Quality of theatre company leading us in acts, I fancy (9)
I believe the answer is:
acoustics
'quality of theatre' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to thinking as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'company leading us in acts i fancy' is the wordplay.
'company' becomes 'co' (abbreviation).
'leading' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (some letters go in front of others).
'in' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'fancy' indicates anagramming the letters.
'co'+'us'='cous'
'acts'+'i'='actsi'
'actsi' anagrammed gives 'atics'.
'cous' put inside 'atics' is 'ACOUSTICS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for acoustics that I've seen before include "Science of sound" , "So caustic about properties of sound" , "The study of the properties of sound" , "CIA scouts seeking properties of sound" .)