Month: May 2017

Friends of mine often send people to me. “My niece wants to be an actress. She’s auditioning for drama school. Can you help her?” One time I was out in Finsbury Park with my best friend and two shy girls came up to her. “We both really love your work. We’re auditioning for drama school this year. Can you give us any advice?” Minnie said “You should go round Al’s flat and get him to help you with your speeches.” They asked me “What do you charge?” I did it for a bottle of wine. I usually say that the first session is free and then I’ll name my price. Because I know after the first session if it’s going to be like pulling teeth. If it is I’ll charge £100 quid an hour and if they pay it’s worth the horror. If it’s lovely and they’re interesting I’ll do it for fun and a few bob. Ten years down the line they’ll be playing my kid, or killing me with a hammer or handing me an envelope. The two from that evening were both awesome. One of them got into Guildhall and is in the 3rd year now. The other one went all the way to the last round at RADA but then didn’t quite make it. But she was 22. Hopefully she understood that waiting is better than compromising and going to any old place. Hopefully. But time feels so big when you’re 22, and three years is forever in theory.

I have a strange relationship with teaching acting. I won’t do it unless I feel like it. I’m a practitioner. I don’t frame myself as a teacher. I can attempt to put into words what works for me. It would be hubris to say “This is the way it should be done.” So mostly I just use my instincts and build confidence. I’m very good at building confidence, and I enjoy that.

Because of the terrible school system in this country, a lot of people who teach acting frame it in terms of right and wrong because it’s what people are used to. But that’s ridiculously unhelpful. If you’re going to pay the fees these places expect it’s crucial to know that you’ll be getting a good training. It’s the foundation that means that you get re-employed and recommended when you get the job, which is how I have built a consistent career. Every year drama schools disgorge hundreds of graduates who have shelled out loads of money and expect something back from the industry. I paid for mine with my inheritance from my dad. I was lucky as Guildhall is an exceptionally good place. I honestly had no idea at the time, it was just chance, I had no perspective. I just wanted to train. Anywhere would’ve done. Every year a huge percentage of graduates are going to have a reality check. Even from Guildhall I would be surprised if 50% of my year group of 23 still actively identify themselves as actors, even if others are working loads. A good drama school training gives an understanding, an empathy and a confidence that is valuable in many walks of life.

I once got a call from a friend who was directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream at a college I won’t name. “Al, I’m working with these kids in the third year. None of them have any confidence or voice. It’s desperate. Can you come in and give them some? I’ve managed to free up some money for it.” I went in. I worked hard with them. I found it so frustrating. All of these kids were good kids. They were willing and interesting, but they had been taught astronomically badly, and rewarded for turning tricks. The teaching style had also sapped their confidence. It really was a poisonous place, where obedience was the only thing that the principal craved. They pay over 10 grand a year! After three years they are three years older, thirty grand lighter, and with a worse shot at it than they had before they started. Shortly after I finished working with them, another friend who knew I had been there said “Were there any young northern lads from that job you did?” With no preamble I recommended the guy who played Demetrius, who after weeks of work was showing the beginning signs of agency and self -confidence. I really wanted him to get the part – to work with a serious practitioner – to learn on the job and to go on his way. I sent him to a workshop audition with her. He didn’t get it. Some time later I was driving through Yorkshire with my friend. I asked her how he did in the audition. “Oh, God yes. I remember. Oh Al. He was lovely. But … he just couldn’t do it. At all. He really couldn’t. And we didn’t have time.” 30 grand. He probably never worked once. And he had potential. Ugh. If you know people who are in that audition hell, tell them to be careful. There are some godawful places out there.

I honestly have no idea why that’s where my mind went tonight. I think I was going to illustrate another point when I wrote the first sentence and then it ran away with me.

Today I learnt some lines while invigilating an exam, and then I unloaded a big van full of set dressing into a warehouse in South London, and stood on it triumphantly when it was done. Here’s Brian and I, winning the van unload. Have a great day everyone.

Considering how unpredictable and varied my working hours can be, it’s not surprising that I often forget to eat. You’ll know when it happens. I go silent, slightly distracted and touchy. If I’m on my own I never work out what’s going on until some hours later when I start shaking. Close friends in the past have marched me to the nearest food outlet long before I’ve noticed I’m hungry. “Al. You’re hungry. Eat something.” “I’m not hungry.” “You’re hungry.” “I’m not.” “Eat!”  “Ok! I’ll humour you! But I’m fine. *munchmunch* Fuck I was starving.” “Yep. Told you.”

I was glad to witness today through a 3 year old that I’m not alone. I went to see my friend Flavia. The excuse was to borrow a cat box. But really I wanted good company and tasty food. She’s a single mum to a three year old. She works in theatre PR. We had to agree beforehand that we definitely weren’t going to drink wine.

Over fifteen years ago Flavia met drunk Al at a party. She was going out with a mate of his. She told him she was auditioning for drama school. Drunk Al hauled her out for not having worked out what she was going to do for audition speeches. He ended up getting her to come meet sober Al after Guildall the next day with at least two speeches chosen. Amazingly she showed up, sober Al helped unlock some confidence and she got into drama school. We’ve been great friends ever since.

Her three year old was hungry when I arrived and I totally recognised it. He was hangry. The goddamn screws had gone missing from goddamn yellow van. It was broken and ruined and the world was going to end and the only way to push back the fog of doom was to howl like a drunk dumped student who dropped his kebab. Worse still we couldn’t find all the screws. One remains missing even now. It is with a heavy heart that I even suggest this, but perhaps it could have ended up in the hoover? Either way, it was a disaster of unmitigated proportions for Ivo.

While this Screw-van Missing Crisis was unfolding, Flavia, who had been working all day, comforted her son, fed him and us beautifully, shared pickles and stories, and got me a towel for the shower. (If you see me these days I WILL try to clean myself in your home.) Then she got a cat box to lend me. It put me to shame. All I’ve done today is book some flights to Amsterdam, try on a robot costume in southwest London and learn some lines. In order to make myself vaguely useful I did Flavia’s washing up. That’s been a tradition since just after Ivo was born and I was so in awe of her ability to make people that I needed to ground myself. She’s growing an adult for god’s sake.

Once he’d eaten he calmed down and returned to innocent childlike games. We sat together as he repeatedly decapitated George Harrison, all the while muttering “No! No! What are you doing!” But not in a Liverpool accent.

It’s amazing how close kids that age are to their emotions. Ivo would decide he wanted something, find out he couldn’t get it, shout and scream in the hopes that would change things, and actually make himself genuinely upset through what started as a conscious manipulation. He would check me out under his mother’s arm to see if I was buying it, and redouble his attempts if he saw I wasn’t. I learnt to keep a straight face rather than smile, as I was worried he’d hurt his throat when I found it funny. He’s a great kid. We’ve always played nicely together. It makes me want to go to Sussex to see my little godson Hal who I renounced satan for. Must. Make. Time.

We are starved of ritual. Science has become our major religion. We pay our tithes with our annual new phone / faster wifi / better car or whatever, but it’s a belief structure and it has little need of ritual. I think ritual is terribly important. There’s a lot to be said for things that have existed for thousands of years in one form or another. They haven’t come about arbitrarily. They’ve come to fill a necessary function, and they’ve been honed through generations.

Coming of Age is the one that is most lacking in our culture. If we had to wear gloves full of bullet ants for ten minutes like they do in parts of the Amazon, or jump over a cow four times naked, or throw ourself off a tall tower with a non-elastic vine bungee to mark our transition into adulthood, I suspect our inner selves would better match our outer selves in the years to come. There are a lot of infantilised adults in this secular society. I say this as a man who essentially plays for a living. But I wish there was some form of standardised ritual for the transition from child to adult. Other than just getting hammered again. Too many people are still just waiting for their mum to give them dinner, or for their dad to fix it. Sure there is a Bar Mitzvah if you’re Jewish, perhaps a confirmation if you’re Catholic. But for the average secular joe, it’s just a prom, where you can shuffle around in an uncomfortable suit feeling insecure and a bit American, before obliterating yourself with Snakebite and black. Even proms only started insinuating themselves over here in the last 15 years or so. Before then it was just vomiting on your girlfriend and falling in the canal.

The Christians mostly mark birth, marriage and death. Birth is not going to be remembered by the kid though, it’s for the parents and godparents – (and the coffers). I was made a godfather by a catholic priest who knew I was an actor. He asked the godmother: “Do you renounce satan, and all his works, and all his false promises?” “I do.” She said. Nice and easy. One question. One answer. He seemed satisfied. Then he turned and eyeballed me: “Do you renounce satan?” … … … “I do.” “And all his works?” He is on his words. It’s rare you hear a man of cloth attributing meaning to the words of his ritual. Often they just sing. “I do.” I venture. “AND ALL HIS FALSE PROMISES?” I’m in the dock. “I DO!” And I did. And for a bit afterwards I felt washed as clean as my confused infant godson.

Marriage is the big expensive one. There’s a purpose to that ritual too though. If you tromp down do a grey office next to a Greggs and sign a piece of paper, you might not think so much of heading down to another office for another piece of paper before too long. If you have a bloody great big expensive ritual and swear complicated things to a nebulous authority figure represented by a dude in costume who is singing instead of speaking – somehow it’ll go in different. You might still head down to a grey office in years to come and opt out, but I suspect you’ll question it deeper before you do so.

I flirted with the idea of training as a humanist celebrant a few years ago. On reflection it’s probably not for me – I am not secular. I flirt with many religions, and like to magpie from them to fit my sense of how I think life should be lived, and how myself and those around me can be best helped. This evening an old friend of mine, Harriet, who IS a celebrant gave me her unused tickets to The Voltaire Lecture at Conway Hall, delivered by Nick Cohen for the British Humanist Association. It was a great lecture talking about the use of language, entitled “Free Speech in an Age of Fanaticism. I was going to write more about it, but the cat has just been copiously sick on the living room carpet so I think I need to switch heads. Eew yes – it stinks… And she looks disconsolate. I’d better stop.

I first met Jack Whitam on a lawn in Yorkshire over ten years ago. Sprite Productions had lost a Malvolio shortly before rehearsal started. Lucy Kerbel Charlotte Bennett and Liam Evans-Ford auditioned me at short notice, and I was told I’d be going up to Ripley Castle for the whole summer. I was stoked. I decided to be organised. I had to get there on the Sunday evening. So I packed my bag bright and early Saturday morning, to be properly prepared for a few months away. That sort of preparation was uncharacteristic to me. Which makes some sense of what followed.

Having packed my early bag, I went down to my car, leaving my flat door open. I consulted my A to Z (this was 2006). I plotted a route to Ripon in Yorkshire. Then I did something I still don’t fully understand. I was reading the A to Z in the driver’s seat. I worked out and scribbled down the roads. I put the key in the ignition, to check the fuel. A full tank of fuel. I then, with no conscious thought, started the car and drove non stop to Ripon in Yorkshire, a day early, leaving all my stuff neatly packed in a bag in the living room, and with the door to my flat wide open.

Some hours later I got to Ripon. Then I realised I had no clue where in Ripon I needed to be. I still didn’t realise I was in the wrong town, or that all my stuff was in an open flat in London.

I rang Liam, the Producer. “Hi, I’m in Ripon.” I say. “Whereabouts in Ripon are you?” I ask. “We’re not in Ripon.” He says. “But you’re not far.” By some cosmic coincidence, (the universe loves fools), Ripon is 15 minutes drive from Ripley. Liam gives me directions to The Mill House, where he’s staying. I drive there, overshoot, and pull up just before the sign to a town called Bedlam. “It’s Bedlam up here,” I think to myself and try to chuckle but I can’t. Instead I berate myself for making premature dad jokes, pull up by the sign, and call Liam. “I think I’ve overshot,” I tell him. “I’m near Bedlam.” I struggle not to make the joke, and succeed. Best to make a good impression. Liam comes out in a car to find me. I still haven’t caught on I’m there on the wrong day or that all my stuff  is 4 hours away in an open London flat. He pulls up alongside me and winds down the window. “Hi Liam!” “Hi, Al – turn round – you don’t want to go that way – it’s Bedlam up there.” He is chuckling. I can’t do it. I don’t even crack a smile. It just wouldn’t be honest. I’ve just hauled myself out for the same wisecrack. And I see Liam’s face fall. “Humourless git” he thinks as we go in convoy to The Mill House.

It’s only over dinner with Liam and Hester that I discover I’m there on the wrong day. I try to make sense of how I managed that – thankfully it’s okay. The digs are ready. We go in convoy to Throstle Nest, which is a remote farmhouse where the actors are all sleeping. I go to my boot to get my bag but there is no bag in my boot. I stand there shocked as the full extent of my idiocy lands on me. My bag is in London. My flat door is open. I am a day early for a job with a load of strangers, in the middle of nowhere. Fuck.

Multiple panic phone calls lead to me coercing my teenage nephew to go to my flat, get my bag, close the door and hoik the bag all the way to Greenwich in time for my friend Jo (who is playing Olivia) to load it into a car. I think I might still owe him £20 quid for that. Hopefully he doesn’t read my blog. He earns more than I do now.

That night I sleep alone in an amazing room in a big Yorkshire farmhouse overlooking Nidderdale, and I learn the terrifically important actor’s digs lesson –  if you get there first you get the best room.

Liam and Hester were worried sick about me as a company member after my tremendous display of incompetence. I was worried sick about myself to be honest. It worked out for the best though. They got me back six consistent joyful years, and I had some of the happiest times of my life so far in the grounds of Ripley Castle making Shakespeare. It was a tight community of theatre makers and believers who were geeky and willing enough to spend summer working hard at something beautiful in a beautiful place. I would never have met the people I collaborated with on Christmas Carol had I not gone to Sprite, and many more projects besides. I did delightful work with a variety of different practitioners, all of whom were having working holidays in Yorkshire. One of the people who I worked and lived with with a few times back then was Jack Whitam. He was the first actor to arrive on the correct day all those years ago. He was surprised to find someone already had the best bedroom by arriving the day before. “I would never have thought of that,” he said to me on that lawn. “I didn’t” I replied.

Since then we’ve been thrust together by chance so frequently that we started to do it by design. We’ve made a Beowulf, as you will well be aware, oh constant reader. First scratch was today. It’s Jack, myself and Anne-May (Dutch Puck) playing around with sheets and masks and lights and songs and movement and verse and danger. I am so glad of the convoluted paths that life takes. It feels like the right story to tell right now, this ancient tale of men and monsters. And the right people to be telling it with.

Funny how my thoughts fell to Sprite when I was going to write about Beowulf. It’s because of the time of year. I think it’s around now that rehearsals would usually have started. They’ve moved to Wales, and those times are now just memories and friendships. Although maybe one day…

Here’s a shot of Jack as Beowulf from today. We were experimenting with mask.

 

“When you’re playing a character do you start to behave like them?” After “How do you remember all those lines” and “Why don’t you get your agent to suggest you for that Star Wars” it’s a pretty frequent question. And there’s something in it. You’re examining someone’s thought patterns and duplicating them. It’s bound to have a subtle influence on your own.

Before seeing Cosmic Trigger last night, I met up with my old friend Jethro, who’s in it. I don’t precisely remember the moment I met Jethro. It’s like we’ve always known each other. We’re very different but have similarities. We have shared roles before, and both played the same part in two iterations of a play called “Oceans of Loneliness” which, surprisingly, was not written by a 15 year old boy with too much black eye makeup. Last night, among other characters, Jethro was playing Timothy Leary in Cosmic Trigger. We met up beforehand.

Cosmic Trigger is, on paper, about the life of Robert Anton Wilson, who I quoted at the end of yesterday’s blog. It’s hard to quickly encapsulate his life and work, as it was wide ranging and frequently extremely weird. This play is an example of form mirroring content. If you’re going to tell the tale of a man who dedicated years to exploring ritual, coincidence, mysticism, joy, visionary disobedience, humanity and chaos then the tale has to have those qualities at its core.

But Cosmic Trigger is also, equally, about Ken Campbell, beloved by theatremakers in this country as an iconoclastic genius who effectively mythologised himself, and who made a 9 hour long play about Robert Anton Wilson’s work that ended up playing at The National Theatre. So it also needs to reflect his anarchic focus.

Jethro and I went for a walk while he was getting himself show ready. He was in the thought patterns of his character, Timothy Leary. It had had an effect on him. Leary was a psychologist and transhumanist maverick sage, expounding and normalising the therapeutic use of psilocybin and LSD. He was described as “The most dangerous man in America” by Nixon, and spent much of his life in prison. Since Jethro was channeling him – (There was a lot of channeling going on in that show) – it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to tell me he had a tiny amount of a certain mushroom he’d found growing near his home. Since I was about to watch a long show about psychedelia, and since I trust his recognition, it seemed equally natural for me to ask for it and chew it up like a good boy.

Some time later, finding my way into my seat I am still capable of introducing myself to the guy next to me. This is not your usual theatre audience so he’s not awkward and nonplussed at being spoken to by a stranger. Which is just as well, as I’m wide angle by this time. I feel the need to tell him I’m a little loose on reality and why. He hugs me like a brother. “Mushies! I’m going to be one of the pips next week,” he says. “Oh. The pips. The pips?” I venture. “Yeah the pips. You know. We get birthed from the golden apple of discord and then … something happens.” “Yes. Um… Pips? er… I’ll find out.” He’s a propmaker. He’s there with his girlfriend. “I’m trying to persuade her to be Eris.” he says. She blushes. “Eris?” I say. “Yeah mate. Goddess of chaos. She sheds her Godhood. You’ll see.” And I do. Plus a lot more besides.

The show opens with a pretty much entirely naked volunteer ritualistically taking off what little she has left – the trappings of immortality – to a disembodied voice. There’s a different volunteer every night. It’s the opening of the rabbit hole. For the rest of the evening we are guided through an experience in which we deepen our understanding of the leading lights of alternative thought throughout history. Crowley, Burroughs, Leary, and Wilson cascade alongside Campbells old and new, actors playing people playing people playing actors playing people. Wilson gives birth to himself and successfully gives his daughter who is every goddess the orange doose she-they want. There are songs, and rituals and cleansings. We are challenged and comforted. We meet talking sharks and the goddess of chaos. Cthulu emerges from R’lyeh to sing karaoke to Radiohead’s Creep. There’s a naked man covered in goat’s blood. He’s having a great time. We learn not to say “I” without biting our thumb. The number 23 becomes conspicuous even by its absence. Identity is questioned, and orthodoxy, and reality. The physical theatrical space of The Cockpit is used to the extent of its possibilities, assisted by wonderful volunteers who are happy to sit in ridiculous places to make a moment beautiful. The lighting is bolder than I thought possible in this venue. The soundscape is complete and bold. There are projections and videos. Aliens and bicycling prophets cross the stage. This is a logistical nightmare made to look effortless. It’s a show built by a community as much as it’s built by Daisy Eris Campbell. But still she sits at the centre of it, caring deeply about the complete experience for the audience, joyfully pushing the boundaries, orchestrating the composite experience. Even the foyer is dressed and lit, and this show has merchandise. I catch the director in an interval saying: “They’ve put music on in the bar for the interval. Get them to switch it off. It’s ruining the atmosphere.”

This is a beautiful anarchic splat of a play, and a proper journey for the audience. It’s utterly joyful, and turns the key just when it has to. The moments of tragedy are handled just as carefully and honestly as the anarchic joy. It’s a company that’s locked into one another, caring about one another, wanting one another to do well but challenging one another as well. I never looked at my watch. I forgot I had it on. Admittedly I was enhanced. But that was perfect.

I didn’t think I’d write a theatre review on my blog but this made me want to. As with anybody who writes about theatre, this is my opinion, nothing more. It’s informed by my personality, my friendship group, my expectations my upbringing and my state of mind. All writing about art can be nothing else. But I found The Cosmic Trigger a wonderful hilarious joyful thought provoking show. Decide for yourself if you’re going to love it based on what you know of me, and go if you think you will. I can tell you that everybody stood at the end of the show I went to and applauded. I was tired from laughing and swept up with emotion. Conversely I can also tell you that the ancient lady with the crazy tree-face that spoke about The Covent Garden journal to a version of me that was desperately holding it together before the show – she left in the first interval. Art is subjective. This is art. It runs until the 27th May.

I’m off to see a show this evening. It’s at The Cockpit theatre, off Edgware Road, down an alley near a shut down street market. It’s alive but you’ve got to be careful. My mate Dan was wearing headphones round here and got hit in the back of the head for them. If you were Batman, you wouldn’t want to go there with your parents. Which in no way affects the quality of the work in the theatre. If anything it enhances it. I saw my business partner Jack play Romeo not so long ago. You’re never too old to be in love. It was awesome. Tonight it’s press night for The Cosmic Trigger. I have a friend in it, and I’m interested in the subject matter.

I was going to wait until I’d seen it and then write on the way home, but it’s a long play so I thought I’d do it before I went in. It’s almost four hours. Four hours is nothing for the woman behind it though. She directed The Warp when she was a teenager. That was 24 hours long. She’s daughter to the legendary theatre experimenter Ken Campbell. So four hours is likely to fly by, particularly as I’ll be supporting my good friend Jethro.

I’ve always felt at home in circles that  could be considered “experimental.” The Beowulf we are making is an experiment. Christmas Carol was too. And Sprite, and The Factory. And Coney, FanSHEN, The Flanagan Collective, Baz. I adore people who are knowingly shagging the boundaries and getting us to join them – they’re great. And fearless. And we’ll be friends. There’s nothing that rankles like mummification when it’s not called for. Sometimes we crash. Sometimes we win. That’s the point of experimenting.

This’ll be a show about psychedelics, which is a fun frame for theatre right off the bat. By the sound of the team it won’t be boring, which is the only true sin that theatre can commit.

I’ve always found the psychedelic movement fascinating, and much of the art and thinking that rose from it has new relevance nowadays. The movement coincided with the birth of computers and the space race. The eyes of the world were on the expanse of the infinite universe. “How do we get up there?” “What is that place to us?” “What will be discover now we have machines to do the logical thinking for us?” People started to reach for the stars.

More than one piece of software will scan over even these words, and something might go ‘beep’ when I write “anarchy” “bomb” “jihad” or whatever. We feel we are being monitored. With actual trips to Mars once again being seriously mooted, and people feeling boxed and observed and crowded down on this little rock, once again we’re starting to seek for the cracks around the accepted view of things – looking outside the party line for meaning, healing, community, understanding and shits and giggles. I work at festivals a lot, so I see people on vast cocktails of narcotics. 8 years ago, those cocktails rarely seemed to be mostly heavy psychedelics. There were pills galore of course, but people on downers were smoking weed or falling into k-holes. Now many more people are in space against trees with acid or even DMT in the daytime. I don’t know if that’s to do with supply or demand. But I’ve definitely noticed a shift, not just in my observations but in the stuff people try to sell me.

Just as hundreds of seekers in fields are doing this stuff, so are professors. I know because I worked with a load of neuroscientists. They were conducting experiments on their own brains, pushing their own boundaries. Jolly bespectacled family men with academic posts had been cooking their own 2CP and had enough to share.  One of them was talking about direct application of electrical current to different bits of the skull. He would put it on and give himself a sustained dose of low level shock to one side of his head or the other depending on what he was meant to be doing. He was quite odd but he had acres of evidence that it helped. Who knows what these brave madmen will discover. We still know comparatively little about the human brain and we can’t experiment on others without their consent. Their argument was that we need to think outside what is accepted. Fair point. We do.

The play I’m watching tonight is about Robert Anton Wilson, a man who walked the walk. Here’s one of his many quotes, which I think helps elucidate the man he was and why I think he was important.

“Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and ‘progress,’ everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man’s refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, ‘Disobedience was man’s Original Virtue.”

Today has been a rush from start to finish. I woke up, splashed myself with water, attempted to wash my clothes at the launderette, ran out of time on the drier, rushed home with a bursting bag scattering socks in my wake. I arrived at a theatre and went into a lovely peaceful audition room for two hours. Then I rushed out, bashed across London, lost my wallet, rehearsed, grabbed food when I was shaky, and now I’m in a bus home thanks to the kindness of my business partner putting the week travelcard I lost with my wallet on an oyster and donating it to me.

Thankfully losing my wallet is no biggie. The biggest horror is the £50 Hawksmoor voucher that I was saving up. If someone takes my card and clones it they’ll probably have bailiffs almost immediately and welcome. With a travelcard I can work, and plenty of people owe me money, so it’ll come good. Nevertheless when you lose your wallet you feel like a prat. Going home through the cold I wanted something to cheer me up and then I got a message from my flatmate…

Brian and I both love animals. We know it of each other. We keep on wanting to get a dog. We dogsit whenever possible for friends. We do that because it’s temporary and we know that the dog is not ultimately our responsibility so we can get on with doing unpredictable things.

But this evening, Brian met a kitten on the way home. She was cold and hungry and lost. So he took her to our warm flat and fed her. When I heard I rushed home through the cold on various buses. Now I’m home, she’s sitting next to me purring like a drill. We don’t have a litter. So we will almost certainly experience early morning poo and shredded sofas. But it’s a lovely unexpected visitor

Brian tried to call the RSPCA, messaged the lost and found, and tomorrow we are going to check the lost cats helpline and put some posters up in the area saying we found a cat. If there’s a family out there that loves her we need to get her back. I’m thinking of one of the last times I handled somebody’s cat, when I helped dig a grave for it beneath an orange tree. I want to make sure this cat finds its way home to a house where she’s loved and has nothing horrid happen to her.

If there is no house where she’s loved then there is now… Apart from the unpredictable hours, there’s a whole lot of love in this household.

Before I got home she already had been given the name “pickle”. She is being spoilt rotten. “Look at pickle,” says Mel, Brian’s girlfriend. “She just loves having her hand stroked.” Oh God. On top of the boiler, am I going to be worrying about vet’s bills? I’m trying not to get attached but… If we can’t find her home, I’ll probably get her insured which is more than I can do for myself. But there’s no National Cat Service.

Let’s see what the posters do. Meantime I’m going to try and establish a place for her to sleep… And curl up myself

If I boil my biggest pot once and the kettle three times there’s about enough hot water for an enervating if mildly underwhelming splash in the bath. I dread to consider the cost in gas and electricity. I’m wondering if this boiler explosion will eventually allow me to get something a little more environmentally sound than the gasfucking monstrosity that has chuntered and loured in the corner of my kitchen for so long. It was installed by the boyfriend of a friend of a girl I was seeing many years ago. His name was Stewart Walkely. He stitched me up like a kipper. I can be too trusting. He even took my old immersion heater, which would’ve provided hot water for us now. He sold it for copper and charged me for the disposal. “Fuck him,” he must’ve thought. “He lives in Chelsea. He’s loaded.” I’d like to track him down and make him wear my socks.

Over the last ten years I’ve tried to force myself to understand that not everybody is lovely. Because I wouldn’t stitch anyone up I find it a mystery that other people do. It still shocks me when someone does it to me. I think I’ve got better at looking out for it now. At accepting that some people are able to sell themselves fictions about other people that allow them to serve their own needs and hurt others in the process. It feels like the world is shifting back to giving permission for that. Back in the eighties it was all the rage. “Greed is good.” Now with this cruel selfish manipulative egomaniac at the helm of Usacorp I suspect his rapacity and simple binary worldview will give permission to similarly minded individuals the world over to take what they can.

“Them and us” though. We’re all guilty of it. Maybe I’m wrong to think Donald Duck is a bad thing. Maybe I’m missing the point. If I could switch off my empathy maybe I’d find a peculiar happiness. I’ve already shifted my worldview once, having grown up Tory. My mother was brilliant, and full of love and heart, care and kindness. And yet she would periodically bang her hand on the table and say “Bring back Thatcher.” I can’t say that made her bad, even if I’ve shifted my spectrum wildly from where I started. There can be no debate if you just think the “other side” is plain wrong. I like to think everyone wants the best for the greatest number of people. But perhaps that’s another aspect of life where I’ve duped myself with my own worldview. Maybe there are just lots of extremely frightened people seeking safety from nebulous others. Maybe I’m one of them. I hope not.

There’s an election coming up in the UK, and we need to think about the decisions we’ll make. For a start it will directly affect how and when a lot of us die, as well as how comfortable or abrupt the dying process will be. However much I hear “strong” and “stable” repeated in the new political language of bad neurolinguistic programming, I can’t associate those qualities with someone who is tightly controlling her media access like this. But similarly, shouting “media bias” about Corbyn while laughing at the idea of media bias about Littlefingers? That’s a double standard. Are those on the left going to be too nuanced and split their vote again? Are those on the right going to be too complacent and assume it’s a sure thing? We don’t have long, but Christ we need to try to be as educated as we can be about what we’re voting for here, county to county, borough to borough. And be willing to examine our own assumptions. This was my morning reading today, by the Oatmeal. Spot on as ever, and despite part of his argument being anchored in an American concern it still carries.

Hmm. I very quickly went from writing about a boiler installer scamming me to sounding off about my clumsy politics again. But it’s election time. It’s unavoidable. Vote.

Here’s a photo of a grey May day in London. This weak May Sun has me longing for change. May should be better than this. I wish this May wasn’t so unstable. etc #BadNLP.

 

I spent this morning as a ten year old boy from the southern states. We were supposed to be in a tree house, but the budget didn’t stretch to that. We had to make do with a portacabin. Considering I’ve rehearsed in a shipping container, it was a step up but it still felt a bit like I was being trafficked. I met someone for the first time, shook them by the hand politely, and five minutes later we embarked on a journey from first meeting, to becoming friends, to me teaching her to read, to her being unexpectedly bludgeoned to death by her father. Most of my friendships at that age were less complicated than that. Although there was that one time…

Central School of Speech and Drama is one of the (too) many drama schools in London, and a good one. I cancelled my audition there when I’d been offered my place at Guildhall as I loved Guildhall and there was no way I was putting myself through that hell again once I had a good place. But some of my most beloved artistic collaborators trained there, and some of my friends teach there now. So today I was employed by one to help the MA writers develop their scripts. The game is: Get actors. Actors read script. Ask actors questions about detail. Notice where it’s inconsistent or unclear. Rewrite.

It’s lovely to be instrumental in the development of these future practitioners and to see the concerns of their work. And in this collaborative medium it’s always useful for them to get some distance from what they’ve written. You often hear the teachers say: “You see! The actors agree with me that that bit is unclear to everyone but you.”

In the evening we got a promotion and moved up to the boardroom at the top of the school. We sat around a long table surrounded by framed headshots of noted alumni over the years. Under the scrutiny of dear dear poor dear Sir Larry, we read two episodes of a television family comedy. It was a bit like Brewster’s Millions in Essex on speed. Then more discussions culminating in a trip to the pub.

The temporary fellowships are some of the most striking parts of doing this for a living. You have to make friends quickly. Melissa the director is an old mate. I met her in a field some 8 years ago. She was sick and I was horrible. Somehow we kept each other. Also one of my oldest friends was there because I suggested her. We did Private Lives forever ago in Norfolk. Very flat, Norfolk. She’s ace. Doesn’t get blogs though, she told me. Nor do I to be honest. But somehow I’m still going. Mike is an actor I run alongside periodically. I’ll see him again soon I’m sure. We had the same agent some time ago and crop up a lot for one another. But the actors who played my friend in the first piece, my children, my sister… We all met tonight and had to go from 0 to 60 in ten seconds. I love it. It makes me forever inpatient with social niceties. It’s ruined me for society dinners where there are doilies and interaction has come down to a question and answer checklist. But I don’t get invited to them so it’s not really an issue.

Here’s our portacabin. Jo, my old mate, took it. She says the composition is excellent. And she did A Level photography…

Oops. Clicked submit instead of schedule. Hey how. Early one today.

I’ve just spent the last hour Charlestoning in front of my TV set, to the extent that I have opinions about the various different youtube tutors that have offered their Charleston tutorials to the world. Gods. Any old fucker can put a video of themselves doing any old shit with 0 production values or charisma and still there’ll be some guy like me on the other side of the world that watches it 8 times. I was thinking “Maybe next time she won’t be so annoying.” “Maybe next time he won’t be so boring.” “Maybe next time it’ll make more sense.” Like when you watch Romeo and Juliet for the 8 millionth time and it’s a good one for a change so you think “maybe it’ll work out with these guys – they actually work together.” Even though you know it won’t. You hope. But those youtube videos just get worse the more you watch them. My feet, knees and brain are tired now and I don’t think I’m much closer to being a Charleston expert than I was before I subjected myself to them. But hell, I’ll keep at it. There might be a job at the end of it.

I’m back looking at the 1920’s again. It’s a period I’ve worked in a lot. Being a bit lost, instinctively bohemian, “posh”, I fit the tone of the times. The most prevalent stories from those interwar years came from those with privilege. Everyone else was working too hard, and didn’t have uncle Joey to help them get a platform for their work. Over here we had Evelyn Waugh, vomiting caustic bile on everyone that looked or smelt like him, excoriating his own class, and yet laughing, telling mad beautiful stories of human monsters and subhuman idiots. It was one of his novels that provided my first job out of drama school – Vile Bodies. I immersed myself in that period – the desperate fun, the lack of morals, the dance of a fucked generation that had lost most of their bravest and were going to lose the rest.

Meanwhile over in America there were three writers of that period that I love and know, and their styles are hugely varied. Hemingway with his spare, sharp observations, his heat and his death. Faulkner with his slow strange poetry warping and shifting and experimenting with form, opening imaginative landscapes and possibilities. And then F Scott Fitzgerald. As a teenager, Tender is the Night was my favourite book. It’s a Wuthering Heights of a book – a young book. A good read for an angry reader. It’s easy prose, incredibly closely observed. Fitzgerald himself was a doomed romantic, an alcoholic, a lover. Be wrote what he knew. He was best friends for a while with Hemingway, the hard boiled practical humanist who lived as hard as he could and then blew his brains out when his capability fell behind his desire. They both lived.

Fitzgerald was obliterating himself, obsessively making art in the gaps, pouring his heart into broken vessels. He ran himself out long before his age necessitated a bullet in the brain. But before he went he penned one of the best known short novels in the world: The Great Gatsby. A quick read. A day’s read. A beautiful read. Some say it’s the ultimate American novel, exploring the gap between the idea of the American dream and the reality. “Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in the world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.” That’s the opening. If you haven’t read it, it’s worth it. If you have, read Tender is the Night. And then get some of his old mate Hemingway into you as well –  I recommend For Whom The Bell Tolls – or any of his short story collections. The Sun Also Rises. Argh. I’m re-reading Gatsby tonight, and it just makes me want to read all of these books again for the first time. So much joy to be had. If I had hot water I’d slide into the bath and read the whole of Gatsby there. Last time I read Gatsby I was at University – a very different man from who I am now. “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I’m off to bed to read and remember. And give my legs a rest.