This is my joyful thing. This has been my joyful thing for years and years. Sometimes it is worth looking at what we have got. I’ve worked hard for this. It has rewarded me.
Ffion and I did a thing. I provided my own costume.
The boots are the latest purchase. Last event we rented the same boots for £35 plus VAT. I went online and bought those ones. A hundred smackers. Two more events and they are paid for. They zip up the back. Easy and effective. The coat is regency. Corporate actors weren’t allowed to wear Elizabethan here at the start. That works to my advantage as Regency is what I have and a costume is a costume. I remember barking for a sideshow once, maybe a decade ago, on the south bank. In my lunch break a very carny lady from the hot dog stand came up: I’ve been listening to you. You’ve got the gab. Your vary it. You’re quick. My dad was a ringmaster. But it goes for nothing without a costume. Get something showy to wear.” “They provided nothing, I’ve got nothing. They ain’t paying me enough”. I was on tuppence an hour back then for long and exposing hours of “roll up roll up ladies and gentlemen” I didn’t have the cornucopia of regency wear I have now. I often wonder how the hell I landed with so much gorgeous stuff. Lou, in short. Magical Lou and the Opera House.
So much use. Mister Kirkaldy and the audience. Halloween ghosts. Benedick, Capulet, school reunion… Some things are yet to find their times. I’m slowly assembling it all into outfits. I wore Benedick for the first time tonight and it fits perfectly. Another rig that can be bagged and labelled.
There’s plenty that fits me like that but then there are duplicates that don’t but might fit someone else. I might have to make some sort of burlesque with it all, or open myself up as a cheap but very specific men’s regency costume hire shop.
All I had to do tonight was a bit of Benedick and then a concatenation of Shakespearesn insults. Ffion and I have it down nicely now. There’s a sense of rightness working in this building and this energy. I like to be able to see the audience while they see me… to be able to incorporate things that happen, like that pigeon in Dream last month when we were watching. Even when I’m not on the main stage, I can feel the history of craft worked into the wood here. There are pictures of my friends all down the stairs. And it is a powerful and rare place. With all my woowoo stuff I feel I’m in the right place when I’m walking through the back rooms, changing into costume in the hallways, being charming and fabulous for some of the people who provide the budget. I know from Brian’s stuff that the bar is a big part of the revenue, and even if I often find the music too loud and the rioja too pricey, it’s ok as lots of it goes back to the glorious art on the main Globe stage. And I’ll pay for that expensive rioja. It is just delightful.
Dream was rare this season and brave and strange. I need to see Maccers before it finishes as it also has a good selection of people I love being gainfully employed and I feel that the ethos in the building is aligned with the needs of the wood it is made from. There’s no other theatre building like The Globe in this country. It is the only commercial one shaped around and for the active theatre that developed in the UK and for our audience. The geek in me adores the thought and care that went into every aspect of it. And I’m lucky to be a cog in a wheel.
The management is not pompous so I no longer feel like I need to hide my corporate work for them. Once upon a time I flinched when introduced to the artistic director with “This is my friend Al, he does lots of the events at The Swan.”
Things are shifting in the world now. Rolling. I’m moving on to another fresh thing tomorrow. Lou is embarking on a long tour very soon. Movement at last. And joy with it. For many people it will start to feel very very busy.
The key will be not to get lost in it all. Christmas schedule looks punishing. Maybe it’s time to pull back on the booze again, and see what things are like without it. Likely the amount of emo blogs that I wake and regret will drop. But what will replace them?
hmm we shall see
and so to tipsy happy bed
AlBarclay 