Right now the back half of an artic from that great big Stanley Mathew or whatever they call themselves depot in Bognor Regis has been stuck into the scene dock at the RST, unloading panels and whatever the hell they have. It isn’t turkey burgers. I just can only remember the single t in Mathew. The van looks like a huge rectangular dyslexic mosquito feeding. It’s doing the opposite. It is pumping things in.
All the people with tools are currently running around in the theatre, likely working late shifts. There’ll be drilling and painting and sawing and dust and noise and shouting and it’ll be a very very familiar world in there to my recent life. Hard hats and hi-vis obligatory. Cherry pickers and forklifts. This is a big old build, but it’s not a temporary sport stadium. I don’t have to show up with all the kit plus a fucking expensive harness and work something out that a day worker has abandoned. There’s a whole team to do that and all I need to think about is “so shall I cross the stage when Desdemona enters?” Because I’m a creative now, darling. And we are traditionally clueless. And I’m happy to be there, clueless, pART of the ART.
Lodivico needs to remember to ask his character’s questions properly. Lodovico needs to think about why he is taking a breath in the middle of one of his verse lines. Lodovico doesn’t have to worry about whether or not the floor will shift, or how we’ll fly that thing in. Someone else will worry about whether Lodivico will be capable of standing in the right place when they do the whatever they’re gonna do. Lodovico is the athlete in this equation, the one who is supposed to think that there’s been no hard work, that nobody has been freaking out about the fact that all the screws provided are too short, or there’s no fucking drills, or you can’t secure the panels properly. We’ll walk onto this huge work of thought that is underway as I write. We’ll be told where it is safe to stand and how we are supposed to negotiate with it. I’ll have to switch off all my build thoughts and just be obedient. We won’t be allowed on it until they are happy it is safe for us, the liability actors, to mix it up there.
“Thespians”. That’s the name of the local Indian restaurant. I am a gentle man but I’ll break your fucking jaw if you tell me I’m a thespian. It’s like telling me I’m “resting” when I’m out of work. “Good luck, oh I’m not supposed to say that…” Say what you like. That stuff was all about self-mystification. The same impulse that led Larry to have the lights imperceptibly raised as he came on stage. I’m not a thespian. I’m just doing my job. I might have things in common with Thespis but you don’t own my attachment to him. But yay I’m doing what Thespis did at a nice place with a team attached and using Iambic Pentameter as opposed to dithyrambs. Still pointing the purpose through the same ritualistic deities. Dionysus will rarely be out of the equation when I’m in the equation, wine or no wine. But you can wish me good luck as easily as broken limbs, and you can talk about all the Scottish kings you choose. I’m a happy man doing a happy job, telling a sad story at a cold time.
AlBarclay 