The little road outside my digs is busy with life. You go through the door and immediately you’re in someone’s conversation. This evening it was Cassie Stuart.
I just walked out the door. “Do they still lease those out to the company?” she asked. “Yes. Yes they do. I’ve just arrived.”
Cassie played Phoebe in 1986 in As You Like It directed by the lovely John Caird. I just saw a woman who was clearly going on an emotional journey. Memory Lane. I opened up to her so we got into conversation. It was lovely. Being with this company now puts us as part of a community that has existed and breathed through the heart part of the industry for so long now. Shakespeare is about that. Meeting Cassie and hearing her memories and giving her a hug felt like a true welcome to this town. “Do you still act?” “No, I’ve moved to Spain.” But she tells me how it all was, how the company was around her. I told her “I was Silvius once.” “My Silvius was Alan Cummings.”
Colin from our company walked out of his door and assumed the pair of us were old friends. I hugged her goodbye and went with him. “You attract people, don’t you, I envy that,” he observed. I think he does too with his impish eyes, and I told him so. He’s a great heart. Tonight’s little moment felt so auspicious when I’ve just landed in this town. There’s history indeed on that street.
It’s a small world here. The roads are likely full of those who love Shakespeare, of actor types professional amateur and retired. Not just Americans, it turns out. I opened the day with coffee two minutes from my door, catching up with a Scene and Heard actor and friend who has moved up here recently and fractured two fingers on stage last week. I’ll probably be round hers with a power drill before the end of the run just as she’s got a tumbledown property here and no fingers to fix it up in time for winter. Life is more interesting when there’s stuff to do, and I’m cursed and blessed with helpfulness.
I’ll think of Cassie for a while now. Here I am, on this grey winter night, full of hope and joy for what is to come as the winter closes in. She was there in the opposite timespace from me, her eyes turned back to 1986. We momentarily shared a present before she walked deeper into the past and I walked into the future. I wonder if she goes to the Dirty Duck. I thought about going for a pint with her just to bring her into a welcome, but I’m not in the headspace where the Duck is a helpful influence right now.
I’ll walk around the dusk streets of Stratford and then cook up something simple in my little kitchen.
There’s a sofa bed in my flat. This makes friends possible. But I’ll definitely have to go to ASDA and get another set of sheets and a pillow or two.
AlBarclay 