I’ve made a bed for Nadia. When I used to go and hang with Minnie they didn’t have these sofa beds. I remember me and Ed Dick freezing to fuckery on two separate lines of cushions. The sofa beds are a great addition to these Waterside cottages. Michelle and I pulled the plastic off the mattress last night. Michelle brings her house on her back so I didn’t need to consider her comfort outside of opening space for her. Nadia has come without a huge and exquisitely refined backpack. She needs a bed. Lou and I have made one.
I love my patchwork quilt. It is the most eloquent present I’ve ever received. It was a rush job and half the material she ordered hadn’t arrived. She had one square of fabric showing the arse of a jaguar, and the rest of it showed way too late. But all the squares have meaning, and the colour shift is all thought through and honestly, people, if you aren’t in the market for an excellent Ayurvedic massage in Ditchling I can hook you up with a quilt just so long as you can pay what it’s worth. I still get lost in mine, and I like that the jaguar is hiding. That’s art imitating life. It’s an incredible piece of work. Somehow I’ve managed to seduce or be seduced by a genius.
Two shows today and I’m properly starting to appreciate the long run. Every show, we can tighten and deepen. Sure, within that there’s the devil telling us to indulge and spread out. But if we keep our eyes on the play and the pace then we can sharpen and sharpen. We are still wallowing at points, and it’s interesting to observe the moments of wallow and to see how quickly the audience gets bored of self indulgence even if we feel within the plot that it is totally justified. We have to keep it moving forward ever forward. My character is momentum though. He has to cut through all the horrors of the play and solve things. “I can solve this,” is a game of Tim’s and it’s something I say repeatedly to myself before I walk on and surprise myself with my final entrance. It’s all I can do not to say “solved” when I’ve finished my final couplet.
We are all so ridiculously happy up here, this company. Tim is a great director for curious actors. We’re all able to express, we all love each other very much, we feel just as it ought to feel in an acting company – a non hierarchical mess of creative fools expressing themselves as best they can. I don’t think I’m the only person who feels this is a special company. The tired reviews from people who are already dead just add to that. I think they all thought it would be raved about and wanted to be the clever one who didn’t rave. Bunch of animated farts. It’s a powerful thing this thing. I’m a small part of a wonderful telling of a strange sad tale.
AlBarclay 