I just had my sleepy drink. This means I’ve only got twenty minutes left really. That’s enough time, I’m sure, to account for the day. I woke up with a headache and I think my body is just processing things. It kinda took me out though for the whole morning and half the afternoon. But I had theatre to go to, dammit. The Christmas Show. I know it so well. Twelfth Night. I’ll be seeing it again in January. This one was with AFTLS with whom I’ve toured America a couple of times. And the last time was with that show. I sat with most of the cast from our one, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. I love it when it is stripped back like that, when it really becomes about the humans and the text. A lovely old guy sat next to me and used the word “concept” about our Othello and I almost exploded, but yeah I guess we did some non literal things, but everything was in service to the text. Useful, forever useful, to realise we are making something that is subjectively experienced. Much as Othello was to my taste it is true that he says he dies upon a kiss. “Why didn’t they snog at the end, I wanted to see him snog a corpse” is a valid response. “How dare they switch the lights off for the strangling I want to see it,” we can tell that person that he says “Put out the light”. “to die upon a kiss” is textual, and he only stopped doing it late in previews, and I never thought anyone would object and call it “concept” that he doesn’t snog dead Desdemona. “It’s in the text,” he says, telling me objected to “the concept”. And I think this is just a generational thing. I’m annoyed about it only in retrospect cos I still can’t balance the show I was involved with the things some people wrote about it. I think I have to more completely learn that critics are largely leftbrainers and as such their scribblings have to be as compassionately allowed as their social skills.
I loved Twelfth Night. Lovely to see completely different humans dealing with similar problems in a new way. Lovely to see the points of similarity too – I was sitting next to Kaffe and some of the convergence was massive. But the whole thing came out completely new, as you’d expect with such good actors. The company is always strong on these. It’s so important you get along. It is intense, a different state every week, and it is hard work, teaching so many workshops on so many unusual subjects : “Speaking truth to power,” was one subject I had to teach one time at Wellesley College, using Twelfth Night. I remember that workshop though. Getting people into their bodies and voices and breath, reminding them that communication is much more than just words – it’s a genuinely joyful thing to have the chance to share with young people.
I can feel the curtains closing in. Drinking sleepiness before blog removes censor.
I’m gonna have to go bye-bye. Early start tomorrow fuck it.
AlBarclay 