Up and out to Brixton. Grabbing back a bag of body armour that isn’t going to be used by a Scottish play that I’ve helped to costume using my large haul of sexy free clothes.
I left Lou to it after slinging the sack into Bergman but suddenly found myself sleepy. I think my body is used to meat. I had a power nap and then back out and over to Ffion in order to work towards a wedding we are Shakespearing up at The Swan. It’s weird, they know we do a good service, but they kinda don’t want to pay us to provide it so this might be one of the last ones I do there and that’s just the way of it. I’m determined to do a good job of it, so Ffi and I hammered out some cuts and changes in order to make it all a bit more palatable to a wedding crowd. The client doesn’t want things to be crass so we are folding in much more lyricism than either of us are used to, and Ffion even less than me. If she had her way it would only be about a minute long.
We won’t be in costume for this one, it seems like it would be too showy and actually it’ll be nicer to look and feel like wedding guests but to deliver lots of lovely poetry. This is why he’s chosen The Globe for his wedding. I’ve done loads of lovely things up in that room and to a large extent Ffion is right, less is more, but I’m not gonna turn in fuck all, it’s not in my nature. Gotta get better at invoicing though. And tech in general.
I was at The Globe last night for a workshop that has resulted in me getting asked to be in a cue script Henry V at a festival in Wiltshire later this summer. I’m actually quite excited at the prospect – it’s people I’ve run alongside for so long it is almost impossible that we haven’t done things with each other, but we haven’t, so now is the opportunity. Festival Shakespeare, back to the bones of The Factory but older and wiser and marginally less likely to get my kit off. We shall see. I’m supposed to be playing a Welshman. “Never stop challenging yourself,” said Al Barclay. And frankly, I can’t do Welsh for shit. It slides alarmingly towards a nineteen eighties attempt at Bangla. I’m gonna have to be very careful, but thankfully Rhys has offered to help with the phonetics. A new skill by the end of it, look you. Or I fall flat on my face. And that, my darlings, is my favourite performance binary. Take the big risks. Try and succeed. Behave like you have. Win.
AlBarclay 