Just stopped in Brighton. It’s ten to one in the morning. Tessy is chowing down on soup.
Some Meisner where I felt largely misunderstood and then an email telling me I didn’t get the latest nice filming job and then early evening I was standing in five layers of clothing on a bit of high walk overlooking Lauderdale Tower, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s the part of the The Barbican where I had my first round audition at Guildhall and where I met Alex Hassell – so the start of a big journey in many practical ways, taking in The Factory and my training along the way.
We were doing Cymbeline. Largely, THEY were doing Cymbeline. I’m still making sense of what the fuck Cymbeline is but it’s okay, I tell Tom. I’ve got a chilled evening, I tell Tom. I just have to play The Frenchman. Done it before. Be a bit alpha. Remember a bit of prose and one list. Over right at the start. Then I can just be a bodyguard for Caius Lucius or something. Easy life, I tell Tom.
And then Scott arrived. Took me aside in his unique manner: “Al, I was wondering…”
Fuck.
Waggy has done a tremendous amount of work learning Cymbeline, making sense of the play, showing up at sessions while I’ve been gallivanting. Waggy knows it so well nobody else there that night had it learnt. Least of all me. Ahhh The Factory.
It’s the nature of the game. If you aren’t ready to play don’t put yourself in the squad. Waggy can’t make it suddenly.
With twenty minutes warning, I’m given an edited script and I’m gonna be sight-reading The King, Cymbeline, just the title character, no pressure. Not as big a part as Imogen but plenty of it. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Scott asks, and he knows he doesn’t need to check and so do you by now. Bring it on, forever. Nothing I like more than a challenge.
And I sank into the happy happy embrace of disciplined chaos. Loads of players. Loads of new faces. Loads of familiar faces.
This is a pure project and it feels very honest to what The Factory has been for me. A place to try and be truthful within a rigour. A place to listen hard to each other and yet attempt to surprise each other. A place to tell a Shakespeare play with clean text but messy truthful world.
This Cymbeline is shifting. A new stage now, as more of us are learning more parts and so new players are bringing their vigour and their rigour to new areas of the play. There are many moments of delight in these plays, and they are so live and so ephemeral, like gossamer, this one is done now and shattered to memory. And through the white noise of it, I played The King and held myself and my friends, and STILL made time for pure Factory mischief. If I know the show well, my track begins a neverending circle of placing myself somewhere, realising it won’t work, finding another place, that won’t work either, move again, listen, move, listen and then make the most recent offer, the only one still relevant, having abandoned multiple other possibilities that bubbled up and died before they were needed. I didn’t know this show well enough to be so agile, but Dissy spotted an opportunity. We were both at the edge of the action, looking for the offer, and we struck up a conversation with Duncan, a resident. Next thing I knew I was in Duncan’s flat and my next scene was a proclamation – (for audibility). Duncan: “Should I hide when you start speaking?” “No, I’m the king, you’re my attendant.” “Would you like a glass of wine?” “Two weeks ago I might have bitten your hand off. No thanks. My body is a temple”. He is an artist and he’s got some nice white wine there. It’s a lovely flat. I like him.
I wouldn’t have got up there without Dissy. She did the talking. We connected and went prowling looking for the mischief. And together we found a lovely moment. I met her in 2010. There’s history with this company, so much history in my life. And tonight was a lovely happy vindication of the time I’ve spent building friendships in this craft.
Perfectly timed. I needed a lift after more frustrating news. Endlessly frustrating on one hand, absolutely joyful on the other. The craft giveth and the craft taketh away.
I’ve made a rod for my own back though. Gonna have to learn Cymbeline now as well as Caius Lucius.
Hell of a way to learn his track, but you’d be amazed how much my head will have already eaten of his words now I’ve spoken them all under pressure. Spongebrain into action.
I was buoyed back to Brighton by Scott’s: “I KNEW you were the right man to ask.”
Now it’s long past bedtime.
