A couple of long days in a row, just because even the business of barely rehearsing a Shakespeare play requires logistical thinking and practice, particularly with complicated songs and a jig at the end. I suspect part of my love for Shakespeare started when I was at school here, and actually the OH shows were often inspiring in some way. James Callis came and played Lear’s fool one time just after he left drama school. John D Collins was a regular for some time. Alistair Boag… Richard Curtis did a turn once… These were all important people to me growing up, a connection between my school and this industry I knew I was going to embrace, spikes and all.
I’ve made friends through the OH Players, and my inability to say no to things. It’s a reminder that some people do acting for fun. Most of them are lawyers. This is their weekend recreation. I’m enjoying their company but I don’t really want to have to get up tomorrow and rehearse from ten till nine. But it’s a discipline. Even just learning lines and paying attention and finding targets and clear intentions and changes, it all keeps the muscles moving. There’s much to do. Choose your battles though. The pronoun highlighting is off the scale. There’s plenty of side slapping and wandering around and pacing and meaningless gesture. Fuck it. I’m not gonna say anything.
On the way up and down I’ve been listening to the news which is never a good idea. The unbelievable destructive power of that wall of water – looking at those videos has been compulsive. Then the usual gallery of aging ninnies trying to cling onto their relevance and doing increasingly ridiculous stuff. Lake Ontario. Threats to nuke England.
Faced with all that on the radio it is easier to contemplate the fact that every waking hour this weekend is going to be with a love story written 425 years ago. The rain it raineth every day, and today it finally did in London. We have been so parched in the south it was welcome. All day it came down, finally petering out at sunset.
Hopefully this rain will help. There was a fire in Neasden that stopped the trains this morning. The glorious long summer has brought a host of problems. The rate of acceleration globally is becoming really apparent. We must be past the tipping point by now, and still they want more. We are such a destructive species. Nice that we can get together sometimes and just make a weird visual story together as a community loosely bound just by random things like where our parents sent us away to as teenagers.
