Author: albarclay

Right in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains here we are, the five of us, this motley crew, surrounded by 4000 cadets.

The Air Force Academy is sprawled over acres and acres of land. “I’ve seen bears here,” says Bill. “Great big deer. Loads of wild turkey.” I can believe it too. Beyond us it’s just wild. You drive a long way from the gate to the first building. There’s a B-52 bomber sitting by the road. Then it’s just trees, and the occasional cadet doing exercise in the morning light until you get to the squat grey buildings, huge and labyrinthine, in which we do our classes.

I had three of them back to back first thing today and I’ve got three first thing tomorrow. Thursday is more relaxed for me although I’ll be chauffeur for the early morning class, back in for the obscurely named “Brown Bag Tour” and having to be still awake and full of energy to do the show in a 4,000 seat auditorium at high altitude in the evening. Considering how much I sweat when we are at sea level, I’m expecting a workout. And depending on the layout of the theatre we may or may not have to do some serious vocal warm-ups. We are a low-fi show and this theatre has an orchestra pit between us and the audience. The first row of seats is going to be a very very long way away from us. It’s going to be a huge shift, having just played our smallest venue, to bang it out into a larger one. But at Denton five years ago we played to an audience that was twenty feet away with an organ between us and them, and it still landed, although we had to make a few changes to bring things further forward.

At lunch they all march in, forty squadrons, accompanied by a brass band. They do it every day. Then they eat together in a huge hall overlooking the foothills. Freshmen on one side of each table, seniors on the other, mixing up the year groups. “It takes years just to get from one side of the table to the other,” quips Bill. We are eating on the officer’s deck, above them all.

We are unexpectedly introduced over a tannoy and encouraged by our escort to wave like the Queen to the sea of cadets below us. 4000 people clap us for smiling. It’s a staggering experience to be here like this. We are the first AFTLS group that has come into this particular institution. It feels like it’s where the work is most necessary, with people in tight regimes, to open up the possibility of personal connection to making art, poetry and beauty. As with Maryland so with Colorado and I only wish that we could come to an army college as well and fully understand the difference between the three services.

Joe the huge cadet today was talking poetically in a workshop about the light on the corn back home, and how it meant it was football time. So many cadets today just connected with something unusual to them through the lines in Shakespeare and their own lives. If I can go away and one of these cadets gives themselves permission to write something beautiful about how they see the world up there in the stratosphere at MACH 2 or whatever, then it’s worth all the early mornings and more.

This tour is coming to an end. It’s been amazing. What a place to end it. Dear God it’s beautiful here, and if this weather holds it’ll be a stunning final residency.

A year ago on Camino, Mel caught up with me in O’Cebreiro. The weather was much the same. Shocking bright sun on a snow filled world.

We are driving from Denver airport to Colorado Springs, and the first thing that strikes me is the quality of the light here. It’s a sharp clear day, with patches of snow by the side of the road. On one side, The Rockies. On the other, the great plains. Another aspect of this impossibly vast country. It feels different here.

This will be a full week, with lots of very early mornings, so it’s a good thing that the jet lag works in our favour. We will mostly be finished with masterclasses by noon. After two peaceful weeks in Indiana I think I might find myself trying to catch the sights. Who knows if I’ll ever be here again?

This is the continental divide, the mountains. All the rivers east of The Rockies flow east. All the rivers west of them flow west.

By the roadside, trains snake through pine forests sprinkled with white. “It came early this year,” says Jason, the driver. “Once we get a cold snap like last week we’re usually mild for a week and it all melts before another one comes. But this one came from the north. That shouldn’t happen. It might be different with this. Probably climate change. This year it’s El Niño too. It breaks against the mountains. Brings snow.” He indicates the mountains. We are much closer to them now. They huddle round us, the sun behind them silhouetting their outlines against the sky.

“There’s the Airforce Academy.” He points, and we see it right by the mountain. Of course. They’re all flying over The Rockies these training pilots. Pissing off the bears and the occasional hiker with their sonic booms. In Annapolis they were flying over the sea, mostly. We look around and notice there are tons of planes in the air. Some are towing gliders. I find myself wondering if any of us will manage to get up into the air over the course of the residency. That’d be nuts.

It’s high altitude here. We feel it right away. We are dry. A bit dizzy. When we lived in St Moritz I used to wake up and spit blood if I’d been snoring. I’d go to bed early the first few nights. Dad had a huge 1980’s humidifier by his bed up there. He could make the house vibrate with his snoring so it made sense for him to make sure the air had moisture, even though we laughed at it as kids. He still got throat cancer. He taught me to put a glass of water on the radiator. The air is dry at altitude, particularly if you’re not used to it.

Booze is more effective too, which is all very well but we’re up every morning much earlier than we’re accustomed to. I’ll be in unseasonably early tomorrow in order to teach a load of pilots about communication. Thank God for jet lag. My uk phone and my internal clock both still think I’m in Indiana so they’re telling me it’s half past ten. In actual fact it’s only half eight, so my six o’clock alarm tomorrow will ring at 8 my time. It’ll ring and I’ll rise, wipe the sleep out of my eyes … and hit the day.

I left my toothbrush in Indiana. Had to go to reception. Reminded me of my Holiday Inn ad…

“I knew a girl from London,” says the guy in the gift shop. “I went to London to meet her family. I lost her. I still don’t … I don’t know. The one who loses all will gain all.”

He works the gift shop in Amish Acres. It’s the Amish safari near Warsaw. He takes our money and encourages us to watch the “free movie”. He isn’t Amish. There is nobody Amish to be seen. It’s the Sabbath. They’re hiding. We buy the house tour with no clue what we are paying for, and browse the gift shop.

There’s a theatre here. They’re playing Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. The director (probably) is on the phone through a door and Katherine, Kaffe and I all stop to listen as he’s ranting about theatre and we all know these rants. As in London, so in Amish Acres. “They’ve made so many changes I don’t recognise it. It’s like watching a totally different show,” shouts the man. “I’m … there’s no point in … I’m not watching Act 2.” Bless. I haven’t seen it. But I suspect that anyone who throws their toys out of the pram to that extent is not a collaborative artist.

We don’t see the show. We go to “the movie”. The movie is a slide show, largely incomprehensible, skipping and jumping through biblical history with an eye to Luther, and to the Anabaptists and Mennonites from which this determined little sect grew. The Catholic/new age musician Enya provides the entirety of the background music. It is narrated in a monotone and you can hear the narrator’s lips. I shiver. I imagine the tickling of beard on ear. He is saying these words to me but they make no sense. The images don’t correlate with the words. Flicker picture lipsmack words. It’s like I’m in an experiment. I absently check the sides of my head for electrodes. Is this an eventuality that the simulation programmer didn’t think through? Did he give the creation of the Amish film to the intern?

We leave before it’s finished because it seems to be endless and we worry we are stuck in a loop.

Finally we go on a tour of a freezing wooden house. I’m sure it would’ve been nice if the stoves were lit. But they’re not. Not for the “English.” Apparently anyone not Amish is called English. Our guide keeps referring to herself as “English” where she’s evidently not. By the way, this account is the contents of my head, not her tour. She spoke, I looked at the cracks. That’s my way.

The Amish are “the fastest growing faith in America”, but not through evangelism – through breeding. They’re popping out babies like wet gremlins.

This sect of a sect of a sect evolved in Switzerland, I’m told. They hate the “German” army. Buttons? Not for them. When they’re ten years old they stop having buttons and have to use straight pins instead to fasten clothes. Buttons are for the army. Moustaches? Absolutely not. That’s for the Kaiser and the Prussians. Or is it the Germans? Apparently they don’t like the Germans, that’s what we are told. It’s at odds with what I’ve been led to believe, where they came over in the 1750’s before Germany existed as a nation. But like with the Mormons there’s a lot of “shhh stop looking at it so closely” going on here. And I reckon many of my friends don’t properly understand the Austro/Hungarian empire that gave rise to WW1. And I’m amongst them. But back to the Amish:

Even though they can’t look in mirrors they have a bit of polished tin to keep that Kaiser moustache away. This has me thinking about messages via facial hair. The Kaiser with the lavish moustache that the Amish eschew. Hitler with his unusual squared mini moustache – surely a symbol too. Talking about what? Lack of flamboyance? The need to trim back? But I keep getting distracted. I’m not writing about moustaches. Oh the Amish.

What do they believe in? Outwardly it’s an austerity and a desire not to embrace labour saving devices.

I’m no expert. But it seems to be about making sure life is busy and hard – If you’ve got too much time to think you think too much. I can understand that. Thought damages faith. Minimise thought, maximise faith.

In this community, they bought a swamp for cheap, and then with single-minded determination and almost impossible degrees of faithful hard work they turned it into this calm dry fertile community we visited today.

They collect rainwater runoff, stored under the house, but that was their drinking water as well as their washing water. Since that’s an invitation for typhoid, someone suggested building a mill to pull water up from deeper down. “WITCHCRAFT!” Shouted half the village, and left their own homes in high dudgeon. Half of the rest died of typhoid before the mill was finished. It was “Too much of an increase in technology.” But it stopped people from dying. Surely it was ok? But maybe it was God’s plan that the casualties took themselves out of the very limited gene pool. With this evolutionary process working over thousands of years you could breed a human that is immune to typhoid. Problem is, said human would be prone to all sorts of other nasty conditions that come out of limited gene pools. But that’s ok. Amish people likely don’t believe in genetics. God’s plan.

And this is what’s curious. They pick and choose what is acceptable. At what point is something too modern? Who decides? They have ingenious devices for coring apples, grinding meat, making butter. These devices are all manual. That’s likely a part of it. But they are still technology. A wood burning stove is technology. I’m not here to unpick it though. I’m mostly curious as I’m always looking at the edges of stuff. With any belief system, after a degree of unpicking you arrive at “Just because.” (AKA faith).

But what I see is people making work for themselves, in a good way. I see that bringing them together as a community. I see that binding them together, with a very strong sense of themselves vs OTHER. And I kinda like them, the weirdos.

They work with their bodies from waking to sleeping. They don’t give themselves time to think. They just do. And they know how to make things into other things. They make soap and detergent out of time and byproducts.

In this polarised world the Amish are not subscribing to the religion of opinion. They’re living sustainably. They’re absent from debate but have managed to strike a balance where tax is paid even though they are separate from the system. In California more people have opinions about flame wars than wildfires. In Amish Acres they’re working too hard to give a damn about the latest celebrity feud.

It’s a shame it’s based in faith. But social justice is a religion just as much as the old faiths are, and social media is the temple. We are always going to police behaviour based on nebulous beliefs, and identify ourselves into groups based on what we think about ideas.

The Amish sing lovely songs, and live carbon neutral. Their eating habits didn’t work with our company though. “Even the beans have got ham,” our waitress tells us.

Our hotel is on the freeway. There’s stuff in walking distance but it’s all a bit dodgy. Ritter’s Frozen Custard. Hacienda, a Mexican eaterie that has just squeaked over 1 star on TripAdvisor. And Maria’s. Where I’ve gone for my lunch. Love Shack on the radio. American football on the screen. The dinging of the microwave audible from the kitchen. Special lunch deals for seniors, who make up the entire clientele.

I did this yesterday as well. It’s the cheapest place around – with reason. Yesterday I had “meat pasta”. The meat was tomato. Literally.

Today I’m having pasta again. Chicken Alfredo. There’s broccoli in it too which is an actual vegetable, although I had to pay extra for it. Mostly it’s water. Like everything here it comes with bread. Call it fuel for the show. I’m still expending absolutely tons of energy every night on stage, so pre-show carbs are helpful. I’ve almost certainly lost weight through energy spamming despite poor diet and unusual hours. (I call this lunch, but it’s ten to five.)

It’s a grey afternoon, moving to dusk. I’m poking around my food, watching the cars fly by on the interstate. Contemplating this week, this job, this life.

A year ago today I was two thirds of the way to Santiago da Compostela, just out of the hardest part – the soul searching and the meseta. Thinking I was going to die on a stone floor in a freezing convent in Carrion. Chased by the devil, talking to my blisters.

I was still challenging my body at that point, but had already overcome a great deal. It was about to get easier and more companionable as I started forming a group of friends on the path, and actively breaking my previously intentional solitude.

Now I’m coming to the end of this beautiful strange varied job, which would have been infinitely harder internally without the peace I found on the path. Perhaps it’s no surprise I’ve come to this rotten place for food twice. The quality of the fayre approximates that of the Pilgrim menus in the albergues I stopped at en-route. Although there’s no free wine. Which is sad but just as well considering we’ve got a show tonight.

Grace College has been a surprisingly pleasant stop. We needed it. The staff and the students are united in thoughtfulness and kindness – in grace, I guess. Natch. The lack of things to do allows for rest when we aren’t working. Sure we would like to see the local area, but it’s not like we’ll miss out on The Alamo, or the redwoods or Boston if I take the afternoon in a café by the interstate and think about the past.

Apparently there’s an Amish community nearby. You have to pay $15 to get into the compound. It sounds a bit like a human safari, and I’ve got mixed feelings about it. But I reckon that’ll be my Sunday nonetheless. That and packing.

Going back over that walk last year as I have been it strikes me that it was better for me than I noticed at the time. I rolled straight into Christmas Carol and then Vault Festival and didn’t give myself time to breathe. This week has been a breath. Much needed. Most welcome.

Now showtime.

Last year, Camino heading to Pieros and one of my favourite hostels on the path, crystallising my reasons for walking: https://albarclay.blog/2018/11/02/day-33-camino-molinaseca-to-pieros/

Today I went into a “public speaking” class with a large number of students who haven’t found their voice yet.

It’s a wonderful space to work in, helping people find their voice. It’s part of my job here and so I’ll do it. I came into teaching “voice” pretty much by mistake.

About 10 years ago I got a call from my friend Mel. She was working at a fee paying drama school in central London. She was directing Dream. This was the end of their second year. A project. “Al, I don’t know what to do. These kids can’t speak.” That was the call. There was virtually no money involved but I could get involved with some script reading for a playwriting prize that paid at the same institution, and she would buy me pints. I wasn’t working and I thought maybe the script reading would recur – even though it was only about £4.00 per script. I was struggling, back then. I decided to help her rather than sit on my hands.

Those poor students. They pay as much as you’d pay for an actual training, but they learn nothing useful. Back then it was an alcoholic running the place. I don’t know if she’s still there. She was essentially a vampire, feeding off the hope of these poor kids, and slurping their parent’s money. Giving nothing in return. I tried to bring some light. I tried to teach some breath, honesty, confidence and attack. I ended up giving days and days more than I was being paid for because I wanted these kids to do well, somehow.

They were being pushed into bad habits tricks and lies by the institution. I did my utmost to give them the beginnings of a toolbox and some concept of safe use.

Afterwards I recommended the two best male actors in the group to a friend of mine who was casting a major job. She needed two young men and knew I’d just been doing that work. She phoned me up after their auditions. “Oh, Al …” she said. They were atrocious. Beyond anything she had ever witnessed.

They had auditioned dreadfully in the real industry. Unsurprising, but disappointing. All the work I’d tried to do to break the bad habits they’d been taught… But I only had a few days with them…

The institution teaches the students to do well in terms of the taste of an extremely out of touch narcissist alcoholic who runs the institution. It didn’t serve the students back then in terms of the real industry, outside of the friendships from fellow victims of hope that have wasted their grandparent’s money too, some of whom might go on to make something, depending how rich their grandparents are.

It was eye opening teaching them. It was eye opening to go on Google just now and find that the institution I’ve been writing about still exists.

Every year hundreds of humans come into this industry from places like that, having spent tons of money, expecting a job, having paid good money in good faith and having been given precious little in the way of tools to do the job well. I was only doing it for a couple of weeks and it was a favour. I was paid to be on it for a single day. I stayed because the kids were great and I wanted to try to help them because I knew they’d paid thousands for nothing.

I would be surprised if even one of them was still acting now, unless they pushed reset and went to another institution afterwards. Still it would’ve taken time to get the validation of bad habits out of them.

But as you can tell, I found myself caring about the students. I wanted them to do well despite their antitraining. Even if they had ability before they started, it would’ve been sent in the wrong direction.

Anyway, that turned into a vent. The intention was to say how nice it was to work on voice with students who don’t identify as actors here in Indiana. I hadn’t realised how much thinking about that hellhole would trigger me to write about it. Still, better out than in.

Which is what I’d also advise to any young actor who doesn’t get accepted anywhere else aged 20, but who gets the acceptance letter from them. Better out than in. Research the institutions.

Anyone who knows someone in the audition process, I’ll try and throw a list your way of places to consider and places to avoid. The list is ever evolving. For instance, The Drama Centre. Up until recently it was a genuine training, and a factory of working actors. It is about to be utterly destroyed by bureaucratic morons who have no concept of actor training. It’ll become nothing more than an average academic university drama course, out of which you’ll rarely if ever find a practitioner. I hope they lose the Drama Centre name. It’ll be criminally misleading if they don’t. Idiots.

But there it is. It’s why I would never make it my full time business to teach. The majority of these institutions are run by fuckwits. The ground staff are amazing.

It’s another reason why I love this particular job I’m doing. We are well treated by people who know what they’re doing. Scott drove all the way from South Bend tonight, loved the show, bought us all dinner and was lovely to us all. Deb has been glorious and incredible when we have hit terrible hotels or any issues. We are supported artistically by artists and makers who get what we are doing and give us room to do it properly. We have a frame to create, and we do. Only a bit left. I’ll miss this when it’s gone…

I’m in Rex’s Rendezvous in Warsaw Indiana. A man with a guitar and a beard is shouting at the top of his voice, mostly about alcohol. I think there was once meant to be a tune, but what hasn’t gone to whisky is swallowed by the noise which is keyed for a packed room. Including the four of us there are twenty people here. Not enough for the decibels. They’re all smoking though these people.

The drummer appears to believe there’s a rythmn but he’s too drunk to find it. The whole joint stinks so much of cigarettes that I feel like I’m 20 again. I remember not understanding the first few times I walked into a bar and it didn’t reek of smoke. Tomorrow it’ll be in my throat, and my ears will be ringing from this bearded howling oaf. Everybody is as far from him as possible but his one friend.

With my new modern sensibilities I went and put my nice cashmere coat in the car. It’s just come out of the dry cleaners. I don’t want it stinking of fags. O the times! I think I might be a little older than I once was, even if I still have wreckhead tendencies.

This is the best we’ve managed for Halloween. Torture. Smoke and howling. It is a little bit like being in hell, but there’s pizza and beer so we are staying. “I feel like I’m in hell,” says Claire, echoing my sentiment unknowingly. She just threw a pint of water over the barman by mistake because the noise is so egregious she’s lost coordination. They have an audience of 1. It is categorically the worst live music I have ever heard in my entire life. Well done the Halloween booking team at Rex’s Rendezvous. The next act might well involve me ripping my own ears out of my head while shrieking “Make it stop!!” Fucking hell! Now it’s a hip hop guy. “Is this open mic?” intuits Kaffe, and oh my God he might be right but if so why the hell inflict it on us at this volume? This is the opposite of fun. It better be the only place in town, like we think it is.

You get what you’re given here in small town Indiana. And everybody knows everything about everybody… “Is Toby Belch the sort of man who goes to Burger King at 11pm?” My guilty secret from last night, laid bare in a Q&A session earlier today. “Yes, if he can bring his own … hang on… wait who the hell saw that?”

Still the show was lovely tonight. It’s the smallest venue we’ve played, I reckon. It can’t sit more than 200 – likely not even that many. They packed in despite it being Halloween. But Halloween, like Brexit, has been officially postponed. It was snowing. Unlike Brexit it’ll only be for one day and the postponement is for people’s own good. Hopefully all the kids will be able to go trick or treating together tomorrow and it won’t be snowing.

Hopefully those idiots will stop shouting soon and go away.

No, I mean the open mic guy. I’m not talking transatlantic politics.

A year ago today I also found snow, in very different circumstances, as I walked over the mountain to Galicia

It turns out it’s only about an hour’s drive from this little town we are staying in to Notre Dame, South Bend, where this madness started off for us. Also, we have a night off tonight, and married to that, our old friend Paul is at Notre Dame tonight doing his two man Macbeth.

Paul was one of the five of us five years ago, the first time I did this job, with Claire in the company too – and Jack, who I’ll be Carolling with on my return. We did Much Ado back then. We had a lovely time, so much so that I knew I wanted to go round again. And I have! Which allowed me to catch his Macbeth.

His life has changed so much since we toured back then. Since then he’s married an old friend of mine from drama school, who he met on this job. They’ve got one kid already and another on the way! They are all out in America, but I missed Hannah and their daughter. They are in Iowa to cut down on travel. Shame.

The two of them did a wonderful job of Macbeth tonight. It was clear and moving and funny and fresh. Such a portable show, so deftly told, and the whole story in an hour and a half straight through with no interval, so we got to hang out in the pub afterwards for one before driving back through the darkness and rain on the atrociously lit Indiana highways. Claire and I got a Burger King on the way home as it was the only thing open. I also grabbed one for lunch today and stuffed it into my face. They are the first two Burger King burgers I’ve had in as long as I can remember. Both on the same day… I hope I make it through the night.

I’m keeping busy out here… My extracurricular duty on this tour is “Education”. It’s an absolute shocker in terms of work. And the last week is the hardest one yet. I’m under massive time pressure to get it out – I’m already overdue. It’s to do with managing your and other people’s fear of the unknown.

We get sent all these incomprehensible class requests – and next week is the weirdest yet.

The academics who know the company already have a better understanding of what we bring and how to ask for it. The institution next week has never had us before and is talking to us as if we too are professors in philosophy and neurolinguistics or whatever they are professors in. But of course they are being like that. That’s why our actual heads will be helpful in their classes.

It made sense to just … divvy up the classes maximising practicality and individual relationships with tutors. I took the first early class and the only Saturday class, as the start of the week is always harder work before they’ve seen the show and have context and then the Saturday means the other four get a full weekend in Colorado. (The class does happen to be on Christmas Carol, so at least I know I can do it without stress – a relief considering it’s first thing in the morning.)

I took ages looking at timings whilst making sure that we all did the same number and nobody clashed with themselves or had too many in one day. Although it’s impossible to tell which will turn out to be hard classes, I arbitrated everybody a scattering of easy and a scattering of hard looking ones trying to take care of them and fit my understanding of their strengths as far as possible – (although everybody this week will have at least one hard looking class for them.)

But before I sign that off it turns out I’ll have to spend a bit of time assuring people that they don’t have to be professors. Also nobody likes to be told what to do, so I expect I’ll now have to make some arbitrary changes as a result of arbitrating things in the first place. “The thing you told me to do is the only thing I refuse to do”.

So be it. Humans.

It’s the last week. It’s the worst week for classes. We are all actors not teachers. Let’s just get through it together. We will all be pleasantly surprised, as we always are.

New York. 1849. The Astor Place Opera House. 22 or more people killed in a riot. Over Shakespeare.

Two different actors were in the city, simultaneously playing Macbeth. One English, one American. Different heads on the same role are always going to produce different results, but these two actors were sufficiently distanced in style and personality to cause a rivalry that boiled over, alongside poisonous international relations at that time.

Many factors were at play here, of course. But people wound up dead. And I’ve just found out about it. Shakespeare riots. Who knew?

How did I find out? Well, a professor gave a lecture about it as I stood by him ready to join his class. I’m an “Actor From the London Stage”. That’s how we are billed. So I’m the only English person in the room when he gives this short lecture.

In 1849 the mannered Victorian actor William Macready was programmed at the swanky Opera House in New York, built in colonial times still darkly remembered.

He was terribly English by the sound of it, William Macready. Awfully restrained. I know the type. Every gesture thought of beforehand and practiced. Every word practiced, worked, reworked and crystallised. Bug-eyed. Devoid of emotion. Incapable of actual truth, but masterful at the semblance of truth. Strangely hypnotic. A lizard.

Meanwhile, Edwin Forrest was the working man’s choice in the USA. An American actor at the height of his popularity. Another type I know well. A fighter. Every word becoming about action. Squat and angry, he would’ve roiled with rage and bombast, his Lady Macbeth no more than an accessory. Testosterone and fury. Attack over nuance. Reaction above thought. A bull. William would’ve been strutting and fretting. Edwin would’ve been sound and fury.

The thing is, both of these approaches can work for the part – (given the actor is good enough). Every actor’s way brings food for thought. These two it’s the old school manufactured war: head vs body. I expect the lizard Macbeth would’ve been as interesting as the bull Macbeth. But the two polarised approaches highlight the difference in our cultures. “Excuse me,” in London means “Fuck you!” in New York, and vice versa.

Somebody whipped up a storm though and made it about old conflicts. Suddenly it was about ownership and history and colonialism.

So. Because of a production of Macbeth with two very different already rival actors from different countries and idioms with very different approaches, people took to the streets. And as usual over here the police started shooting, which is where the death toll came from. NYPD: “If in doubt, panic and kill innocent people.” I understand that was the motto back then – it still is now in some states.

Edwin Forrest had toured the UK in 1830 and Macready had been overbearing and high handed about him, dismissing Forrest as having no taste. Macready was the UK establishment player, with nothing really at stake considering their different approaches and types. He might have chosen to bury his pride – to see the things Forrest did that he couldn’t do. It feels like Macready wasn’t capable of that leap of empathy though, being a lizard. It feels to me like his privilege blocked him from empathising with someone so immediately unlike him in approach. He had had a fortunate beginning, dear William. It’s SO much harder to look backwards from privilege than it is to look forward.

By being antagonistic – and how could be not with all that privilege? – he made a very patient enemy.

Forrest went and sat on the front row and booed Macready’s Hamlet, then he seduced Macready’s wife effectively enough for it to come up in court, then he fomented enough distaste at home against the man to get a dead sheep thrown at posh English Hamlet in Cincinnati. Then he stirred up his New York gang friends to fuck up Macbeth properly, once and for all. It worked. Macready slunk off back to England after the show on the night of the fatal riots. He didn’t come back.

The professor today just touched on all of this, like it was a living cultural rivalry still, just before the class we had. (I researched it since and found the deeper detail included here.) But with THAT introduction: “and now, here’s Al. From England. To teach you about Shakespeare.”

…

I dropped my intended class, and instead did a class about how different a scene can be to different actors based on multiple factors. I spoke about different approaches to things like conflict, culturally, between England and America. I examined how different humans bring whatever their past is to their lines. It was a lovely lively class about helping people read out loud from a personal place.

But it was a very very strange introduction. Admittedly he tried to then read the CV I’d sent the company but I stopped him because it makes me want to stick toothpicks in my eye when they do that.

I don’t think he intended to frame me in such an awkward way: the representative of a defeated colonial power whose subject matter and approach had since raised people to the streets and caused fatalities. I think it was done with an intellectual sensibility that fails to take into account the fact it would be weird for me to be brought into the room like that.

It was a hell of a way to be introduced to a room full of strangers, to have an expert talk with slides about a fatal riot against an English actor by Americans (clearly, in his talk and his slides, favouring the American.) “And with that in mind, here is an English actor to work with you on Shakespeare.”

On the subject, I think that an inevitably shared culture has homogenised our approaches to craft now either side of the pond in acting. My class today was about finding individual voices. The styles come from the individual not the culture.

English actors and American actors are working in roughly the same field, and there are SO MANY MORE of us than there was back then when it was even worse in terms of “oh he’s good let’s let him play everything”. (Although the funneling still goes on.)

Perhaps emotional “state” is still preferred over here as a starting point. Perhaps active “target” back home. Or perhaps I’m working with younger people over here than I would be back home. I’m certainly having to push target over state when I work.

I’m seeing a lot of emotion with no basis.

I’m trying to give help that’ll stop their acting just being therapy with somebody else’s words, and make sure they are making stories that other people might engage with. We all know instinctively when someone is faking an emotion. Toddlers do it when they want something. We know we are being manipulated, because we have all tried it. “I want to STAY HEEEEEEEEERRRRRREEEEE”

I’m an English actor but in approach I’m closer to the bull than the lizard. So I know bull. And I dislike lizard. Even if I see and understand both.

A few hours drive today. That’s all. Just a few hours drive. North and East. Much closer to our starting point in South Bend. Winona Lake. Grace College.

“There are a two virgins in the cast,” says Claire. “Oh God, I mean vegetarians!”

“It’s a Christian campus. There are plenty of both here,” our escort responds with a grin.

We are surrounded by cornfields. The crop still stands, drying in the field, to be harvested when dry enough as time is cheaper than money when it comes to the drying of corn on this scale. It’s strange to drive through all these fields with dead looking husks of corn. I wrote this on the way before I did any research:

“Indiana. A small town. One of many like it, and the highways run like scars through open country. And beside these highways, even at this time of year just look. Do you see it? Just there. Everywhere. The corn. Brown armies of the stuff. All brittle and bowing in the same direction. Look at it closer. This state is full of it, but how can this be profitable, these drying dying husks in serried ranks? Food for the nation? Or just employment for farmers? Will this go to starch, to bind together the Halloween candies? Or landfill? Well, this is down to the American appetite for waste. Meanwhile, look at it. Sad. Bedraggled. Row upon row of it. Lost brown plants, once useful, now neglected. Will they be used? Or are they just filling the quota? This is what we do with the natural world.”

It’s not really the right start for a blog, but it was my head. Amidst the drying dying corn, a little pool of loving living light. Grace College, and the delightful young men and women on the campus. They all have faith. They also have a tiny theatre that is filled every night but Halloween with audience for us. We will be going in and helping them with their Addams Family musical rehearsals. With their self written religious plays. It’s an amazing job, this. It’s so varied. But we don’t take into account the stress of it.

I’ve got wind. I’ve actually got anxiety but as a result now I’ve got wind. The wind is because I’m not breathing properly. The bad breathing is the anxiety. Another strange place, another group of strangers, another different idiom, once again so very far from what is familiar. I love the unusual. But it mounts up after a while. I’ve been tense today all day and then I put food and beer on top of it.

I’m teaching these kids and prisoners and old folks about breathing. I should be able to breathe for myself. It does actually work, all that body and breath stuff, otherwise I wouldn’t spend my days on it. I walked into my first day at Guildhall a “floating head”. They dropped me into my body and my voice. Now I can help other people walk that journey. Safe use is the only way to sustain a career. With my habitual attack and without the craft I was taught those three years, I would have permanently damaged my body and my voice by now. But right now I’ve got wind, and a full belly. The only thing I can think of is fingers down the throat.

Yep. Worked a treat. Maybe I shouldn’t have had those prawns and scallops. Certainly not the hot sauce. Hopefully the offending article is no longer inside me. I think I might get some rest. Thankfully the working day is long over and I’ve got a king sized bed. And Blade Runner soundtrack just showed up on Spotify. Rutger Hauer, may he rest in peace, telling us what he’s seen.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. I simultaneously belched and threw up scallops in a Holiday Inn in small town Indiana. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”

If I’m going to be sick, this warm comfortable room is a true upgrade on what happened more or less a year ago today…

https://albarclay.blog/2018/10/24/day-24-camino-unexpected-stay-in-carrion-de-los-condes/

A very lazy Sunday. Now I’m in a supermarket. I don’t even know why. Claire is stocking up on miso soup and snacks.

I’m walking through the aisles astonished by the sheer quantity of stuff. Cinnamon and Apple everything. Instant roast cow with horns – just add water! Sugary drinks galore. Carbonated water that advertises itself as being “caffeine free” leading me to wonder if you can get fizzy water that has caffeine in it here somewhere as well. I wouldn’t be surprised. Piped music and adverts – this shop has its own radio station for customers.  Open fronted fridges belching money into the atmosphere so you can just grab the thing. I haven’t got a basket. I’ve been rinsing my per diems on expensive meals so I need to make sure I don’t impulse buy 300 bags of caramelised pecans like I did in Buckys, and end up broke with nothing but snacks for my roadtrip at the end of the job.

It seemed a clever idea to start hitting the double whisky last night after the gig. As a result I lost the best part of the day. Never clever to mix drinks, but if I haven’t learnt by now I expect I never will. This morning found me curled up under my duvet occasionally scratching steaming and hissing when the light came close to me. Now I’m in a supermarket looking for miso soup and it feels like an adventure. It’s dark outside, and the reality of this season is beginning to dawn on me. The clocks went back in the UK. The long nights are upon us, and I got myself precisely no vitamin D all day.

Claire and Jono had a lovely day exploring the local area while I mouldered in my own stink. They regaled me with photographs and stories as I sat next to them unresponsive and in my own private hell of hunger. I’d like to have explored a bit, seen the creeks and the bridges, but until about half an hour ago I was completely and utterly useless. Now I’ve achieved a supermarket and that’ll be the extent of the day.

I didn’t buy anything. I probably should have bought some fruit. Meat meat meat, this country. With fries. But rarely a vegetable to be seen. Bread and meat and starch and sauce and booze and ranch dressing. I have no idea how the vegetarians have managed it. They’d have eaten nothing but cheese for weeks. Vegans would be dead. Your tomato soup has crushed bacon on top. Your vegetable soup is definitely made with beef stock. Your Bloody Mary comes with a dead pig. Pigs and cows and chickens. Chickens cows and pigs. Conveyor belts into grinder, down our gullet and all the way through us, get some more. No wonder they put caffeine in the water. Speeds up the digestion. I’m having a bath. Then I’ll probably get back into bed and sleep some more. You heard it here first, people. Rock and roll? Rock and fucking roll.