Author: albarclay

“This is a question with no agenda. But does your blog serve you anymore?”

Hi, friends. Some of you have fallen away since Facebookpagesgate. Now I have a mockery of a Facebook page because I schedule the blog for 6am and the only way I can share it automatically is through that page, which is a monetisation tool for Zuckerberg. The more I pay, the more people see it. It’s bullshit for a personal blog like this. My reach is now up to chance, and up to the number of likes. The more likes I get the wider my reach. If I was a shouty “like me” person then that’s more readers. But, as with paying for reach, sod that.

My friend had a fair question though. Is it serving me?

As we shift and grow, so too do the things we make. This wall of words has been a morning muse for many, but maybe I don’t need to put it out at 6 anymore. After all, you can still read it at 6 if you want. It’s only the six am thing that forces me to put it through a money platform without paying it money, and even though it was always something of an accountability project, this blog can be a lot of work sometimes, and that work is not translating into money. My creative time is valuable and getting more so as I grow in capability and demand. I stopped selling myself short actingwise years ago. I’ve honed myself into a powerful and valuable artistic presence. I’m useful in a rehearsal room or on a set or in a studio. I’m a professional with the calm and ease of experience. I’ve put the time in. But on this blog I still shout prose out into the void every day for free, and if I’m proud of the daily blog my thumb hovers over the “pay to get more readers” button. But that’s absurd. I’d never pay to do acting. I’ve put minimum 500 words of thought into the world daily for over two years. There are columnists out there paid a handsome fee to fill a coveted weekly spot with trite guff composed in their conservatory in Sussex. There is categorically no way I am going to pay money in order to get readers. This isn’t my book about how Jesus was related to me. It’s not my book of poems about how angry I am about my divorce. This is my blog. It’s just a thing I do.

But why? There’s the rub. I haven’t examined why I do this, recently. Two years ago I was a very different shape human. My friend who asked the question lives more consciously than I do, so it’s a fundamental question to her way of being. But me? I’m doing it because I set out to do it and I had no end date in mind. Okay It helped me be accountable, but my parents are long dead now and my ambition is fully firing so I’m not going to sink my time into nothing again anyway.  That depression is past, my grief is understood and owned. I’m growing in confidence about what I put out there into the world. I used to get a lump in my throat before I published sometimes, fearing trolls etc. But now for a couple of years, I’ve put something into the world every day and slept easy that night. That’s a useful lesson in terms of making anything. Like with Pantechnicon. I made a thing. People came to the thing. People take what they take from the thing. “If you build it, they will come.” I’ve learnt and taught a lot. I refuse to check the stats but I’ve written a fair few novels.

For now I’ll keep writing. But I might convert this, gradually. I’d also welcome your thoughts. Is it worth trying to add another string to my crowded bow by monetising my prose, and if so, does anyone have any idea how you start that journey? If I dedicated one blog day a week to poetry would that work well? How about if I tried to serialise a story? What genre?

I think I’ll need to mix it up to keep my own interest. But thank you, friend – you know who you are – for again catalysing something, as the full moon shines.

I’ve heard actors evangelise about the self-tape revolution that has swept through our industry, where before you even get in the audition room you send a video of yourself doing the lines out of context. “It’s great. You get control of your output.” Well, yes. You sort of do. If you have a friend with infinite patience, and all the time in the world. But if, like many of us, you have loads to do and you’re not in a loving patient relationship with another actor then it’s a difficulty. You can’t just send a hacked together tape, as you know someone else will have taken the time and you want to stay in the mix. But conversely you don’t want to eat your time too much. It’s been a luxury that, after Macbeth last night, I didn’t have to work today. I had time.

I went to a friend’s house. I’ve done tapes for her in the past, and been patient. What goes around comes around. But you can’t ask for endless takes no matter how patient your friend is. I had three scenes to record. I’d learnt the lines in a vacuum, and was delivering the scenes for the first time, while she was sight reading and thinking about camera angles and eyelines and so on. The script is fab and rolls off the tongue, which made it easier to learn short notice, but now it’s sent it’s always that odd feeling. It’s over to the Gods now. I learnt those lines. Thought those thoughts. There have been times where I’ve sent the tape direct by wetransfer and noticed that it was never even downloaded. This one will be different in that it came through my excellent agent and will be handled professionally. But the whole of my day became about peaking at that tape. And now I’ve converted it and renamed it and emailed it I’m wondering where the day went.

I’ve got another little movie to consider, back home in The Isle of Man. A friend of a friend is filming something and wants to fly me back. It feels like a very small scale thing, but it’d be nice to go home in that context – so long as it feels like the movie we make has some purpose. He’s posted me a script and I’ll get stuck into it tomorrow. Let’s see about that.

Meanwhile, after the self tape, I went to hang out with a dear and true friend and her son. I haven’t seen her for way too long, and we clicked easily back into familiarity and consumed way too much red wine way too quickly. By the time I got home it was early and I was already too drunk for a Monday, but Monday is the official actor’s day off so I’m taking carte blanche as I stream of consciousness into this blog which, she quite rightly tells me, you have to look for now. Damn you Facebook pages etc. Happy Tuesday to… Whoever remains. Facebook is not the only platform dammit, etc etc…

EMPTY TRAIN

On the long tube journey home, I’m reflecting over this evening, doing Macbeth. Alex explained to the audience before the show “We don’t rehearse, but we train in a way of playing. We think of a show like a game, with specific rules, and we play to the best of our abilities.” It’s crazy, beautiful and challenging. We played well together tonight although it’s kind of hard to remember. I saw some beautiful work by friends. It was a strange, tight intimate show. The point of the game is that we create a frame where it’s possible to lose, and then play to win. The result can be compelling and immediate. Many of my greatest moments of theatre, both watching and playing, came from this sort of work. Tonight we won.

This was The Factory. There are lots of actors making up our numbers. Probably over 100 now, accumulated over a decade and more, with hugely different ranges of experience, and a wide age bracket. We play age blind. Today one of my children was older than me. We play gender blind. Macbeth was played by Leila tonight, and one of my parts was Macduff’s wife, Ross was Alix, etc etc. And we play for the joy and the challenge and the humanity.

We were doing Macbeth in a strange building in Dalston, the Dalston Boys Club. It’s a space we’ve used before although it’s under new management. They were giving us lots of strictures about their venue before we even got started right down to “Make sure people don’t drag chairs across the floor.” At one point one of us remarked “Do they have any idea what they’re in for?” The days are gone that an actor would unexpectedly smash through a wall or precariously dangle from a fragile bar. We like to respond to the space, though.

The space is amazing. It’s full of weird and wonderful stuff. Huge oil paintings of penises, detailed and unusual taxidermy, catholic iconography, royalist propaganda, old books, weird art, antique cabinets, huge beautiful plants, WANKER written on a balcony… We couldn’t really use anything though, at the request of the venue. So we played in a beautiful room, and let the room inform our play without reaching out to directly affect it. It was still there, around what we did. And it was definitely a great place to play Macbeth.

I was a bit affected by the strictures. I felt a little fettered. I felt guilty standing on a chair. I was worried blowing out a candle, in case I’d get wax on something that shouldn’t have wax on it and hear a voice shout “STOP” from the edge. But I did it anyway when it served. In the end it worked in our favour.

The rules and strictures of the venue made for an oppressive feeling and that oppression lent itself to the show. It was dark, literally and figuratively, and doubly so if you have tights over your head. This is the first Factory Macbeth I’ve played for a while where nothing was played for laughs, and it really served it. It was human and light at times, but mostly there was weight. It landed. There were laughs, but they were in the words not the playing.

The show finished about two hours ago and I’m already almost home. That’s an unfamiliar thing. We have a new intake, but lots of us have responsibilities and families and lives. We come together to do a show on a Sunday, and then we pull apart again. We’ve trained enough over the years that we have a spine of shared understanding. Having been away for a while I could just drop in and play and it felt like coming home. “Welcome home,” I even found myself saying to a cherished friend who I had last seen in very different circumstances. And that’s part of what this is now. We had a new player tonight, Nick, who came in as Fleance. There’s still freshness and danger here. And there’s still huge joy and community. So long as it stays odd and challenging and fun, it’s the best way I can think of to spend a Sunday.

A high proportion of my friends now have children. I’ve spent the day with two of those friends, plus one kid out of their two. It’s been lovely. Life takes on a different shape with kids. I always seem to get on with them. But then I have the special power of being unusual with most of the kids in my life. And I can send them back at the end of the day. They haven’t had enough exposure to get bored of me and I haven’t had enough to get exasperated by them. I can sometimes shut down crying episodes just by the magic power of being an unfamiliar human. But on the flip side “she’s not going to go to bed if you’re still here.” That was my cue tonight to say goodbye. BUNNY.

It’s another way of socialising, this thing of home visiting and saying yes to small humans while catching up with the big ones. I just tend to stay relaxed and to understand if everyone suddenly disappears upstairs for half an hour. Occasionally I get called on to assist with nappy changes or bedtime stories and whatnot, but I’m just as happy to be installed somewhere with a glass of wine, waiting until the dust settles for my triumphant friends to arrive downstairs and break into conversations and wine as the monsters finally sleep.

Today I was in Elstree, right by the studio. I don’t think I’ve been back since I was seen for Holby the day before I opened a show. I hadn’t realised I’d been sent the sides in advance and probably sight-read them adequately but the director was having none of it as to his mind I hadn’t done the work. It was one of my early career mishaps. It is the meeting that taught me to check the email closely no matter how busy you are. We learn by our mistakes. It would’ve been nice to have pleased the casting director I guess, but life has so far served me a rich hand elsewhere and it might bring me back to Elstree in triumph one day.

Elstree studios is still a busy and fruitful place, and it has an extraordinary history in our industry. The new EastEnders set is coming up in my friend’s backyard. Who knows, in a year or so, once its made, I’ll be able to come to his fence and wave at his little girl while I’m on a break from filming. Right now I caught up alongside him.

Sometimes, on the weekend, Brian and I will watch each other play computer games, eat simple food, catch a movie and then say “That was a great day.” James and I caught a similar vibe. “You haven’t seen each other for ages,” said Bella at one point. “Don’t you want to catch up?” We were catching up, with snatched questions and answers over the course of a day as we played Red Dead Redemption, or snowboarding simulators. It was a lovely organic day and we both know a lot more about what’s going on internally with each other. We just used computer games as the maguffin.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is extraordinary. It’s beautiful and deep and full. Knowing what I do about working practices at the software house where it’s made, I found myself comparing it to the pyramids at Giza. But still. When I have a free month (ie never) I might treat myself to the fruits of that labour. And maybe use it as a chance to catch up with long lost friends…

Years ago I remember going to watch The Seagull in Dalston, at The Dalston Boys Club, by The Factory. It was a group of friends making it, and they were making it with rigour. Alex Hassell, whose company it was, had been the other one recalled on my Guildhall first round audition day some years before. We were friends, and there were plenty of friends in the company even then. They made something thought provoking and brave that evening. It’s stuck with me ever since, as a benchmark of unrepeatable and disciplined audience responsive theatre. It keyed in with the things I think are important. I loved it and decided I had to get stuck in.

Last week I was at Vault with a load of them, including the Konstantin from that evening. They’d been to Pantechnicon and thankfully loved it. We were having a drink afterwards and Alex mentioned that the company was back to doing guerrilla Sunday shows. The next one is at Dalston Boys Club. It happens I’m free. So I’m going to play in Macbeth. Probably Banquo. Probably Lady Macduff (with that evening’s Trigorin as my son). If you’re an old friend of the company or mine, or you’re free on Sunday in Dalston and fancy an unusual possibly beautiful night then come by and we can have a pint afterwards. Here’s a still from an earlier show. I think there are a few £10 tickets left…

These guys have been up and running a bit so I’m going to have to work to get up to speed again. But lovely to have a show and a fellowship to slot into like that. It’s what the company does best – keeps you connected to your community, to your craft and to a live audience.

Tomorrow I’ll be having an afternoon with another old theatre friend. James and I did Our Country’s Good up in Kingston something over ten years ago. Then we did The Office Party with the same company. James has settled into proper jobs and high earning, kids and love, while I’m still living the dream. I suspect lunch will end up being on him…

Next week I’ll be off to Hampstead to see another dear friend doing what she does in the studio downstairs, and also to Guildford to catch Jack in Measure for Measure. Plus there’s always Vault going on. It’s a good month for threate. Yesterday I went with a friend to see a crazy show about Guinea Pigs by someone who will likely turn out to be friends with most of my friends on Facebook. I kept running into friends and collaborators from over the years doing such a wide variety of shows.

My world has started to brim over with talent. People finding their groove and dancing wild. It’s lovely to see how we have all shifted, and then to have the chance this weekend and at Vault to reconnect with the carnage of early career and early Factory, see some old faces, and some new, and find all the same abstract passion.

The inside of my head is full at the moment. I’ve got more projects and possible irons in the fire than I’m used to. It’s why I might seem a little distracted. Some time things might settle into a more predictable form, but for now every day brings new random. I’m writing, making, and trying to stay in touch but sorry if I’ve fallen off the radar personally. A day down yesterday has helped me kick into gear again, and I’m starting to fill up my diary for the next few months. Collar me by phone and hold me to a diary date if I’ve vanished on you. It’s not personal!! 🙂 X

Valentine’s Day. Oh the joy. I was going to get some more pitches in for the summer, but figured that everyone would be bunking off early to change into their gladrags ahead of steak and prosecco for £100 a head in a crowded shouty room. “Fack you moaning abart? Facking candle onna table, innit. Facking romantic, vat is.”

I’m off to Vault to see a one woman show about guinea pigs. And sickness. It was a tenner, so I just bought it immediately. There are two of us going, but typically it sold out before she could get one too. I’m going to give mine to her and then hope that my pass will get me in. It probably won’t, but worth a try. The Vault pass allows free entry into shows that aren’t sold out. Also a small drinks discount. Very cool now that Pantechnicon is finished, especially considering the Festival goes on for weeks yet. Although it’s not something to use willy nilly, this capacity to not pay for people’s art. I’m not sure how many people came into Pantechnicon with a pass, but a fairy dies for every one of them. But then two fairies are born for everyone that paid for a ticket and could’ve used a pass. So by buying a ticket and then using a pass, I’ll be making a net profit of one fairy for the artist. I’ll find out before long how many fairies died for our little show in a van.

Right now I’m in The Young Vic, shorn down to my little pink cheeks. Even the furry lip squid is finally gone. With my Mediterranean heritage it’ll all be back in a week. But for now, in exchange for daily expense and bother, I look young again. Fresh faced. Like a baby, but with better smelling poo and a worse smelling head. I’ve been putting words into my brain today, and playing too many mobile-phone-crack-game distractions. My early night went to shit last night after the rude email managed to keep me up until 5, on and off. That peculiar form of insomnia where you feel tired right up until you switch the light off, and then the elephants parade in front of your closed eyes until you dance with them and they insist you switch the lights on again and consume crap fiction. I read a whole Sláine anthology, and not even the stuff that was illustrated by Simon Bisley. The painstaking black and white mystic scratches of Glenn Fabry. Beautiful examples of British comic book art, mindless enough in plotting to induce sleep in the busy mind on a normal night. My subscription to the 2000AD collection has helped my sleep immeasurably. It got me through dry January. But even with gin it took a long time before I finally succumbed to gentle mad Celtic warping dreams.

I’ve got a glass of primitivo. I’m waiting for her to show, although I’m not entirely sure she will. We made this plan before either of us realised it was Valentine’s Day. Cheers.

Finally a day down. A chance to potter around my local area in the sunshine, to do some shopping and to catch up on my emails. Also, with perfect timing, a self tape has landed for an appropriate role, and unusually it isn’t due in a huge rush, and it hasn’t landed in the middle of a busy patch. I should be able to learn the lines and find the right person to read it and the right set-up to do it well enough. It’s just a self tape, so me sending a recording of myself to the creative team. It’ll probably lead to a meeting. Unlikely to a straight offer unless they know my work. But I get what they’re after and I’ll enjoy filming it. I’ve done my basic online research and like the look of the director. And the script comes off the page very well, avoiding many of the common traps that scripts in this genre fall into. It’s surprising, modern and smart. Must be why they’ve chosen me…

God I needed a day down without having to stress about stuff after IKEA defeated me yesterday. The leasehold people in my block chose my relax day to send a rude email which I received just before starting to write this blog. It still put a lump in my stomach, but I reckon I’ll be able to sleep anyway. In the end it’s just noise.

I sat in a coffee shop and read the script of the movie. Then I went to the supermarket and got a few days worth of food, including loads of Waitrose Rösti – so cheap, so good. Then I went to The Chelsea Potter for a cheeky lunchtime six pound pint and to send a ton of emails and call a few people. Then home to chill out with the cat before bed at 9pm. It’s closer to ten now, as I found that stupid email and wrote an annoyed reply that thankfully I didn’t send. That can go tomorrow morning after a sleep. And for the next few days I can learn lines for the self tape and enjoy this unseasonable weather.

I didn’t even notice that I spent the whole day in just a jacket and waistcoat and never missed wearing my coat. The world is dying, but at least the weather is nice.

Brian and Mel are next door having dinner. It’s rare for me to go to sleep before them but today that’s on the cards. Tickety-boo. A big mug of sleepy tea.

And I’ve got the means to make a great breakfast tomorrow.

I also got a script through from back in The Isle of Man. It’s a guy out there with some equipment who wants to fly me over and shoot something he’s written. He’ll put me up in a hotel, he says, although I’m tempted to just ask for per diems if I go. I haven’t spent time with  the script yet as today was for the other one. But glad to have a few irons in the fire immediately Vault has ended. Interesting year ahead, I’m thinking now…

I went to Ikea, but I was so tired that I shouldn’t have. I ended up buying nothing but food and wasting ages.

Today was looking pretty chilled. I had a reasonably easy morning. A little bit of managing a dear friend who brought the work to me and is an atrocious back seat driver. I know this already but he still surprises me with it. “You need to inflate the tyres,” he says to me. “Oh shit, really?” I respond thinking those kids at Vault have taken the time to let them down after I got everything torqued up beautifully for a heavy load. I feel bad about not noticing. “Yeah mate, don’t you know that?” and I realise he’s talking generally, about vans with heavy loads, not specifically. Bless. I let it slide. If he could drive every vehicle on every road at all times he’d do it – and solve the overpopulation problem at the same time…

The morning was just watching the van while people brought stuff in to load it. That and directing the load. Taking care of the interior carpet and the interior timber frame. Nice and relaxed with occasional lifting.

Then a bit of a drive across town with a full van and Ollie, who I’ve just met. Ollie and I are both relaxed and happy. I’m imagining a great big ground floor scene dock to unload into. He’s imagining just a few lengths of timber in the van. We are taking it to his studio. Both of our imaginations are lulling us into a false sense of security. His studio is down a long narrow corridor, through a door and up a flight of stairs with a corner in it. There’s a shitload of mdf flooring that weighs a ton and is basically useless. There’s some random bits of chipboard with nails and screws sticking into your face. There’s a few big chunks of plasterboard. And there’s the timber. We got it all up there pretty efficiently but both of us felt the job by the end of it. And both of us were wryly aware that it might all come back out to go somewhere else almost immediately – Ollie doesn’t want it in his studio.

In retrospect I was too tired to go to Ikea. But I drive through rush hour and get there before six only to discover that there’s a height restriction on the car park and the van’s too tall.

I eventually find a weird lot near a garage that’s already full of vans, but has space. “Is it ok to park here,” I ask the guy to my right. “No English,” he responds. There’s another guy to my left. “Hey, mate, I’m thinking of going to Ikea but I’m not sure what this area is for. Am I okay to leave the van here?” He looks at me and shrugs with a studied lack of expression. “I’ll likely only be about half an hour…” I realise he doesn’t understand me either but doesn’t trust himself with “No English.” He throws out his cigarette and winds up the window shrugging as his eyes slip off me. There are loads of vans here though. People are sleeping in them.

I take a punt, and I walk across the roundabout to Ikea. Just as I walk in I get a text from the guy who I’ve borrowed the van from. “How’s the van?” He’s in Adelaide, but he’s still sensed that I’ve left the van in some weird van city surrounded by people who literally speak 0 English and won’t try. I haven’t told him about the tagging yet although he’s likely been told by mutual friends who read this. I tell him officially, and he’s understanding. He is more concerned with the interior, which is fine apart from the drapes being moved around a bit. But now I’m worried about leaving it where it is.

I’m in the maze of furniture, taking photographs of things, when I start to feel really panicky and weird. I guess last week and weekend, with rehearsal in the day and shows in the evening, with being whacked in the back of the head by that drunk kid in the tunnel who was trying to knock my costume hat off, with the van getting tagged, with managing audience and with money and with driving and with not knowing what’s next… I think I just hit a wall. So I bought nothing in Ikea but meatballs and a Daim Cake to help ground me. And then I went and sat in the van until I could drive home. And now I’m in the bath.

I remember one time I came off stage after the last scene of a touring show to find the backstage area already stripped down and ready to go in the van. “We thought we’d get a headstart while you guys did the last act.” I have an early childhood memory of watching the company of an outdoor show loading the van in a pool of floodlighting and thinking it romantic. Since then I’ve hauled steeldeck, huge flats and timber. I’ve packed up lights and endless cables and I’ve broken down trusses without earplugs leading to two years of tinnitus. I’ve obsessed over van packs. I’ve fitted impossible quantities of furniture into Luton vans and hauled it back and forth over the Pennines. I’ve helped load an old Post Office van with ridiculous knick knacks every night. I’ve gone around London in a transit collecting delicate sets to transport up to Edinburgh for people I’ve never met before and shows I’ve never seen. The van … it sometimes feels like a company member in a touring show.

Someone puts diesel in the petrol engine, or takes a chunk out of the side or gets stuck on a tree or hits a badger or gets five tickets on one drive and everyone knows and talks about it. I was in a show where they missed the ferry to Ireland. They had to cancel a performance. Financial disaster. I’ve done others where I had to preside over the van pack, imposing a strict and fine order to the contents, to do with weight and delicacy and movement when driving. You start to care about the van on tour. It’s the whole show apart from the bodies.

One of the first big vans I drove was up to Edinburgh. I winged it getting out of the parking space in the Sixt van lot, and took a chunk out of the pristine transit to the left of me. Thankfully I’d paid the extra insurance but still an expensive mistake. Idiot. You learn by doing though.

I remember in the Tower of London, saying “Watch out for that low bollard at the back of you. You won’t be able to see it from the cab.” “FOR FUCK’S SAKE, I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING,” replied the other driving ASM at the wheel, before immediately reversing hard into the unseen bollard and really making a nasty dent in the thing. As it hit I felt awful, almost as if I’d seen a friend take a nasty cut. My eyes were drawn to the scar for the rest of the tour…

I’ve come to care about this big old Maxity. We split the interior space for Pantechnicon and I forgot it was as big as it is in there. But today was “get-out” day. Usually that involves loading the van. But it was all in the van already. So it was about tearing down all the stuff we built in the cold about a month ago, and then unloading it. Pulling out staples and unsticking carpets. Packing random knick-knacks into bags. Working out what was borrowed from who and where it all needs to go and why. I need it empty for tomorrow. I’ve got a whole day of hauling ahead of me. The best part of a week to build, and just a few hours tearing it down. I haven’t got the figures yet but I’m thinking we didn’t lose much. Maybe a small recovery, even. It depends how many people actually paid for a ticket… We will see. Not that we did it for the money. We did it for the festival season. But we need to get those pitches out there.

Late August 2018. Mel and Al, driving up to Shambala festival to work. “The deadline for Vault Festival applications is tomorrow. Shall we try something?”

At the time the jag was driving beautifully. As we coasted through the English countryside we composed a crazy pitch. We stopped at a Sainsbury’s to buy festival supplies and hijacked the WiFi to send it. It was an unusual pitch. A vehicle outside the front, an intimate show, storytelling and tarot, as much about the watcher as the watched. To both of our surprise, the pitch was accepted.

Both of us work with tarot. We had already learnt, through collaboration with the remarkable artist Alice Instone, that people in this city crave an intimate moment. We wanted to make something that reflected that, but that was as much about the listener as it was about the speaker – to combine a theatrical experience with something more personal.

For the last three weeks the result of that, The Fantabulous Pantechnicon, has been outside the front of the Vault. The Marquis (who looks very much like me) is lost in time, lost in space, thoroughly excited about everything but jagging through dimensions and eras uncontrollably, gambling and consuming compulsively as he goes. He has an oracle in his van, (Who looks like Mel, properly using Alice’s remarkable Tarot in a very different soundscape and atmosphere but the same van, with a live snake.) He might have picked her up from Delphi. She is Pythonic for certain. She has her reasons for being there. The Marquis has no idea how lucky he is. He’s just selling snakeoil and ticking over. She is there as another timefree being because she’s realised he’s damaging the timestream with his haphazard consumption and self importance. She’s an immortal, he’s an accidental time traveler. He doesn’t understand that his adherence to old models and redundant power structures and ways of being is dragging the world to destruction by fire – despite having been extremely close to Shelley, the delightful romantic, who he helped burn at Fiareggio with Trelawney while Byron sat in his carriage. He can’t remember much of his old life. He gambled it. He has gambled memories and concepts. He’s lost his name. He’s lost the memory of how he lost it too. It likely had something to do with his romantic liason with beautiful Juan who turned out to be Death. That’s part of the whole problem, even if he doesn’t attach significance to it. Death and the Marquis were lovers, for a moment, in New Orleans. Death gifted him the uncontrollable immunity from time that spins him through eras randomly.

None of this is particularly relevant to your show as an audience member. It’s part of the absurd but beautiful background work that we do in theatre to give our characters weight. As far as you know I’m just a guy in a hat plus what I decide to tell you. You meet an excitable and confused but extremely well spoken man who knows he is important but doesn’t know why, and has recently consumed huge amounts of psychedelics. How mad the experience then becomes is to do with you and the dynamic in the van. The Marquis tells stories, gives gifts, destroys regrets, improvises rituals, shares poems and gives advice dependent on what is needed. It’s a very complete half an hour now. But we owe Vault Festival for that. You can’t rehearse audience responsive work without a paying audience. I needed to experiment with different story and ritual before I got the shape locked. The biggest thing I had was that I wanted the character to be less important than the ritual, but for both to be present. I never thought it would be possible to achieve genuine ritual with a character frame but I wanted to try. The Marquis frame works for me in terms of being truthful. He’s taken from me anyway, a version of me. I have a genuine Spanish Aristocracy. By channeling it, I got the chance to make this very strange, beautiful and layered show. We needed the first week to make it. But now it’s done and honed we can move it forward to festivals and so forth (although not with the same van probably – we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)