Category: Uncategorized

Nope. Sorry.

My head is full. But I’m flooded.

Went to see Charlie and Jo and her kids. Never met Jo before. I’ve been aware of Charlie making things with Jo, but she’s the other side of the world.

We had a moment in an Airbnb flat in kings cross. A chance to think about what it means to fuck with energy in this world. A moment to touch base with all the energies coalescing around our current AYLI.

Two hard weeks coming up. These guys are good guys. I’m very very happy to be throwing things around. This week will be about listening.

I forgot this blog though, again, until I was almost flat down. This is one of my stopgaps. Sorry. How am I gonna drive engagement if I always leave it until I’m so tired I can’t think?

Oof

Lovely coffee with Roo between shows. She’s doing so well. I love my friends.

Night. Sorry. I’ll try to remember tomorrow and not suddenly remember as I’m about to sleep.

Ok so wow. Team America World Police are still in operation…

Maduro was a baddie for sure, and he was using the tenets of communism to hide deep corruption and greed. Corrupt greedy self serving world leaders are a blight.

My VISA is still outstanding for the US.

In the light of that it is interesting to see this happen right now. The recipient of the esteemed FIFA Peace Prize, in an unexpected move, has moved in a big way on a neighbour in order, of course, to ensure peace.

I don’t know much about Venezuela, I’ll be honest. I understand the capital is Caracas, they are very coastal, they have the largest remaining oil reserves, lots of corn food like Tequēnos. They speak Spanish as their official language. They have excellent beaches and come to think of it, Angel Falls! Perhaps this is why – the falls! Perhaps bungee jumping is important to the current fun filled US administration. That would make sense. The people around him look terrifically serious and clever but also fun and bright based on the Vanity Fair photo shoot I saw recently.

The White House staff evidently want to make sure they have control over the highest bungee jump in the world. Of course. That makes sense. For funzies.

We should institute another peace prize really. The bungee jumping peace prize. That sounds legit! Just as legit as FIFA! Great!

We could award it to the excellent man who has made all this happen. I’m sure no global leader who has been waiting for an excuse will use this as justification for a land grab in… I dunno remote places like Eastern Europe or… the Pacific Ocean. This is just a logical move to shore up the recreational needs of this planet (and primarily America which IS this planet, ya?

I’m loving rehearsal still. We were in all day even though it’s a weekend. We are working hard even though our visas haven’t been officially approved yet. They’ve been very very slow. People are worrying a little but I can see that common sense is going to win out.

Apparently our social media gets checked. It’ll be fine for all of us though, bunch of nerdy artists the five of us, getting more excited about wordplay than about geopolitics.

I think it’s great that a balanced and sensible fellow like the President now has annexed the biggest bungee jump in the world. That’s what this must have been about.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the good people of Venezuela will still be able to go and leap from the falls if they fill in the correct paperwork, but Americans will be able to take advantage of the privilege too and safely – without fear of leftists making them feel guilty about their opinions. Wonderful. Brave New World.

Somehow we have finished our first pass of As You Like It. We have now looked at all of it. The whole pile of content.

It’s a lot.

I’m impressed with the five of us. It seems like we genuinely still like each other. There’s no tension, no weirdness. We are a brilliant bunch of nerds.

I’m happy to be a massive Shakespeare and word geek. I’m not the guy who says “well actually I think you’ll find” because my attachment to Willy is mixed up in my assessment that he was coining words, fucking with form, breaking conventions and generally being disobedient. To honour his work is to have mischief and bright life sewn into it. Treat it with excessive reverence and you ossify it. Don’t fuck with the text, sure. Listen to the notes he has given you on rhythm and tone and action. You don’t need to “make it relevant” by putting concept onto it – it is relevant purely by being human and relatable. Find that. Speak the speech trippingly on the tongue. He gave us, through Hamlet, three years of drama school in a speech:

“Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.”

Trust the text and yourself within it, and each other. The words will do the work so long as they can be heard. You don’t need to chuck them at us larded with false meaning. And honestly the more random shit you do with your hands the harder it is to hear the text. We are vessels. It is on us to embody this stuff, the more we “do” the more we get in the way. Sure yes ego makes us want to be impressive and sometimes that’s good cos it’s fun to watch people in their blood. But… it mustn’t be the only setting or it loses its sting. Be Herod when you’re Herod – it’s gonna be written big and it’s what the people want. But there are many many tools in the toolbox.

This is a very special group. I’m happy to be part of it. But I’m feeling old at the moment. My back is all gippy – still the JC lifting injury. We are in tomorrow and I’m delicate…

Very happy to have stayed at home all day.

An old and very dear friend is in town. She lives mostly in San Francisco these days. We had arranged to meet today, but ages ago, before I knew how knackered I would be. At about noon I switched on my electric blanket and fell into sweet crazy dreamstate restish.

No rehearsal today thank the good lord. I was up at early because two little girls don’t wait and I’m not interested in being ‘mummy why can’t we go into the living room?” I had tried to get out late last night. I had a £67 uber cued up and ready. I’m glad I didn’t take it. Would have had to come back this morning anyway for my car.

Z gave me a Christmas tree decoration. B gave me wisdom. I hadn’t realised that Uncle W was no more. Sorry sorry sorry to go all Jane Austin with names. I have to reassure people they usually aren’t gonna get put here unless I am totally sure it’s okay or they are a total cunt.

I’m sad about the death, I loved that particular uncle in theory. He was my best mate’s uncle, and he was the person in her life that gave her space to actually see chaospeople like me. I have a lot to thank him for, he brought mischief to her ordered upbringing. “It’s because he smoked, but not just as an old man he smoked as a young man too,” I was told with great wisdom by an eight year old. “Then he was on a beach and he had a stroke and that was bad.” From a (six?) year old? The two girls are coming together and interpreting the world together. I’m sad about uncle W. But I’m happy the way he has rippled down to the kids even if right now it is just a cautionary tale.

I drove home, crashed hard for an hour, then plastered myself together in time to see my San Fran friend. She hasn’t changed. Barely at all. Carries the years well too – she’s olive like I am. We had a big tasty meal with Brian. Now I’m in bed. It isn’t nine yet. I’m making a habit of this, going to bed early. I like to be at work early, I just love the room I’m in. Happy creative times with happy creative people.

I thought it might be a good plan for me to go home. But it is 2am. And Minnie has just bust a gut to get her inflatable mattress from the loft. I was about to spend £60 on an Uber home. But honestly nah. What’s the point in spending New Year with an old dear friend if you sod off before the morning? It’s because they have kids. Maybe it’s worth putting up with the early morning.

Kids. I like the two that Min has done. Some of my friends do good kids. Others I can take or leave, but yeah surely that’s the parents and a delayed reaction. I like the kids because I like both the parents and I’m not inclined to do that shit to myself so I’m mildly in awe of people who do. I’ve been running headlong into a wall for decades. Other people have somehow found headspace to breed. I envy them. I’d love to have continued my wonderful mad parents. But no way with the way it has gone for me lifewise.

New year in Twickenham. We went to the garden and burnt stuff. Rhys made a little incinerator out of bricks. All my shit for a year, and this year was big big big big big big big big big big big big big (sorry needed to express that) shit. This year. No longer. Dead.

A hope. A moment.

Something honestly something something that would finally shift things. Concrete. Completed. Holding my own and holding it well. And then it went to shit. And I can never talk about it publicly.

So yeah, I burnt things with Minnie. Nothing gained by holding onto things. Onwards onwards forever onwards.

There’s power in ritual.

So much, I burnt. Sides for an audition that how did that not land? Bits of ritual towards stunted hopes… This year has been hard to make sense of. It is comforting to find myself doing a job I did twice before COVID. Somehow, maybe, the work we do pays back over time.

God I’m tired though. And tomorrow morning I’m gonna get woken up way too early by Minnie’s girls. I’m in the middle of the living room. Best get my head down.

Waggy came into rehearsal. I don’t really know him but I like him. He put me on the spot about text work cos he’s just started to play in The Factory and thought I would know it. I panicked and talked shit. Yes of course lots of what we do is about text work and rigour but I’ve been deliberately keeping it out of my practice with these guys and this company as it is is a different idiom. We do accents in AFTLS. We stress the pronouns sometimes. Hopefully we don’t point at ourselves when we say “me” and “I” but… We wear things that look like costume. The game is just … different. It aligns, many Factorites thrive in this setting. But there are many ways many ways many ways.

I’ve seeded a couple of things that have become fundamental to what annoys me. The double hand side slap. Every fucking actor does it all the fucking time on stage and NEVER in real life. I’ve kept tennis balls out though until today cos I don’t wince when people don’t end stop. TCs verse work takes years before you come out the other end anyway. There’s pretty much universally a period where good actors start sounding like clocks when they’re working it through.

We haven’t got time to work through it so I’m just doing verse lite which I think is enough. Know where it is. I might introduce “Stop leading into the first word of the next sentence and then breathing to try and make it sound more natural, it doesn’t.”

Let’s not be zealots here though. We have a story to tell. And I know so well too well how Factory rigour and play stuff can leave company members isolated if it isn’t a company where literally everyone buys into it, even if directed by TC.

One friend had a horrible tour with this company because they only trust the Factory way of working. They’re an incredible actor but also a fundamentalist zealot. It didn’t blend with the rest of the company. They ended up resenting my friend and the whole idea of the Factory that had been set up against what they were doing. So… I’ve been choosing my battles, cherry picking the parts of my later learned craft that match with my knowledge of what works. As we must do. We are craftspeople.

Patsy always made us run the thoughts. That’s helpful too. My education, with Martin Tyrrell, Chris Deacon and Jeremy Lemmon helped me hold these big thoughts and work in a way that absolutely flies in the face of Factory work. Big broad strokes. I went back to school a few months ago and did that stuff with Marc Antony. We use all the tools we have. I go towards Factory when possible because often it is not what is accepted as the “correct” way to go about things, and it involves A HUGE AMOUNT MORE WORK. You can’t turn it in with chutzpah, someone will bust you on it. I’m always more interested in exploring dark alleys than going down the main drag and that’s my weird friendship group but it’s not what we’re doing here.

I love and trust this group. We are building our shared language. It’s gonna be a great show.. insha’Allah

Crunch time. Sure we have a few weeks but we also know how a few weeks can go. I’m not too worried. This company is so strong on their own instincts. Trust will win the day.

I’ve been taken aside many times in rehearsal processes by insecure primadonnas. “We just haven’t been given direction” type stuff, usually from people who have but literally can’t cope unless they are told exactly what to do at every stage. One guy called an extra Saturday rehearsal in front of the director. Two others took me to lunch and tried to recruit me into a “we aren’t being told exactly what to do so I’m gonna tell is all what to do” type mafia.

It is mildly comforting to discover, sometimes decades later, that none of the people who have done that – (more than you would think) – have gone on to have robust careers. Why sew dissent? Trust the room. Trust the people. If there’s a chain of command, trust it. Why not?

Sure, art blends badly with obedience. But you have to be a team player in this game. If you make it negative because you haven’t been babysat then you won’t sustain a career, you can’t. Ultimately it has to be about the art in you and not you in the art.

Dammit I love the people I’m working with for that very reason. We are five massive geeks. All of us have learnt how our art works differently and we all respond to it through that personal prism. But… we are all totally focused on making the best show we can make. And as a result it is gonna be a really good shift at As You Like It.

It’s a play about plays. It’s an actor’s play. Every character is playing a part. The word “fool” is seeded throughout, along with the best explanation of satire and what it is for that Shakespeare ever wrote – I’ve quoted it before – The Fool’s Charter. Fool is 0 in the tarot. Fool is the wild card, the one outside the hierarchy, always safe always capable of changing things. There are more fools in this play than any other. Duke Senior, Touchstone, the dead deer, Celia, Jaques all have their motley way. Arguably others too. Shakespeare hammers the word throughout. He’s invested in this. Was it a changing time for his company? I’m not fully on the history of when Kemp gave way to Armin, but Touchstone is certainly Armin and I suspect it must be an early one as the writer is preoccupied with foolery. Suddenly it is a fool that has been a courtier.

I’m loving this. I’m knackered. I am not in an admirable fooling. God you good even.

I feel quite sad tonight. The darkness but also just going to Brighton and not seeing Lou. I charged up her car battery this morning but there’ll be work in March to get her on the road again. I went up and sat with Tessy. She insisted on play so for a long time it was ribbons.

A bright cold day out the window. I put the radiator on for her.

Then back to Bergie and back to London. I’m up to Miles Davis, Kind of Blue on the listening project. The first jazz album and perhaps it informed my mood. It has been a mixture of ease and struggle since Kid A. Unfamiliar and eclectic in genre. Bruce Springsteen, Notorious BIG. Then a run of ease with Velvet Underground, Sgt Pepper, Carole King, Patti Smith. I enjoyed Wu-tang Clan but couldn’t fathom d’Angelo : Voodoo. White Album and Jimi Hendrix familiar enough and I used to listen to Coltrane on purpose so I’m happy to have Miles but now I feel sad.

So I’m going to bed early. Back to rehearsal tomorrow and there’s loads to do and the worriers in the company are worrying. I know for absolute certain we are gonna be fine here. Sure I’ll be flying the flag for chaos but there’s plenty of orderheads here. So long as they don’t start thinking of me as obstructive when they go “Right, we need to work out how to kill this moment,” and I go “no we don’t”. (They’ll use language like “set” instead but I know what they mean). Some things absolutely have to breathe. But annoyingly, if your partner isn’t listening they can’t. We choose our battles.

I think I’m worrying when I don’t need to.

Café Rust for breakfast on my own. Then this evening, leftover Christmas ham and cheese. It isn’t nine yet. I slept really well last night in my weird hotel room cupboard. I think I’m gonna start the day tomorrow ready to roll for the week. I’m looking forward to this still, and happy we’ve got something excellent to run with. It’s a lovely bunch of people.

Hotel Sachi, on New Steine. £30 a night. Check yourself in, everything on a code. A single bed in a cupboard looking out on the square. The radiator is stuck on full blast so I’ve thrown open the sash window. I can hear St James’s Street this Saturday night but the other option is snoring in a hot room and spitting blood in the morning. I’m about to do some Shakespeare so my pipes need to be in good nick.

The other rooms are full. Lots of men talking loudly on phones in unfamiliar languages, watching foreign TV on high volume cast from phones. It’s basic here but there’s good WiFi. My bathroom is across the corridor, with a lock and key. When I get into it it’s mine, but the corridors are rarely empty in here so any late night wee I do will have to be dressed in something. I’ve got no pajamas.

I drove here from Hastings to look at Joni, Lou’s little green car. She has ongoing issues with her starter motor. Sure enough that’s happening. I’m gonna use a battery pack tomorrow just to juice up the battery. Hopefully see it through until march rather than let it die, but the cold months are still to come and I can’t start it without an engineer, I haven’t the knowledge and there’s no point as she’ll die again before Lou is back. I was hoping she’d play ball and start for me and then I could just rev her back to charge. Sadly not. Annoying.

I checked into the cheapest hotel nearby. I could have booked the flat next door to her for something like £175 a night. Obviously didn’t. It only gets booked once in a blue moon at that price which is great as the walls are thin and you don’t want to have to listen to the conversations of the sort of people who think that’s reasonable. They impose their noise on us anyway when we try to have a peaceful sauna at beach box. Coming in through the wall at midnight? Nope.

Brighton is OUT tonight though. It’s the little gap between Christmas and New Year, that everyone tries to name but no name will ever stick as the time itself is too shifty and lost. Missedmas. Malcolm. Twixtmas. Meh. No point imposing meaning on it. But everyone in this town, in many towns, is out getting fucked up.

Apart from the guy who is doing what I would have been doing if Joni had started. He’s running an engine. At ten at night. Hard to charge it. Right outside my open window.

I’m in my single bed in my cupboard. Thankfully I’ve got my book. And my sleepy drink. And Gaviscon. I can settle my Christmas tummy, shut my brain up and guarantee 4 hours of clear rest.

The highlight of my day was seeing Tessy. Fluffy ragdoll attack cat. She was happy to see me. We played and did brushing and generally looked at each other. Within ten seconds of my arrival she was slutdropped waiting for me to get brushing. She has a full time carer living there so I didn’t want to fuck with his routine with her, but I’ve missed her since Lou has gone. Exactly the same breed as Misty, but infinitely smarter and willing to bite you if you piss her off.

Back to the woods. Rajah and Carlos happy to see me. They’ve made a right mess of the area around the autofeeder but it seems the thing does what it is supposed to do. They’ve missed no meals.

Brian has a cat litter robot connected to his phone. It tells him how much poo the cats have done but both our cats weigh the same so it thinks we have one very shit-tastic feline. If we also had one of these autofeeders we could run the whole shebang from Addis Ababa. Thankfully we have neither the tech nor the inclination.

I could have put enough food in the feeder before Christmas to last right up until my friend gets back, but I didn’t want to leave the little terrors on their own too long. So I pushed myself out of the house on boxing day and here I am in the dark woods again.

If I lived in a place like this I’d start hibernating like a hedgehog. It has been dark so long I’m barely able to stop my eyes from drooping and it is barely 9pm. As soon as I’m done with this I’ll be out like a light for at least 3 hours. I love it here though, out in these woods, exempt from public haunt, finding tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.

Bella is back tomorrow evening. I’ll end up quite busy tomorrow. Gotta tidy up and then a zoom rehearsal to keep momentum up. Then driving to Brighton to check out Lou’s car. I think this early bed will pay for itself in time. It is inevitable.

Christmas happened! That’s it for another year. What a treat. I’m absolutely fucked.