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We are all exhausted. It’s quarter to nine South Bend time, which is 1.45am UK time and we have been rehearsing all day. Detail work mostly. We are tightening. The five of us undeniably have a work ethic or a death wish as we could make our own hours and we made these long hours. Now we are off to a pub to get booze and dinner and do line runs. We are in a totally new place and we just haven’t stopped to smell the roses yet. We took a bit of time in lunch break though, and it’s a beautiful day in South Bend. This time five years ago I saw my first chipmunk here on this campus. This beautiful campus.

The squirrels have moved in now, so the chipmunks are marginally more oppressed than they were this time last year, but they’re still showing up from time to time. I spotted one in my lunch break, cute little buggers.

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We have decanted to O’Rourke’s. The Irish pub. There’s not much in the way of choice for food. Notre Dame are playing American football vs Louisville tonight. College football is huge in this country and Notre Dame is one of the biggest teams, so even though it’s an away day the city is banging. Everybody is in the bar glued to the many screens inside. We went and sat outside so we could think. Now we are ordering food and every option comes with a raft of extras. Kaffe orders first – the vegan option. Her immediate response is “Do you want chicken with that?”

The two teams are neck and neck. It’s tense in there. We are sitting on the terrace outside away from it all. Most of us still don’t really understand the sport so it’s just lots of big men leaping into one another.

Out here it’s a soundscape of somewhere unfamiliar. The chirr of cicadas mingles with distant music and the occasional roar of the crowd as the match twists and turns. We’re in America! This huge populous place. It’s a culture shock of sorts, with jetlag on top. Little things are different. The sausages are different. The roads are laid out and landscaped unusually. Everybody communicates in a slightly different way. Queues are unfamiliar in how they work. Social norms are subtly shifted. Bars function differently. Ambient sound is unfamiliar. We are a long way from the streets of London.

“Your accent is so cute,” says our waitress in her cute accent.

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It’ll take a while to get used to being here. I feel lucky though, to have this chance. There’s world to see here, and places I’d never normally have been to. Once the show is tightened we can find the gaps. There’s a replica of the grotto to our lady in Lourdes here. I started the journey that took me here in Lourdes in September coming up to a year ago. This’ll be a great continuation point, to go to that grotto and to light a candle for those who have passed, and for those with whom I walked all that distance a year ago. Where now?

Nowadays every seat on the intercontinental flight has a screen on the back. In my section, 99 people were simultaneously buried into 99 different screens. It was like some sort of dystopian nightmare. I stood up a few times and they were all on. Barely a book to be seen. A hundred little screens, people plugged into them by the ears, jaws slack, drooling their way through stories as we howl through the sky in a tin can. It’s things like this that make me wonder if I’m just a tree somewhere having a really fucked up dream.

When I wasn’t watching films I was in my iPad. I was part of it. I sometimes struggle to let myself sit and watch a three hour movie at home so I figured I’d get Avengers Endgame ticked off. Then I noticed the woman in front of me and to the right was watching the John Wick movies in order and was just finishing the second one. I put on John Wick 3 as I didn’t want to watch it through her screen first.

The John Wick franchise is ridiculous but that’s the point of it and I love them. It’s a duration exercise. They’re seeing how much carnage can come out of a story about a man losing his dog. And Keanu Reeves carries a film very well. The time flew by. We have just landed.

The only downside is that the guy to my right was going to the loo the whole time to be sick. The cabin crew were bringing him fruit and trying to make it nicer for him. He was trying to be discreet but you could tell that he was having a hellish time and, selfishly, I’m hoping it’s not something you can catch or my first night in America is going to be fun. There was also, right off the bat a rudey mcrudeperson who took vast affront at my suggestion that we rearrange the stows a bit so we could fit other people’s luggage in as well. “Well you should’ve checked it,” she attempted regarding my accordion. “It’s an instrument.” “There are check in desks, you know.” I bit my tongue before telling her some facts from my point of view, or making any suggestions about what she might consider checking. I found somebody less unhelpful who I comprehensively thanked for her understanding and willingness to help instead, and scratched the itch through mild passive aggressive comparative gratitude.

Now I’m in a boneshaker van. There is literally no suspension in this thing, but there are sofas. It’s like a cross between a stretch limo and a bus, but the roads are rancid with potholes. I’m genuinely worried about my accordion in the back, as these hits we are taking are substantial. I’m glad I’ve got it through security though. First time is always the worst. A little bit of passive aggression from a passenger is much better than “Sorry sir you’ll have to check that bag, it doesn’t quite fit in our stupid cradle, and even though you and I both know it’ll fit in the overhead locker I’m extremely sad and lonely and it manifests itself in little acts of malice like this. Thank you for understanding.”

I’m thrilled to be here, burning through the potholed roads from Chicago to South Bend. It’s Labor Day tomorrow so everything will be shut. We can just have a relaxed day finding our feet and making sense of the time difference while working some scenes etc. They’ve thought this through. I guess they’ve been doing it for half a century now.

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Arrived safe. Lovely room in Fairfield Inn and Suites.

Off for food. It’s 3.30am. It’s half midnight.

There was a storm in Kentish Town, the night the accordion fell. January 2017 it was. A cold night. The Luton van jolted into a flooded parking bay. 2am. The driver killed the engine. The music jolted to silence midphrase, an emotion cut off in an instant. He sat and balefully challenged the rain through his windscreen, all wild beard and electrified hair. Perhaps he could stop the weather by hating it?

But no. “Fuck you,” he muttered, as he pulled up his collar and threw open the door into the flood. He launched his tired frame into the heart of the storm. You would have seen him grapple with the shutters at the back of the van, clawing with his angry nails, all rage and spittle and exhaustion. You would have seen the shutters yield under his haphazard assault. You would have seen the accordion topple soundlessly from where it had been lying against the stubborn shutter.

In slow motion it fell, no faster than the rain around it. It turned a little, as dynamic as Trump on a trampoline. It impacted once, hard. You would have heard the final disgruntled vamp as the whole fucking thing stopped working.

Then you’d have seen the man’s face. What a strange expression, you would think. Almost empty of meaning. A moment of complete stillness as the rain speeds up around him. Too tired and too wet to care, an actor at the end of a job, his beloved instrument unceremoniously killed before his eyes in an instant, at the heart of a January storm in Kentish Town. You’d have seen him shrug, pick it up, drop off the keys and squelch to the bus stop in silence.

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“It’ll be too expensive to fix,” Al told Brian. “Have you checked?” “No, but it will be.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, Brian, yes I’m sure.” “Shall I check?” “NO.”

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*Your package has been delivered*

A Chinese accordion. Half the size of the dead Hohner. Delivered to my hallway by DPD. Not as loud. Not as versatile. But functional. Scrooge plays it every night throughout the next December. He keeps it in a hard case. When it’s in a van it’s on the passenger seat. He grows to love it. It comes to Oxford with King Alonso. Prospero plays accordion too. He tells the king of an accordion shop in distant Lewisham. “It’s the best accordion place in the world mate.”

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This morning I woke up and got a Kapten to Lewisham. Kapten is like uber but the cars stink and they’re all driven by maniacs. Cheaper though. In the boot was the dead Hohner and the Chinese travel accordion. Destination Allodi Accordions. The best accordion shop in the world.

It’s a Mecca. Mr Allodi himself is there, just about to sell a brilliant mini Hohner to Naomi from Northallerton. The conversation in this shop is superb. He really knows his accordions. He really cares about them. So long as they aren’t pre-war. “There’s a beautiful looking old accordion on sale in Barnardo’s Brixton.” I tell him. “Oh yeah, like that one?” “Yeah.” “Pre-war then. What do they want for it?” “About £200. I took it down and it’s completely fucked.” “They all are. That room used to be full of them.

I sold them all to a Brewery for £30 a pop. About 200 of them. They stuck them on the walls in their pubs. Glad to be rid of them. They’re beautiful to look at but…” He shrugs.

He geeks out about my Hohner. “I could’ve fixed this in seconds if you’d brought it right in. Still, I can do it. It’ll just be harder. The wood has warped over time now.”

Shut up Brian. You were right.

He can’t really decide which of us to serve. Me or Naomi. He switches between us. He’s about to screw a foot onto the Chinese one when I remind him that she was here before me and she’s going to spend £500 so he should probably close the deal. Naomi wants to travel with her gorgeous little new Hohner. I covet it. I tell her she’ll need a bag like the one I’m in to buy. She gets one. We instantly hit it off. We add each other on Facebook and she waits for me so we can chat as we walk to Lewisham Station. She’ll be able to learn from my experiences as to the practicalities of persuading airlines that it’s a carry-on.

“Shouldn’t you be packing,” she perceives as I plan my route to Tottenham Court Road to pick up my contact lenses. “Yes.” (Even people who have JUST MET ME intuit that I locate my self-consciousness externally!) Dammit.

I’ll have a handy travel accordion and contact lenses packed for America, that’s certain.

I’m gone till November. I’ll probably have a suitcase containing nothing but socks. I wonder where my Kindle is?

Breakthroughs today in character. A rehearsal out of a discussion into a shift that makes so much sense of Belch. I’ve got the key, finally, to this remarkable fellow. He’s fun, but much more calculating and manipulative than me. But it was one of those moments where the character drops in, today. I’ve felt it before. I felt it today. I know who he is now fully. Just in time. I can’t wait to go through the play again with what we discovered today. But we are in a good place to go to America. Which is just as well, considering that’s what we’ll be doing.

We’ve been rehearsing in Brixton. Frances who runs the venue cooks for us every Friday. Jerk chicken, rice and peas, with spicy spinach and salad. Vast portions. She’s a feeder. She made us rum cake. “Have it at home in the evening with a cup of tea.” I had it with a can of beer. I dreamt torture dreams all night. Two other cast members had terrible dreams too after rum cake but no cup of tea. I always usually have a hand on the tiller dreaming, but I couldn’t. The rum cake was tasty but the hand it put into my dream was the corrupted hand of a gebbeth.

Now I’m aware I’ve only got one day – Saturday – before I leave. In the morning I’m off to the accordion shop in Lewisham. Then to Specsavers Tottenham Court Road. Then home to put things into cases and make sense of the stuff I’ll be taking out to America with me. I’ll be going through a variety of seasons over there. From 1pm I’m having open house just so I can have company when I’m packing. I’ve got food. I’ve only mentioned it to about 3 people. As it should be. But you’re invited.

It’s business as usual round my flat apart from the fact it isn’t as I’m leaving. Pickle had assumed the position and was drilling her purr into my belly when suddenly Al showed up. Another Al. He’s been in my life for a decade or more and he’s making crazy good theatre and will be staying in my room for a bit while I’m away. As always this place seems to be a playground for ideas, thoughtful people poetry and cats.

I know from being in Newquay that sleeping without Pickle will take some getting used to. She and I have been constant for too long now. Brian and Mel will be looking after her when I’m away though, and she loves them too. She will be a happy beast.

I had the evening with Flavia and Ivo. I was made to read The Book With No Pictures. It’s fun but it’s definitely not a sleepy book in the hands of Ivo and I. We were bouncing around like fools. Stories are fun. That’s the job we do…

I feel like I’ve run a marathon.

I sweated a river, unnecessarily shouted enough to train an army, lost all the words I knew when I saw people writing about me talking, covered for uncertainty with a display of overconfidence as is my wont and generally made a twatgenius of myself as I can do when I don’t know fully what I’m doing. If I’m unsure I always attack harder than when I’m sure. That’s my way. I paint in broad strokes, then pull back, then overlay, then finally detail.

I remember this afternoon a verse scene as Antonio that I know excellently being derailed when the person I was delivering my line towards started writing something. It might not even have been about me. I was thrown though. Useful to be thrown. Maybe I don’t know it as excellently as I thought… Maybe I need to really work out the verse again with a ball, think about clarity and detail. Or maybe I just need more time in a room without disrupted company, working with these particular humans on this incredible text.

You always have to keep going back to the text. It’s never worth muffing verse in a company that values that idiom. And my prose is still sometimes made up as Toby. Shakespearean prose is an absolute ball-ache to learn. I’ve got work to do to get the specific words. Lots of it. And no underlying meter to help. I have a thought-filler where I say “I do dare say” while I’m searching for the words he did write in prose. We will need to be utterly precise and correct very very soon.

But five of us did the show starting at the beginning and ending at the underrehearsed song at the end. We didn’t look at our scripts. We noticed every time the ball dropped. Often as with Antonio who I’ve drilled finely, it was to do with the circumstances. Still worth noting. If you can be thrown you can be thrown. My personal shit about an individual came into the room. That shouldn’t happen. I need to know things better and deeper.

It’s like when you do an audition and all three people on the panel are eyes down writing while you work through a tricky scene. It can be discombobulating when people make notes when you want them to be watching. Even though the notes might be glowingly positive and listening is enough.

The people at the showing all have our best interests at heart. And their notes are designed to be helpful. We took them in the spirit they were given and will build them in. These lovely people had given their afternoon to help us. That time is valuable to us. But now we have to bind together with rigor and positivity and make this into the show it almost is.

We fly on Sunday. Then it’s mostly just the five of us, zooming around in beautiful places, making things happen, rolling with the changes, telling a story. It’s gorgeous, this company. The work ethic, the thinking behind it, what it makes possible. Just five actors every tour, twice a year for half a century. We get to tell stories to people who have never seen a play before. But bloody hell, right now I’m feeling the pressure. It’s not all done… It will be. I have to sleep.

Tomorrow we have a sharing of Twelfth Night – work in progress. We feel the pressure. I am perhaps feeling less pressure than some because I’ve met the people on the list so far and like all of them. But I’m still feeling pressure. All my paraphrases, all my little moments where I’m not sure what I mean, bits where I’m more involved in logistics than story – all of that will get magnified to me through my perception of how they are viewing it. Thankfully I think this is a lovely show, with a lovely group. I’m happy to put what we have in front of people who know the idiom better than me. I worry we have too much stuff. I worry we are asking for more stuff than we need. But I’m a worrier, and I want this to be great and my worries get in the way, and I know this about myself. I just know we will have shows in venues where there are no chairs possible, and I don’t want us to get stuck in stuff that stops us from looking at the scenes the scenes the scenes. The scenes are paramount. The words between the humans. That’s why we are doing this work.

But we all know it. And that makes it lovely. We are all pulling in the same direction. And our taste is roughly equivalent across the group. And we can all drop everything if we are asked to. It’s gonna be lovely. I can’t wait to go around America with these humans.

Right now I’m in bed. It’s hot. I’m hot. I had a bath. Pickle is lying on my stomach. She likes to do that when I’m blogging like this but it doesn’t make me any colder. She seems to like the heat. She’s purring like a packdrill. I can’t quite believe I’m leaving her and going off to America on Sunday. Good God I’ll miss her. More than anything else. I suspect she’ll miss me too in her feline *I don’t give a fuck about anyone but I like it when he rubs my belly* way.

I haven’t packed. I haven’t emptied my bedroom. I’ll be gone until winter. Saturday is going to be the day I attempt to do literally everything that’s left to do.

I’ve got to drop off some costume to Camden before I leave as well. Stuff that we use for corporate work at the Globe. There are literally not enough hours in the day. I went up to me attic this evening to get it down, swearing copiously as I was hoping to use the time to sew magnets into a bit of felt in order to make a satisfying quick change. It turns out that learning to sew and costume design simultaneously on a rushed hot evening when there’s hundreds of other things to be thinking about – somehow it’s not conducive to my best work. I’ve made something. I’ll make it better over time. That’s what making things is all about anyway. I just have to get the makeshift something through tomorrow without being told to ditch it because it’s not fully realised.

“I like it like this,” says Claire. We are rehearsing in a sauna. Pathetic fans flank the walls, moving the sweltering air around us to no discernible effect. All of our thinking is tortoise slow. We are unfamiliarly fractious. Everybody but Claire is flagging by lunchtime. Claire is bouncing around, keeping the energy moving, positive and funny. How? Who knows. Maybe all the barre classes she teaches. I can feel myself melting into myself. My brain is gazpacho. If I move too quickly it’ll slop out through my ears.

I’m usually cool with heat. I used to go to Bikram Yoga on purpose until I got fed up of feeling dehydrated for hours afterwards. This has been a slog today though in a sweaty room. So much still to do. Jen and Jack were in with us, being lovely, but our five has become a seven. A different dynamic.

We still managed a good day, even if I felt my own eyes on myself unkindly. I know intellectually that’s just a function of me when tired and the heat strung me out fast.

Oh all we humans know so much about ourselves intellectually that we can’t put into practice. It’s the same with the work on the scenes.  “This scene should be about *idea*” we might say. But in the end it always has to be about *need*. Let the idea coruscate in the air between our conflicting objectives, ignored by us, observed by our watchers, different for people with different lives from ours. Most of our audiences on this tour will have lives such as we could never have experienced. We can bring them the story of Twelfth Night. They will do with it what they will. That’s art, at heart. And theatre is live art.

This story is rich. Loving the wrong person, hiding aspects of yourself and the toll it takes, bullying and being bullied, so many colours of love, so many colours of disguise and identity, all wrapped up in the wind and the rain, come away death, grief, avoidance, party, the morning after, love love truth pain need love longing love twelfth night.

Rehearsal done, I hauled myself sweatily across London and over to my brother Rupert’s lovely house in Kensington. He’s worked hard. It has borne fruit.

I was picking up some children’s books that my nephew had written about screen addiction on a successful Kickstarter. He needed them posted to America. I was going to go out and send them locally. Turns out he’s already posted them from the UK. Hey ho. Saves my packing weight and makes it easier for me in the long run.

We had dinner al fresco and how many times can you do that in London? There’s the payback for cooking in our own sweat together like five little Shakespeare lobsters all day.

This will be beautiful and clear this show. We still have detail work to do, but the wash is in place. I need to cut this fabric and so some sewing. Fuck it. I wish my grandmother was still alive, she’d smash it for me. It’s down to me being clueless with fabric and magnets first thing tomorrow morning…

 

I spent most of the day thinking about fabric. How to shift characters. What do I have in my wardrobe?

I ended up finding a bolt of red cloth from Christmas Carol and realising that it’s good enough to use as cummerbund/sash, but too red. So I’ve ordered two metres of blue cloth on Amazon. It’ll arrive tomorrow. I guess that convenience is what we get in exchange for Bezos and all the richest people paying next to no taxes in the UK. Hooray for quick food-bank fabric. I’ll bring in the red stuff in the meantime, but hopefully I’ve found the solution even though it’ll probably involve some sewing with the fucking magnets and I can’t sew yet. Time past time to learn. It wasn’t considered a useful skill for young Al. Oh I wish I had it. Hitching up Scrooge’s nightie. Making and adjusting costumes. There’s always work to be done and I’d love to be able to do it myself. I’m getting better at widening my focus, and yes of course it would be lovely to get one of those jobs like Newquay where you come and get looked after and don’t have to bring or make your own stuff. But dear gods I love theatre and theatre is often makeshift.

Four more days of rehearsal and then I fly. The start of this job is the start of Brian’s Wolf of Wall Street. Our household is a household with no thinking time whatsover. I’ve started paying for a cleaning lady and it’s the best thing in the world. Maria is amazing. She will sort things out if she has to. But if she can spend time doing laundry and washing up she will do so because they need doing.

It’s a lesson. Do the things that come easy to you, and she will do surprising and amazing things that nobody would think of. She has organised our kitchen draws. She is pairing my socks. I always have clean pants and I know where they are. It’s almost like witchcraft.

Tristan came over this evening to use my home studio. He was recording towards a potential consideration for a well known character in a string of adverts. I got him set up in my home studio and realised voice recording is not a familiar idiom for him. So I’ve lent him the home studio. I’m off for months anyway and I’ve got a very serviceable portable studio. He might as well have my soundproofing and my nice Rode mic. I’ve got an iPad studio which is sexy as fuck with a few towels well placed and that’s what I’ll take to America. I’ve done books in hotel rooms before. I’ll be fine. It was noticeable how Tristan didn’t quite get the game yet. If he experiments with the kit I’ve lent him he’ll likely be able to monetise his ability. You don’t need much for a start (this is not the configuration I record in btw, oh experts).

The well known character had already been cast of course, in spite of our work. We didn’t know it until we had sent a couple of testers. So be it. When I get back from America I might well turn a specific little cupboard I have in my flat into a functioning dead room. Because everyone needs voices. And the tighter I can get my dead sound the better. And I’m very good at this work.

Barbeque in the sun. I’m exhausted. It was all I could do to get myself to Richmond but it was worth it for the Bloody Maria. I couldn’t manage a drink for the first few hours so I lay on my back and occasionally munched a sausage hoping it would be the one that brought me back. I was refreshing the cricket scores less and less frequently and more and more disconsolately. Eventually I gave up hope and lay alongside an interesting conversation for a while until Tristan shouted my name. “18 left to win” Fuck me sideways. How did they manage that? Ben Stokes.

Three men in shorts and hats standing in a circle around a phone, listening to the cricket commentary. “This is what it must’ve been like in the 1920s” says Tristan. “This is the most middle aged thing I’ve ever done” says Andy.

Another amazing game and we three bonded over that frantic listening. I thought I’d experiment with a Bloody Maria to celebrate. The same principle as Mary but with tequila. I think it helped, although my head still hurts.

Now I’m writing this in the garden. Dogs, meat, music and friends. It’s more sedate than I remember summer barbeques being, but some of us are pregnant. They’re growing tomatoes in the garden. People are talking about Moreno glass and Galileo. Nobody is shotgunning cans of lager and falling asleep in puddles of sick. Earlier today there was a child. Now it’s gone someone might have a sneaky cigarette, oh my. It’s ten past six. I might be gone in a few hours. People are already slowly leaving, talking about which stations they are going to travel through. The sun is setting.

Good to stop though. And good company to stop in. I caught up with Diana earlier today who taught me at drama school. She lives conveniently close to the barbeque and I’m aware that I’m gone for bloody ages in a week. No time to see everybody but I’m gonna keep trying to see as many people as I can. Although next week is gonna be hard work. I’m good with hard work. Good to see Diana. Good to see the barbeque bunch. So many people to see. So little time to see them. And I need to pack my bags for the tour and sort my bedroom out before I go, not to mention make this 5 person Twelfth Night zingy and fun and alive and alert and deft and meant and delightful and truthful. Not such a big ask?

I’m beginning to come back to life. Could this be a second wind? Someone is recommending books to me now. Good God. I’m going to join a conversation and see how I manage.

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I did indifferent well at conversation. Now I have retreated to a cool living room and I’m prostate on the sofa about to watch the highlights from today’s cricket. I do enjoy The Ashes. Now where’s my pipe and slippers?

 

Can you imagine back to 1185? It’s so hard. It’s forever back.

The Templars built a Temple back then, just south of the river fleet. They had money. Back then it was the crusades kicking off. “That thing you believe is wrong. We will teach you that our idea is right. By force.”

With a modern sensibility it seems absurd that a belief structure can be used as grounds for war. But still now in the modern world pretendywendy things are the unquestioned basis for absurd acts. People actually literally explode themselves publicly because their flibbedywobbet has PINK wings, not blue like those hateful fools have believed for centuries!

The Knights Templar created the idea of banks, before banks became about gambling for profit and actively destroying the economy.

Back then you could lodge your money in London and shortly have it available in Jerusalem. Amazing, and difficult and rare. It was still a gamble, of course, but the gamble was on the Templars. Less likely to result in some pasty faced narcissist eating your stuff. They tried to make sure you got your stuff.

The gold you left wasn’t the gold you withdrew, of course. They didn’t need to send the bank manager off walking from London to Jerusalem laden with your stuff without getting beaten up. They just passed a promissory note down the line, faster than any individual could travel.

It was a gamble. It was largely predicated on pillaging. But it worked. Yes the gold was mostly stolen but there was enough stolen gold to satisfy the people who didn’t get killed when they asked for it.

Meanwhile the heart of their economy sat in London. It’s still there, in the thick of it, pulled back from the main drag. The inner Temple is a strange anomaly – a quiet public private bit of land, just off the main drag. Sometimes I know someone who has a key to private gardens around there. I’ve covered that ground in different contexts very deeply. The church itself is a huge beautiful and fascinating monument. And whatever it was built on, in the heart of London, it’s a powerful building.

This evening I watched Macbeth there. Good to see a show with witches in that ancient edifice. All the stone churches are built on places of power.

The guys in the Twelfth Night company told me I was mad to go and watch a play. Particularly a Shakespeare’s play. I’ve had a six day week on Shakespeare and then on the Saturday before my day off I pay money to see people do it instead of just stopping. But hell, I love working with that person’s words and I always learn from watching other people.

Right now Macbeth is of particular interest to me as it’s the active Factory project. I basically literally know every single line. I’m interested in how they deliver them, and whether the company can sweep me up enough that I forget. But meanwhile I reserve the right to be distracted by a glorious ceiling…