AlBarclay

“Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi.”

We usually only hear the first half of the first half of this with a dot dot dot. “If you’re in Rome, live like the Romans. If you’re elsewhere, live like they do.”

“When in Rome…”

That’s St Ambrose. He didn’t like Jews or Pagans so, like many theologians there are personal boundaries to his advice, assumptions and internalised prejudices. But it ain’t bad advice for the traveller. “Get stuck in, wherever you are. Oh and remember, the Romans hate outsiders.”

We need to do more of it, that getting stuck in thing. Too often we hear people giving all the “We was in that Turkey and they didn’t even have proper fish and chips, it still had the head on it and all.” “I ordered a Coors Light and they didn’t even know what I was talking about.”

So I’m taking St Ambrose’s advice. Here at the home of the “fighting Irish” we are once again watching sport. There’s the band. There’s the pageantry. The stadium is full. It is men’s ice hockey this time so they won’t be exploding things on the court between quarters. Shouty tannoys, bangy music. Fun fun fun.

We are rehearsing tomorrow morning. We hoped to get away without. Peter Holland came to a run through. He writes the introductions to many of the Arden editions of Shakespeare plays. When I’m watching Shakespeare I usually know every fucking word of it and I’m looking at the choices people make. When he watches Shakespeare he’s seen all the choices already too and is likely just interested in how smoothly they are executed. “You’ll be coming in on Saturday to rehearse, I assume,” he said to us mildly after giving each of us at least one excellent difficult note. “We weren’t planning on it.” “Hmmm”.

We are coming in on Saturday. Everything is in place for this to be lovely. But it ain’t tight yet. So we are trying to tighten it now.

There’s weight in this work. It is gonna be the first Shakespeare of a lot of the audience. If it’s shit we burn jobs for people like us down the line. If it’s living, we keep the fire burning. Fifty years they’ve mostly sent out great shows. As You Like It is complicated and bitty but damn it is charming too. And so are we.

But tonight we are gonna be here with the sirens and the band, with the children waving rattles and the dancers. Last night they won the basketball. The hockey are 0-2 to Ohio State right now. The brass band is playing “Take on me”. The atmosphere is muted. I’d like a win in as much as I care, because I’m in Rome. I’m in a Catholic sporty enthusiastic academic institution in the US of A. Doesn’t matter how much of an international joke the president might be, the Romans had Caligula.

“Let’s go Irish.”

The chanting is more polite than the chanting we get in the UK…

I’m watching the Fighting Irish Women’s Basketball live at the stadium. There’s so much pageantry in American sports. The game is well attended and between rounds all the cheerleaders jump up and down and children throw rubber chickens and people play brass and it is all done in such a way as to make it feel it matters.

No wonder pockets of scum occasionally bubble to the top of all this pageantry and get the idea they are kings. This youthful nation is doing well and it has the self importance to prove it. Right now though that American youthful nation thing that is charming if it doesn’t run rampant is getting ugly.

Not that we see that here. We are in a rarefied environment and working hard. This nation is big enough that we probably won’t see empowered meatheads dragging people from their homes. We will just see happy uncomplicated people who love their flag and haven’t examined the inherited view that they live in the best nation on earth under God.

It’s concerning of course that much of the almost childlike messaging is being picked up by the more simplistic thinkers in England and carried as if it is some kind of brand new idea. “Flags mean pateritism! Are country neds to be proud of us together.” There are always gonna be grown ups with crayons but its definitely bad at the moment.

—

They just had a “science” interlude mid game. Kate The Scientist came on and blew up a whole load of hydrogen balloons before letting a bin full of liquid nitrogen explode for our pleasure…

Now the band is playing Bon Jovi.

The Irish are still behind… I’m hoping they turn this around as the college is working hard to make this fun for everyone. American sport though is as much about the gaps as it is about the sport. It makes me really aware of what we are doing here, how strange it is to ask people to sit and watch us do words that were written when this was vast empty plains running with buffalo and scattered nomadic tribes living in sync with nature. “Slow down,” was a note from Scott. This big thing has to be played lightly and then once we can be deft and light we have to make sure we don’t lose the audience.

—

Oh and now it’s a light show. I’m sure it was sport a moment ago… I’m gonna settle in. They’ve leveled the score… They’re one up! GO IRISH GO IRISH.

I have to remember not to schedule now. I’m in the time zone where I started this blog so I can just hit publish. Yesterday I forgot that.

It’s only nine. I’m right out of wakey.

I went to the pharmacy. Blew sixty bucks on stuff like vitamin pills and carmex. Aircon dries the air, and so does below freezing. All the moisture freezes up. We are doing lots of breathing, lots of thinking with words. It can dry you out.

We did All The World’s a Stage today as part of a pass. Honestly the speeches before about time decay and what fools are for – they are much harder. But I know how much weight will be on that one. It’s like To be or not to be, half the audience is gonna be mumbling along with me. It starts in the middle of a verse line, which telegraphs to me that it is coming on the fly. This is Jacques trying to do foolery, but his experience makes him sad so his foolery goes with his proclivities.

I know this foolery all too well, all too deeply, from my work with various strong medicines. This is the foolery that made the universe. Nothing or everything. Everything will go back to nothing. In the beginning was the word. Before the big bang what was there? Entropy? A universal being in nirvana state?

Noise, chaos, curiosity, light… All these agents of life exist despite and because of a defiance of the death state, the nothingness at the edge of vision that sucks and sucks at life. We are making a patch of light, and Jacques in that is the agent of the dark. It cannot all be pretty flowers and prancing sheep or we won’t be able to appreciate things for what stupid beauty they have.

A little red squirrel came and said hello yesterday in the snow and it was a wonderful moment of communion. We look at nature, nature looks at us. We look into the void, the void looks back.

Perhaps we will be pushed back to a less unnatural way of living before long. There are still millions of years before the sun takes us out as a planet. Within that time, if we persist as a species, we would have to become unrecognisable and live in ways we cannot fathom. Maybe there will be oil fields made of us. Who knows what will come but sure, this period we are in where even though we all have the same basic anatomy arbitrary differences are dividing us deeply. Stuff we’ve made up like economic and political differences. Stuff that is irrelevant but extremely charged, like gender and racial differences.

Here in Indiana I’ve seen nothing of the division that seems to be rocking America – social media is a very bad window on anything. It’s like London. London is more chilled now than when I was a student. Hackney used to be dodgy, now it’s just kombucha and sandals. Brixton was angry, now it’s food and cheap tut. Chelsea was posh high society, now it’s Botox and balloon lipped chancers wondering where they all went. The world moves how it moves and trying to frame anywhere as being in one state because it serves your narrative is mere hubris.

Anyway I’m tired.

My experience makes me happy, largely. Being sad is often a choice from privilege. Jacques is choosing to be sad and do nothing because there are other people in the woods with him who kill and cook the deer. He can think of the morality of mortality because someone else is doing the heavy lifting and putting food on his plate.

All of us reading this to a lesser or greater extent have privilege. I think one of the ugliest things is when people take their privileges for granted, treat them as God granted, as their right. There’s a lot of that in the world right now. Nobody is special. Circumstances and work breed opportunity. Some who are all circumstance disparage those who are all work. Some who are all work disparage those who are all circumstance. I’m both. I disparage those from extreme of either who gave created justifications for hating their opposites on the scale.

I’m so tired.

Don’t be dicks, kids.

There’s a blow heater in my room. It’s essentially a great big wall mounted air con unit and I remember from previous tours that there is only so much control that Fairfield Marriot lets its customers have over their own heating/cooling. In summer I switch the thing off but it goes on of its own accord at 7am and generally just ignores what you ask it. You have to get out of bed and shut it down again.

When it’s running it sounds like a jet engine taking off. I hate it. But if you ask it for maximum heat, the one in my room keeps things at body temperature or thereabouts. So I put it on maximum every day before I go rehearse. I come back and my room is tepid after a day of noisy fuss. And I switch the fucking thing off because I need to sleep. Thus I wake up at 4am absolutely freezing cold because the duvet covers are made out of albumen and there’s no blanket.

I would have brought the quilt Lou patched me, but luggage allowance makes it impossible. So I’ve asked them for extra blankets. I did the same in Tabuk for the same reason and I got a blanket. Here today I just got some extra egg whites. They’ll do. Put three of them together and it is like a real duvet cover.

Bedtime. It was Scott’s birthday today bless his heart. He’s a gorgeous man. He’s made so much possible for so many for so long. There are some golden figures I’ve brushed with in this unusual life. Ros from Scene and Heard is one. Scott is another. Who could replace him?

He was here with us today as we worked through moments. He brought in all sorts of insightful and bright flashes of clarity and detail and world building. Having his eye on us this week is a great privilege.

The snow is heavy on the ground. Red squirrels and bright light and cold. Shelves of snow falling from bare trees. Birdsong. The beeping of snow ploughs. Slush on the pavements.

We went to “Jesus” and Deb picked up a company meal. Peruvian fusion in an old church just down in Mishawaka. I had surf and turf. Now I’m back in Eddie Street Commons and it is time for bed. We are still a bit jetlagged, we get tired and addled late at night. My body knows it is 3am. It’ll adjust, after all I was in this time zone right until just before I was born when mum flew back on purpose as she didn’t want me born here. Maybe she could see what was coming.

Coldest day of the year, apparently, with Wind Chill. Americans love simplification and buzzwords. -10 temperature. They say: “Real feel” -25. Celsius. Real feel. Oh go suck a pig. But yes. It’s COLD.

I have a heated gilet. It’s like being wrapped in an electric blanket. The cut of it is bollocks, it makes me look like Mark Fuckerberg. But unlike him it does something useful. Still it takes ages for all of us to get kitted out to go outside. And my gilet is liable to short itself out at a moment’s notice. I’m of the generation that worked out if the battery was flat by putting your tongue on it. I left my best electric blanket on the bed when Brian moved in and told him about it. He took it off without trying it. It still makes me sad for him thinking about what an inherited seventies safety hangover is denying him in the modern world. I trust that my gilet isn’t going to kill me. Even if it overheats itself. Modern electric blankets are incredible things and you won’t get a tickle even if someone pours a whole litre of water on you on purpose. But we were taught to fear the things, and conditioning is hard to overcome.

My new boots – lent by lovely Brian – give me blisters UNDER MY TOES. Anywhere else I would keep wearing them and weather it. But I need to be good at moving for the show so I’m in my trainers and thick socks for the short term. Wet feet beats hobbling actor.

We are in the Decio Theatre here at Notre Dame this week. Last time in 2019 we were in Washington Hall with the bats. This theatre is kind to actors and good for Shakespeare. The stage is right on the seats, the acoustic is tuned for students who can’t project, we can do nuance here.

We built the stage, settled in, and started on detail work again. And we worked longer than we had planned despite Scott trying to stop us – bless him. Bunch of enthusiasts, we are. I am proud to be part of it and it will keep growing and growing and growing as we keep going and going and going.

—

I wrote that in the pub. I’m home now in my weird little room. We have been watching the college football final, but American Football doesn’t suit my particular set of neurodivergencies. It’s too bitty for me to settle my interest into so I’m always distracted in the gaps between plays, and even though now I know what I’m looking at and how it all works I get switched out in the play breaks (for instance into writing my blog like I did tonight)

Here we all are in the Decio. Joy to come.

I couldn’t check in fully online yesterday. Random ID check. Meant I couldn’t adjust my seat. The flight is full so by the time I’m ID checked there is absolutely no wiggle on seats. “Oh yeah,” she says “you wouldn’t have been able to change your seat because of the ID check thing, right?” “Yes that’s right. I’ve got a bad back and I’m six foot tall.” “We are completely fully booked now. But inform the flight staff and if someone misses a connection we might be able to move you.” Nobody misses their connection. Darn.

Middle seat right at the back. A young tired social media vodka drinker on my left, thankfully diminuitive and hammered to sleep. On my right, the lady immediately has a protracted hacking cough as I sit down. “Did something go down the wrong way?” I ask her this hopefully. She turns to me. Her eyes are streaming. “I don’t what the fuck is wrong but it’s bad, I’m really really sick,” she tells me and I turn away from her. It’s bad enough generally on an airplane. I’ve rolled terrible dice here.

As we take off, water starts dripping onto my bald patch. There is consternation. Benjy is behind me and clocks it, and catches a staff member. “Has someone’s water bottle burst?” The air hostess is here to comfort me immediately. “Oh that always happens here. It’s the air conditioning unit. It’s just water.” So I’m in the middle seat with no legroom, next to patient zero, and now I’m getting baptised with filthy water. British Airways. To Fly. To Serve.

I watch Oppenheimer. Gorgeous work. Maté is in it, so I take a selfie with him.

They fed me. They had run out of vegetarian options by the time they got to me. I didn’t have a choice in the matter I consumed but it was vaguely edible matter. Some sort of deconstructed burger thing. The dying woman next to me asked me to open her water bottle. I then immediately went to wash my hands. I really don’t want what she had. Thankfully I’m maxed up on vitamins at the moment.

Then I watch Avatar. The first one. Never seen it before. When it came out it looked like a cartoon and someone said “It’s Dances with Wolves in space”. I couldn’t be arsed back then, and all the hype pushed me away. Finally watched it. It passed the time. By the time it was over we were landing, which was excellent.

I’m right at the back on the left hand side so I’m pretty much the last person to leave the plane. “PASSENGER BARCLAY PASSENGER BARCLAY” says a pissed off looking woman who has clearly been saying “PASSENGER BARCLAY” for months by now to everyone as they walked past. “That’s me,” I tell her, bemused. She gives me a poorly written form. “Your case is lost. It’ll be here tomorrow.”

The form encourages me to contact http://www.ba.com/bagagge (sic) for more information. There’s no file reference. British Airways. To Fly. To Serve.

Security went well. And then to the baggage carousel, sorry the bagagge carousel, where I thought it worth looking for both cases. And curiously I found both cases. So they didn’t lose my case. So the poor lady didn’t have to shout my name for a year.

Now we are in a van on the way to South Bend with all our cases. It’s fucking cold. Minus ten. But I’ve got a snood. All is well.

Last time down the rabbit hole tonight. Slightly earlier than usual. An oil and gas company having their belated Christmas party at The Underglobe and muggins here is out on the street with ears stuck to a top hat, whiteface clown makeup, tights and great big padded arse with a fluffy rabbit tail on it.

“Is Christmas a very important date? I would suggest it is. You’re late for it.” It writes itself. I’ve got my patter down now for it and they were all a game lot. Getting a lot back from all of them. Maybe it helped that I’ve been away from it awhile, and coming back employed as an actor. I’m not gonna be second guessing myself as the confidence is up.

But that said, I’m a ruin of myself. That tooth extraction last night was literally a shock to the system. And then last night I blocked my back so I couldn’t lie on my right. I get my deep sleep on that side so it was a restless night. But I wanted to be absolutely sure it healed up nicely. Don’t want dry socket on the plane.

They absolutely rinsed me, that dentist, at a time when I’m already brassic. I’m gonna try to be as frugal as I can over there. Got to accumulate. I just spent half my tax bill on having my tooth pulled and I can’t afford to pay it at all now. But I’m employed and they will pay before long. Gonna cancel any subscriptions I can cancel like Deliveroo plus and get myself back in the game. This job is way too short to rely on.

I think I’ve packed. Hope so, we fly tomorrow morning. Brian lent me a good but not a huge case, and I’m bringing the denim bag Lou lovingly made for me, and my accordion.

“And so from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, and then from hour to hour we rot and rot”.

I’m the oldest in the AYLI company and I’m definitely in the second section of that particular aphorism that my character finds surprisingly funny. Impermanence and rot. Teeth. Eyes. Taste. Everything. It’s all going in the end. And it seems for many of the company, the list is starting to get underway.

“I think I’ve chipped my tooth at the front,” Joanna said in check-in, while I explored the calamity of a shattered molar I got from biting into nothing more than a biscuit about two weeks ago. “I can’t stop running my tongue around it”. I know the feeling and assure her it’s natural. I remember though the first time I had a tooth properly split, right at the back, and I couldn’t swallow. It was scary. I was lucky with this one though. Prevention before it forced my hand.

“The tooth is split and it’s infected. Needs to come out right away. I’m surprised you aren’t in pain yet but you will be.” Damn. I partly hoped it would just be a check-up and a band aid and can deal with it when I’m back home. But nay. He’s got the needle in my gum five minutes after the x-ray, and I’m listening to little crunching sounds and my best biting tooth tries and fails to cling on. I didn’t ask to keep it. Horrible fucking thing.

I told the AYLI WhatsApp group. Benjy is having repairs done on his front teeth, he took some damage to old damage. Sam is off to the dentist tomorrow… “True I have lost my teeth in your service,” my character Adam says. Sam will be fine though, he’s still on the ripening part of his strange eventful pilgrimage. Bunch of crumbling Shakespeareans coming over to make a play about love. At least I’m on the “mortality” character.

We have all been too busy since rehearsal started to put time aside for the dentist. We all know this is the longest gap between showings we will have. So we are all getting our notoriously bad British mouths ready for America.

I feel fine, a bit shaky but it feels like it has clotted ok. Will sleep carefully tonight if I can, and Brian bought me yoghurt and ibuprofen. I nearly took one of my tramadol but they are over a decade old, off one of the chefs at the open golf tournament. I think I’ll bin them.

It seems my dreams are waking me at about 4 these days. This is really impractical cos it’s the wrong way round to make the jetlag easy heading over. My ideal situation for the next few days is to stay up until about 3am and then sleep until noon.

Turns out my body has other ideas.

We packed up the show case today. The whole show is in Bergman. I drove it back to Chelsea and it was pouring with rain. I got up to my flat and at about 5pm with absolutely no choice in the matter I fell asleep with the blanket on next to Misty and the two of us lay in sweet sweet slumber for a deep two hours. I woke up at 2:30pm Indiana time.

Thankfully I don’t have to buy boots. Brian went on a bootpurchasing spree about a year ago. I didn’t know until today that we are the same shoe size. He doesn’t want his Timberlands. I do. They aren’t walking boots like I normally have, they haven’t the easy lacing hooks and they need to be undone to get your foot in so they’ve nicked a good hour or so of my life in accumulated faff if I have them for as long as I normally have boots. But they’re a gift. I’ll trade an hour for the cost of those boots this time. I’m sure I’ve traded much more time for short term highs in my early thirties.

So now there’s nothing between me and America but time and the Atlantic ocean. I’m gonna deliberately stay up late tonight. I always try to begin to function towards the jet lag when I’m anticipating a long haul. The less time spent in bed in interesting places the more time you have to find the interest. My power nap might turn out to have been a help towards getting me onto US time.

That said I am FULL of cheese. All the Christmas hard cheeses and half a pack of raclette cheese just went into an absolute beast of a macaroni for the household. It might make me sleepy but since it is my interaction with Dreamland that is currently bashing my sleep patterns, an early cheesy night will only bring complicated stories. I dream semi lucid much of the time, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t bonkers dreams. And right now I’m playing multiple characters. A lovelorn shepherd boy, a vital old man on his last legs, a sadistic majordomo that hates his boss, a depressed pompous old louche (get that for free sure), the God of Marriage, a banished lord and a local pop star. All their journeys and needs are conflicting at the moment. It’s enough to play and honour one part with this writing. This is why I love absolutely love the work we do with AFTLS. The shows always please me so much, they are like little tight eggs of passion and control and technique. They’re actor’s shows and I’m an actor so yeah, I love to see the solutions and the connections and the things that happen that are true that could never happen without the problem of making it with a 24 kilo suitcase and 5 people.

Ahhh wonders. I’m home.

I woke at about half 3 and that was it for sleep. Busted out of a dream into full wakefulness. By 5 I had totally given up and I was reading As You Like It. I beat through all my verse. Found an Alexandrine I had missed. Found a useful storytelling pause. Found a moment where Jacques tries to pull everyone into prose and jar things into a different energy as is his job. Early morning good. It was time well spent. But I’m fucked now.

Went into Brixton by overground from Victoria. The streets of Brixton are always madness. The narrative that London is somehow dangerous seems utterly egregious and unfamiliar to the place I’m living in. Yeah sure I live in Chelsea. But I’m an actor. I’m going to the interesting places. Brixton has always had vibrant shouty multicoloured streetlife. There’s no more threat now than there was when I was a teenager going to gigs in pubs. I would be considerably more concerned about going to a country where there’s an active militia of untrained murderous goons with guns. Just as well I’m going somewhere perfectly safe instead, eh? Eh?

We had our sharing today. Some gorgeous people with us, to watch and share thoughts. This thing we have made – it works. And we care about it. And we are all really pulling in the same direction for it. This strange unusual pastoral play, a serious of vignettes on love bound together into a mad tale of a court lost in a dark forest of love.

I wish we had it longer. Such a short tour and this group is joyful to the point it makes my heart feel full to bursting. We have an official scribe in Grace. I avoided that role because the daily drive of this strange thing I feed you – it cannot and will not guarantee quality. Days like today I have only the contents of my head and the last few hours left. Other days I have too much time and too much whimsy.

I went to a show. Brian sorted tickets for the household. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I bought a Don’t Panic T-Shirt. It’s an immersive show with actors who aren’t shouting at you blind, so it might be unfamiliar to Secret Cinema aficionados. I think they’re probably being paid in more than carpet-mites. It’s a karaoke musical experience inspired by the Douglas Adams books, with some very deft and moving moments, with exceptionally clever and present immersive performers thank god and in the world of the Douglas Adams. Some Shunt influences. Some Gatsby influences. But these things are inevitable. It was a unique and delightful experience, I didn’t feel part of a conveyor belt, and the actors weren’t dead in the eyes when they spoke to me. Perhaps they’re being paid properly. It was all held together with smart writing. Different stations occasionally. Some performers wasted. Some ideas given more production space than they warranted in the execution. But I think they are still refining what’s possible. I like them. And I like the game they have made. Hopefully it’ll run a good while. I would go again if I was with a friend who was a fan.

I am gonna sleep like a log.