AlBarclay

I’m glad that tonight is my last night in a tent on a mattress that deflates gradually beneath me. I’m using a rolled up death cloak as a pillow. My neck feels like wood and I am over the whole experience of waking up at dawn and having to walk across a field to have a pee. There are kids next door so I can’t go al fresco.

My Vango Icarus 500 tent has been a wonderful home again, I would always want one of them as a festival tent. I needed to buy a load of heavy duty tent pegs because it is a barrel vault so it is basically just held up by the ropes, and the ones you get aren’t great. At Wilderness one year there was a guy who kept deliberately tripping over one of the crucial ropes, and that causes collapse, but so long as you can stake out a region around it and hammer in big pegs it’s a mansion. Trippy Wilderness guy was a grade A tool: “You shouldn’t have it coming so far out !” “It’s how the tent works you goitre!”

I walked away from one talk today cos he was blithering on. Watched a brilliant and inspiring talk by Lucy Shepherd about going to wild places. Listened to a very clever thing about Pompeii. Welcomed a load of people as Marc Antony. Threw an axe. Got bored of a chariot burial cos I couldn’t see it. Got hot. Got cold. Had a non alcoholic beer in the beer tent. Ate a currywurst. Walked a lot.

Beautiful big skies tonight over the campsite and it is getting a little cold now so I’ll probably scrub myself off in the showers and go to my unreliable bed. Late night showers are always the key at festivals. If you go in the morning you’ll be queueing for hours.

I’m feeling like I’ve got my festival done now. Tomorrow morning I’ll pack up my tent before we do the show so we can get the hell out ASAP once we’ve packed everything down.

An interesting festival. I think I missed more than I caught this year of the stuff that is a curiosity to me. There’s a bit too much war. History is culture as well. I like the prehistoric area, and the bits where someone in a smock is chopping something for half an hour while talking in monotone.

Tomorrow we will do a lovely Macbeth, cue-scripted once more but with the advantage of having done it once as a company. That’ll be a joy, as I really like this hastily cobbled together band of rogues and vagabonds. Hopefully it’ll come over well. The people that get it get it – immediacy is invigorating, particularly combined with craft.

Time to get my head down so I remember what I’m supposed to be saying tomorrow.

Still in the geeky embrace of Chalke. They’ve made more use of us this year, queue busting as well as the two shows, which makes it harder to just enjoy the talks. I missed the only one I wanted to see today – about Hannibal and Carthage. But many of the ones I didn’t think I would be interested in gave me some joy. I caught one about Bog bodies. Inevitably went to one about Shakespeare where various members of the company were interjecting with corrections of various points of history. We are a bunch of lovely nerds.

My favourite surprise hit talk so far was Doctor Crippen yesterday just as I hadn’t ever thought that story could be interesting. The speaker made it very alive. She’s just written a book about it and her frame on it and passion for it was contagious.

There’s a big old Waterstones tent here because everyone here is flogging their latest book and there are signings after many of the talks. I’m walking around with my kindle most of the day when I’m not listening to people talk. In between little bits of acting there’s time to wind down when it isn’t boiling. And last night there was a great big lightning storm so it isn’t quite as sweltering now. Last year I bought a book after a talk knowing Lou would like it. This year nothing has hit me so much but I’ve been working more so less able to sink into thinking.

I just got called boring cos I’ve gone to my tent. Affectionately but I still heard it and imwardly smiled. I don’t need to be hammering myself and I don’t feel much social pressure to do so now its been a good month off the old forgettyjuice. And a nice read and a good sleep makes me happier than watching people drink in the dark. I was going to bed early at Soul Revolution too. I’m tucked up in my sleeping bag again as the summer chafers slam into my tent. And the air in the tent is almost cold for a change. I think I’ll sleep better.

It’s crowded now. Must have been a couple of thousand people here at peak but only a few are camping. I’ve been here long enough and it’s been sweaty enough that I even washed some shirts for myself which will probably airdry before I wake up. I’m starting to miss things like Lou and bed and mobile phone reception and cats. I’m hoping this will post. I’ll just hit schedule and let the wheel spin…

It’s half nine at night. I’m in my tent. I just had a shower and I’m already sweating again. If I leave the tent open for a breeze it’ll be full of summer cockchafers (amphimallon solstitiale) in no time. (Glad I’m here, some people thought they were bees and were freaking out). The next two hours are theirs. I can already hear the people in the tents next to me swearing about them. They land on your face, in your hair, in your food. Totally harmless, but big and loud. Their dance of sex and death is short but intense and they are well named as they’ll be gone soon but for now I can hear them crashing into my tent all around me. Smaller than the Maybugs, but very much the same deal. Low level buzzing. Humans are interesting warm moving trees on which a flash of life might be possible before this inevitable ruin. Thousands of them.

Down in the festival, much the same. People mill about, stopping and starting, making strange buzzing noises. Some are working very very hard. A friend of my brother Max walks tall and slow, dressed in a fur headdress with teeth dangling over her face, a replica of a 6000 year old burial. She greets everyone. She works so hard in this sweltering heat simply because she cares about her subject. Calm and measured. She must be absolutely boiling. She was here last year as well.

We jumped in and did a snippet of Brutus and Antony’s funeral oration to a very loud crowd before a speech about Schtrumpf. Demagoguery before demagogue. Although Antony, in my feeling, genuinely loved and respected Caesar whereas some modern demagogues wouldn’t know how to do either. It’s always a pleasure to speak those words, but I snipped it right down as my voice would have run ragged in there unmiked. I think some people thought it was some kind of protest and deliberately raised their volume. I wasn’t about to howl, means I can keep my powder dry for some of the more detailed work until there’s a room where detail will land. It was still well appreciated, but in this heat in Elizabethan costume, just no to pages and pages of text.

I’m tired now though. My mattress slowly deflates overnight. Takes a few hours. By the time I’m on the ground my tent is an oven anyway. Hence the early bed. If I’m asleep at half ten I’ll get almost seven hours in.

Hot hot hot. Hurrah. Sweaty but I’m happy to have no possibility of being cold for a while. I made my choice. 🔥

“Banquet” is a little optimistic for the meal I just had. £42 for a duck leg and some sponge cake. I booked it in advance dreaming of gourmandisation. It wasn’t terrible, nor was it worth £42. But sometimes you roll the dice and win. And sometimes you get a bit of dry duck and school potatoes.

Thankfully the company at the table was diverting. Local people, similar age to me, very keen theatregoers. Mum would have been friends with them, but would have randomly chosen one of them to secretly disdain. I reckon I got lucky. They were very good at small talk. My table neighbour has a group that meets regularly and does Shakespeare on zoom. Delightful. They did Maccers recently. “Are you being paid to be here?” “I wouldn’t be here otherwise”. ‘Have you ever worked at Chichester Festival Theatre?” “No, to my chagrin I’ve never auditioned for it. But I went with my mother to see Art there many years ago. I’d love to work there. What have you seen there recently that you’d recommend?”

Gatekeepers, gatekeepers, gatekeepers, everywhere. I don’t actually know who casts for Chichester. Might be worth a letter. You never know what’s round the corner. It feels like, despite my occasional moaning, every day I deepen my connection with my work and my industry, and the things come when they come. I’d love to do some regional theatre. It was delightful being in Stratford. You experience the country from a different perspective.

Once again some lovely jobby meetings are outstanding so it definitely isn’t all doom and gloom. My agent is wonderful still, God Bless her and all who sail in her. And I’m continuing to draw lines across and make friends across this bananas profession I’ve made my home in.

Today I woke up and ran lines from Marc Antony in the yoga tent over a coffee. Then I drove to the parking lot of the local pub and sat there with the air con blasting out in order to zoom a rehearsal to London. This is the Meisner group that I’ve found, that has found me. I feel very held and happy in the group after just a week. It’s hard work but it’s good work. I’m a lucky boy and I need to stop moaning.

So I sat in the cold car in the car park and worked with the Meisner people for most of my working day. I skipped my lunch ahead of that dry duck leg dammit. Loved the rehearsal and zoom is not my friend.

Got back on site at about 5pm and I had forgotten how hot the world is after the air con in my car. I went and threw some Romanesque flashes over my clothes, ate my expensive supper, and went to help out with the guys who were doing the first scene of Julius Caesar to the waiting audience before Mary Beard’s talk. I was mostly flyering for our Macbeth on Sunday. “You liked that Shakespeare? Guys we got more Shakespeares for ya! We got as much Shakespeare as you could want. Ghosts? Blood? Iambs? We got the lot, kid. And great big wooden swords.”

Mary Beard is talking about the ancient world. “They didn’t know what they looked like”. She’s not as well attended as I thought she would be so I came and sat at the back. “Can you imagine what it would be like to be a human being who didn’t recognise themself?”

Having been in a zoom meeting all day I find it strange to contemplate, as zoom tends to like to serve us ourselves. What changed when we all started to know what we look like?

Who knows? But I’m gonna stop writing and plug in closer to what this pleasant and thoughtful lady has to say to us. I’ve had many friends over the years like Mary. Brilliantly clever ladies who give very few fucks. The world needs as many of them as possible.

“Well that was fucking pointless,” says the woman in the cubicle next to me as we emerge from our showers. I’ve never before been disappointed to discover that a festival shower was warm. But this is what we are up against today.

Inside a tent in this heat we all tried to top and tail the entrances and exits of Macbeth without letting the heat make us fractious. It didn’t really work. We all got pretty hot and bothered.

In about twenty minutes I’ll go and put on thick woolen clothes and tights and boots and all of it. Even a hat. Maybe some armour. Then I’ll try and remember Banquo and Old Seward and an apparition. And then I’ll drive to London and sleep on my own sofa.

Right now though I moved Bergie to a better place for a swift exit, and I’m sitting in him with the engine running and the air con blasting on full because it is the only way I’ll ever get less hot. I love it, this blistering heat. The world is dying because of people like me putting the aircon on. We put the aircon on because the world is dying. Sure we could sort it out still and we would if it was more profitable than killing it. But it isn’t yet. So it’s still Choose Death for now and all the bought people will try and say “but it was hot in the summer of ’76!” and use that as an excuse for inaction. At least I know it’s hypocritical of me to be sitting here with the aircon on. Oh but it’s nice.

—

I’m out of it. Back in the relentless heat. My fresh clothes are already pretty wet and I only showered half an hour ago. The water in my flask is hot hot hot so I bought some Vimto from the coffee concession as its been iced. Now I’m gonna have to stop writing and do this show in my hot hot costume. Also my phone screen is too sticky for me to swipe.

—

Wow. That was a sweaty business. It really was. We all felt it. Hard graft, Shakespeare in this heat. Neither Banquo and Macbeth wore their armour to war. Nor did old Seward. He was just in a George’s Cross Tabard. And I wore my T-shirt under it all as I’ve learnt about sweat now. We won. And there were some wonderful moments that could never be replicated, which is what I’m here for in the end.

And at the end of the show there was a voicenote.

Bergie was primed! Right outside the exit, pointing away, full of fuel. My shoes on the passenger seat to change into. I had it all worked out. But owing to possible illness and this mad heatwave, the rehearsal has shifted onto zoom. So I’m likely gonna drive off site and find a peaceful place with good mobile phone reception where I can be on zoom in and around my car and show up without having to drive seven hours. I was up for it, I’m always up for it. But never look a gift horse in the mouth. I get to stay in Salisbury.

So I’m in my tent, it’s barely midnight, someone is snoring nearby. The shuffles and grunts of people windinh down are audible. I’m on my air mattress which will slowly deflate overnight but it’ll get me through. I lent my better one to a couple in the company. And I can stay here and plug into the Antony and Cleopatra stuff we’ve got going instead.

Summer plus. It seems every time it gets properly hot this year I sleep in a tent and mostly live outdoors. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s just gone eleven pm. I’m up at the top of a hill in Chalke, exactly where we camped last year. It’s gonna be another heatwave in a tent but first I’ve got this little patch of brainflood to negotiate.

I have a strong feeling that, with the week I’ve had, Banquo is gonna have his emotions pretty close to the surface. They’re often doing that anyway. But good lord. My eyes still feel a little teary now. I had to rebalance with a tuning fork before driving over here.

I’m finding this Meisner room in the cracked black box an incredible room to be part of. It’s a great reckoning in a little room. I’m being made very welcome in there while shadow exploring a person who goes to some pretty dark places. There’s nothing like feeling safe enough to go to that dark with truth. Today I did some pretty fucked up things and then got killed and surprised myself in my own ending. It’s hard to fully encounter even half of what comes in this work with these people – they’re steeped in it and brave every one of them. I’ve always been curious about the work – Abigail drove us up some twenty years ago to see some of them do Three Sisters in the Scottish Borders. That was a friendship gesture but also a curiosity. I’m sure I would have looked into it further had it not involved spending money.

I’m hoping the lines will hold in my brain tomorrow. I’m hoping I’ll be fresh enough to drive back after the show. If I leave at ten I should be in bed by 2 which will give me 6 hours sleep. Then another day of shadow and then one more long drive and I get to languish in the sunshine for a few days and listen to clever people telling me things and be free of obligation until Sunday afternoon.

Bed in my tent. Hungry, as I didn’t think to get dinner and there’s nowt on site at this time. But I’ll sleep like a baby very soon and honestly I’m calm enough and like the cue script work enough that I’m really thinking of tomorrow as just a lovely opportunity to be really live and really listen.

But a good night’s sleep would help. I forgot a pillow so I’m resting my head on a death cape. Today has involved a lot of my death. Hopefully that’s it for a while.

It’s peaceful here and not freezing. I can hear quiet chatter from nearby but nothing that’ll keep me up. A generator down the hill but far enough away that I can tune it out. My lovely old big festival tent, still going. I bought it in 2013. Should’ve brought a pillow, it’s such a luxury parking next to the tent.

Right. I’m home. It’s solstice! And I have to go to bed before ten. It’ll still be light.

Last night I got pulled from deep sleep at half 1 because there’s someone staying at mine and she couldn’t work out how to open the door with the key.

Today was very much not an ordinary Sunday. We were back in the scratched black box, the six of us and a very lovely dog.

The Meisner stuff is growing on me as I start to internalise what its for. My initial concern was that we were going into “rinse your own life and beat the shit out of yourself in the process” territory, but actually it is about safely creating genuine experiences that you can subsequently channel. They put me through my paces today after going easy on me yesterday, and I was looking forward to that in my masochistic way. I like these guys so I’m happy to go there with them. So I opened a few doors. Lots of crying and rage, creepiness and manipulation. All the best bits. It’s like shadow work.

I’ve got to play Banquo on Tuesday though. I really hope the lines are in there somewhere because this overlapping week is a category-A headfuck. The two projects couldn’t be more different. Tomorrow I’ll wake up and record a tape in a third world, a telly world. Then I’ll drive across town and dig into the dark bits of my psyche with some really connected and exciting actors. Then I’ll drive three and a half hours, put up a tent, fall asleep in it, wake up and before long I’ll be running around in tights remembering verse with a very different bunch of delightful committed clever actors. Then I’ll probably have to drive back to London Tuesday night so I can dig in again on Wednesday before driving back to Salisbury. It could have been more inconvenient perhaps. But there’s a joy in having made it all work. I love this stuff, the variety, the exploration. I’ve been pretty wobbly this summer but this is a reminder of the sheer joy I can find in the communities and the crafty bits and the difficult things. My middle class guilt means I’m always more fulfilled when it feels like hard work.

I’m gonna turn in. Kinda wanna sleep naked in this heat but our guest is a young woman and my prostate is a cannon ball. At least she’s home tonight and not going out so I won’t get pulled out of dreamland by frantic late night knocking. I need to be tip top for the next few days.

Off to the Meisner rehearsal room. It’s a black box, but surprisingly one I wasn’t aware of. Very near the old Arcola. It looks like it has been flooded, possibly squatted too. Round the back of a building and down some stairs and this subterranean space but it’s all you need. You can get stuff made in a black box.

I wasn’t sure what to expect today, I had a sense of the ladies having met them all but the gentlemen were people I had observed but never really communicated with. What are they like in their work? Pretty generous and free, thankfully.

The director was being kind to me today by not throwing me in at the deep end. I largely got to hear and watch them work, long form physical and emotional exercises designed to build connection and truthful experience with the text so as to help create experiences that can be genuinely remembered and tapped into when, at the end of a long strange road, you find yourself in that place where the lights are shining and someone has miked you up and you’re looking at another actor and your job is to say the things written in the book after the things written before them. I can see how this work will quickly build a foundation that can be accessed without cost. It’s a way of working that I’ve rarely been lucky enough to encounter in the main industry. Process driven work often gets sidelined by people worrying about deadlines. “Let’s go in over the weekend to block this properly, we’ve never had any direction,” said the leading actor in a process show I did about ten years ago, and I couldn’t bear that anyone could so completely miss the point. But we’re all scared of being found out. Some people respond to that by wanting to be told what to do, so they can blame the director if they’re shit. I’m not in it to look good – (although it feels nice when you do). I will hit my marks if needed, do as I’m told if asked, but generally I’m happy not to know exactly what’s gonna happen until it happens. I think I’m going to enjoy this process.

Tidying my room again today, and I’ve thrown away loads of stuff but somehow it feels like there is still the same amount of stuff. I think I’ll need a few more passes before I get close to having a clear space around me but progress is progress. I’m all hoovered, blown through the cobwebs, and the bath is running. Hard to believe this is a weekend. Back to Meisner tomorrow…

Brian and Maddy have gone up north. Tonight I’m home alone. I’ll start a new job tomorrow and got someone staying tomorrow night but tonight I can finally explode. My room got too full of things that need to be laundered and sorted out. When they’re home I don’t want them to be wading through piles of clothes waiting for washing, fighting through jungles of drying sheets, stumbling over mountains of bags with things for charity. I have a moment to express myself through the medium of tidying. I need to clean my launchpad. How can I expect things to flow, professionally, how I want them to flow if every day I wake up in a pile of old clothes and dusty books? How can I be the tiptop physical version of myself that I am sober to get back to if I can’t find a clean pair of pants in the morning? Sure I have no end of available frock coats or pinstripes or suits. The costume side of living in this world is fine. But day to day clothes are a lottery. I think I’ll do a baby Marie Kondo…

Kirti invigilates at Imperial with me and she is very much not a potato like some of them. She never worked a day until her husband died but she’s working now and I really love working with her but she made me throw away my jumper a while ago. “The money gets out through the holes,” she told me. I reminded her of it today and: “the same thing happens with your socks,” she told me and my sock drawer is an absolute chaos of ruined socks. My toes are baby soft but the nails are often talons, and my heels are made of sandpaper.

So this is my Friday night. Running the washing machine ragged and cooking a curry. Then once everything is dry I’ll shinto my underwear, although that’ll have to fit around rehearsals and lines. I’ve had too many projects, happily, while I moan about the fact that the sexiest looking jobs keep going to some other old fucker.

It is sweaty in London. The barometer just dropped an inch towards rain. This afternoon was lovely though. I took my lunch into Brompton Cemetery, dropped a couple of crisps and ended up with an army of crows behind me.

It’s a gorgeous walking place in my borough. I only just realised how easy it is to walk to from one of the common exam venues for Imperial…

Cymbeline not Hamlet. It was Hamlet once. Now it is Cymbeline. But at Dulwich Hamlet. At Dulwich, Cymbeline. At Dulwich Hamlet, Cymbeline.

Dulwich Hamlet is a football club. It’s nice seeing the word “Hamlet” everywhere. They very generously and trustingly let us into their grounds with Cymbeline instead, in many ways that spiritual successor to Hamlet. We are in a run of weekly shows WE ARE IN A RUN OF WEEKLY SHOWS. It is fucking glorious, as we edge towards solstice, to have twenty people get together and do random shit with attempted rigour and as much nonsense as we eat.

The more we do it the more we will start to properly understand the game and how to play it best. Right now we are mostly winning but there are plenty of misplays and missed plays. We need to train better together and on our own. We need to be paying attention to the squad more closely and knowing when to play and when to just keep our eye on the ball. People flow in and out all the time. Most of the shows I’ve been to I’ve ended up playing unfamiliar parts in some way so have not yet experienced a Cymbeline without a base level of white noise. There’s always the constant shift of “what’s the offer now” but I would like that not to be running alongside “what’s my cue?” and “what’s my line?” I’d like a clear head finally. I think I’ll get that in two weeks at Bold, when I’m likely only playing parts I’ve played already.

My level of brainflood came through most strongly when I found myself saying “things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” instead of “some falls are means the happier to arise”. The former is from Macbeth and definitely not Caius’ line. Fits the rhythm and the sentiment though. Oops.

Next week we’ve got a champion of improv who doesn’t know the show improvising the part of Cloten which is gonna be a hell of an obstruction and potentially genuinely joyful and I’m sad I’ll miss it but next week is crazy busy for me, I’ll be at Chalke and rehearsing in London too so pinging up and down the whole time.

I’m glad this show is out of the way to be honest. I need to look at Banquo for Tuesday and Awaken for rehearsals starting Saturday. Good to be busy, sure, and I’ve had a lovely audition come in once again for me to try not to get too excited about. I’ll have to fit that in on Sunday night or early Monday morning.

Fun?! And now I’m gonna wash / lie in warm water for half an hour. Bed is calling. I’m gonna change my sheets.