AlBarclay

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.

Much better today.

We are in rehearsal for As You Like It. Coming to the end of the process. Tomorrow we will play to an audience of friends who have done this work before. Some of them will have played the parts we are playing on this very job. They will give notes. Some of them are “when I gave my Hamlet, I made this choice etc”. Others are “Do you really think that The Scottish King would wear Green?” But a few are like : “Why are you making it harder for yourself unnecessarily in X moment.” For that reason, it is golden.

This is quite a precious process. We have made this thing, the five of us, in isolation. But this thing we have made is for public consumption. So now we have to move from the realm of ideas into practical reality. It will always be a jolt. But we are ready for it.

Sure I’m still paraphrasing bits of prose. I know that will be happening at this stage. My mind is on staging right now and physical choices. The words are the liquid. They come easy so I’m pushing them down the priority list. But tomorrow I’ll have to bump them up a bit. “Are you not aware of the rhythm of that line?” I don’t want that note. So I’ll have to be aware of that shit tomorrow…

Tomorrow is basically the big high pressure day. After tomorrow it all gets easier. But until tomorrow… Aargh

I had a long chat with someone close to me just now. Didn’t bring that in. It’s tough for her right now.

It was good to hear her issues so I could forget about the fact I’m nervous about tomorrow. I tried to offer decent advice. It’s hard though without full context, but it feels from the outside like her direct boss is dealing with past trauma that causes him to mistrust and cut out his deputy. Likely he had a deputy screw him over on a past job. Shitty for her though who is just trying to be her best self and getting stuff back from him that reads as classic clear bullying even if she isn’t reading it like that. She is full of positivity towards this guy, trying to find reasons, looking for ways in which she might have escalated it… I just want to pick him up by his ankles.

I have only ever once in my life experienced stuff like that. It’s impossible from the inside when it happens, I know that. It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my superior’s fault. It was a clash of worldviews. But I could never have sat my boss down and said “You’re constantly treating me like absolute shit needlessly and making everything harder for all of us in the process.” They were my boss. They pay the bills. And occasionally they take half my wage from jobs they have nothing to do with.

But yeah, when someone above you is being a dick and you know you’re in the right, the best thing is to just walk. But if you’re in a vocational job it’s harder.

There’s surely a way to solve it… But I think of my example from my life and I know there’s no way on God’s green earth I’ll ever do another live event if they are my direct superior. I can’t be fucked to be someone’s whipping boy.

I really hope this works out… She ain’t a drinker so the social stuff is less available to her. She’s not judging anyone but it’s telling how much work happens in the pub when it comes to allaying people’s insecurity.

Fraught day today. We’ve got a new lovely person in the room who is known by some but not by all, so the three of us who don’t know her feel slightly on the back foot suddenly as there are preexisting relationships. That’s worth me remembering for when we get to America, as I know and like Scott and Debs and Peter and Grant and many of the people at Notre Dame and Austin. The dynamic between the five of us is precious, and it is important to hold onto that and be sensitive to when people might feel uncomfortable or back footed. The guys dealt with it beautifully but I had my first “moment” almost immediately after the stranger was in the room. I had made a decision to keep being my playful experimental self despite the sudden pressure of the stranger. I got a hard “no” about something I was playing with. It made it look like that was something that keeps happening, and I honestly felt completely isolated for a moment. The group came together quickly, but all my insecurities jumped to the front.

We only have a few days left. This will be a good show, but I want it to be brilliant. And if that involves me noodling up to the wire with things like extendable magic wands then dammit I’m gonna noodle. Annoyingly Benjy fiddled with it when it was primed during check-in and it extended into Grace so now everyone is nervous about it even when it’s fully extended, like… rather than bringing something lovely fun and appropriate into the room I’ve brought in something dangerous and problematic. I saw people flinching around it while out, so I thought that perhaps overusing it might make them less uncomfortable, so … I overused it looking for the right moment to fire it and I ended up having it randomly hard cut by someone who hadn’t seen what I was trying to do with it, before I was able to properly explore it, because Benjy had pushed the button in check-in. Circumstances. It’s annoying. But… we have to make space for this sort of thing. It’s just us on the road. The dynamic is the most important. If someone is scared of spiders we don’t have spider props. insha’Allah. We couldn’t eat peanuts on Twelfth Night. Jono loves Reeses pieces and was mortified. I backed up Katherine.

I’m not gonna drop it yet as nobody is allergic to magic wands. The wand will come with me to America in my personal luggage. It isn’t that it isn’t right, but… my way of just trying things first and discussing them later often results in hard barriers. I should have learnt that by now. (I’m the only one extending my trip. Adventure is not in everybody’s blood.)

I am now gonna have to have a day or two of being doggedly reliable so people can see that’s a part of my jam. Because it is. But only so people relax around me enough that I can try to make magic again.

Sure it might be wrong for the right reasons, I haven’t finished exploring it and couldn’t with our new sixth person. All potential magic is potentially magical, kids.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow as much as I have looked forward to all previous days. The dynamic has shifted. I’m hoping it’ll be fine … but this has been really precious and suddenly there are alliances.

Best get to bed so I can be solid tomorrow.

In light of recent events, we at the “Correct Naming for Religions Society” have made a decision that will largely only effect our cousins across the pond, but some people here in the UK as well and globally to a lesser extent.

There is a faith system called “Christianity” built around the teachings of one Jesus Christ, a Nazarene carpenter’s son and also perhaps a divine immaculate conception. He lived an exemplary life, and his teachings were remarkable. Exactly what one might expect from a divinity undergoing a human lifetime. The trinity locked part of itself into human suffering to understand, goes one of the versions of the narrative. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. To understand and redeem flawed humanity, and even, at the hardest part, to cut itself off from itself, abandon itself to loneliness. So God would experience human death, before of course, resurrection because God is eternal. “My God my God why have you forsaken me?” Jesus, on the cross, suddenly cut off from his own divinity. Fully human, so he could experience mortal suffering and death and commence the harrowing of hell. Oh and perhaps teleport to the future and hang out with some guy in Utah with bling plates if that’s your jam.

It’s a huge story. It’s a remarkable faith. And the teachings of Jesus are excellent and kind and human. Of course they are if you believe he’s the divine made flesh, but even if you just live by his tenets he’s got good ones. We need to spell out these things. We have made civilisation up, we have invented morality, some people are only gonna be nice if they believe in consequences for not being nice. It is useful to spread these messages.

“Blessed are the peacemakers”. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?”

So yeah, we need a local rebrand, don’t we. All this Christ stuff doesn’t wash with the majority of people in the world’s newest dictatorship and their growing horde of toadies over here. But they are using the phrase “Christianity” to justify much of their division and hatred and ridiculous thinking.

We at the CRNS have therefore rebranded what they assign their faith to. Instead of calling it “Christianity” we are calling it simply “Ianity” This effectively removes the problem of lovely kind caring Jesus Christ from this faith structure that is merely being used as a bludgeon and an excuse to divide and hate.

“Ian” is the focus of this new version of faith. Praise be to Ian. The people attaching themselves to it will doubtless be thrilled not to have to be associated with such a woke liberal figure as Jesus.

We are currently taking suggestions as to what form exactly this new “Ian” takes. Ianity (not to be mistaken for inanity) is a faith that believes deeply in following the tenets of Ian which we are currently establishing. We might attach it to a famous Ian past or present, but for now it is just Ianity while we effect the transfer.

Just so you are current with our thinking, we at CRNS currently think of Ian as a middle aged or elderly white male. LO, he is frightened of being replaced but painfully aware of his own irrelevance. It comes to pass that he wants things to be great again like when he was young and he didn’t have to work to get food cos mummy and daddy gave it to him. That sort of thing. Bring back I dunno whatever. Why can’t we all have meh meh meh meh? I remember when you could X without Y. Not like now when it’s all Z.

We need to flesh out exactly what the story and rules are with Ian, fill in the blanks in the doctrine etc … but:

We are Proud to announce Ianity.

Details aren’t really important in Ianity, it’s more about a feeling. If you’re an Ian, like Ian himself, behold! you hate and fear everyone who isn’t you, but you are justified in your hate and fear because yea they are not Ian. And if they happen to be called Ian then lo and behold they aren’t Ian enough for only Ian and your own stunted inner life be Ian enough for Ianity.

We at CRNS feel this separation of Ianity from Christianity will be a helpful distinction going forward. The well meaning and exemplary practitioners of Christianity then won’t get tangled up with all these horrible angry hateful morons who are currently muddying the name of a great world religion, pulling things out of ancient texts from the dawn of society and airing them like they are still relevant, justifying structures and opinions that lost relevance thousands of years ago. It is long past time to make this distinction.

Behold, Ian is a man of small critical thinking and much opinIAN. Thus, his followers are merely IANnocently following the tenets of their lord. It maketh so much sense. Taketh all the cognitive dissonance out from horrible horrible people self reflecting ideas of their own righteousness while behaving atrociously.

If you hear “Christian values” from an Ianity follower spewing divisIAN and vitrIANol, you can correct them – “No no, you mean Ian values.” And then it all makes sense again. They are just being a total fuckwit in order to be like their Messiah, Ian. Praise be to Ian.

At CRNS we are currently drawing up a better profile of exactly who this Ian was/is and what the rules are. Like are we allowed to draw pictures of Ian? Do Ianists have to wear special hats? Can an Ianist marry a Christian? So much to hammer out. Is he alive? But these things can take hundreds of years. Watch this space.

Once we know if there will be consequences for doing so we will try to release an official picture of Ian – but only if we learn that Ian is okay with pictures. Some Prophets can get really weird about Instagram etc. There are some with massive no photo deals and break them at your peril. Ian is new but he isn’t modern. He’s grounded in a romantic past that never existed.

We are excited to see how this new distinction helps understanding of nuance regarding global religions. We know that Christians who understand and care about the teachings of Christ will be relieved and happy for the separatIAN.

It isn’t 6pm on a Saturday night in London. I’m in bed already and honestly I’m fine with this decision. Both the cats jumped up with me partly because it’s unusual and partly because they know it is likely the electric blanket is gonna go on and they will get some stroking.

On arrival home I was presented with sweetcorn and courgette fritters and dahl. Brian has got a Planthood. Very good tasty easy healthy food. I only get one full day off this week so I’m trying to use this evening like a whole day of relaxation. I ate the lot, drank a mango lassi and decided to go to bed.

I could go next door and watch a movie with Brian and be sociable. That would involve getting out of bed. I don’t think I will. He’s watching Star Wars. It might distract me …

I’ve been sad today. A suicide in my block over the Christmas period that I’ve only just become aware of. It’s hard not to wonder if it could have been shifted. It’s always a huge shock when someone does that even if you’ve only met them in a corridor from time to time. Still went to rehearsal and worked on this mighty play about love and the seasons and the passage of time and the circle of life.

This is a hard season, even if the light is coming back incrementally. We are past the artificial joy of Christmas but it is a long old slog to February and let’s be honest, no matter how hard I try to style out February as the beginning of Spring, it’s usually something of a shitshow.

So I’m gonna solve the rest of the day with a book, cat cuddles and an electric blanket.

What a lovely day in rehearsal land. We ended up running the whole damn thing and even though the wheels came off occasionally we solved this flipping show in a satisfying manner. We’ve been working very hard together to get to this stage. We’ve built this thing together, with Willie Shakes. Now we can start to breathe into it.

I love this discipline, building a show without director. I love working with directors too, but the more we can remember to be generative the more an outside eye has to work with. And anyway, we are all directors. When I put these shows on my spotlight I never know what to put in the “director” window. I usually put the name of one of the producers. But for this one I might put “The Company” because actually there’s space for that. If any director gets their back put up by the idea of a company without them, that’s their fragility. This work highlights how useful they are. The shows are always lovely and human and live but there are five directors so it is always a little unusual. I love them for that though. We are directed by each other, and the processed understanding of fifty years worth of theatre practitioners, going back to Murph Swander asking Patrick Stewart to bring some actors over to his university with a suitcase show and teach some workshops, around the year I was born.

One of our songs, Hymen, begins “Then is there mirth in heaven,” and I always hear “Then is there Murph in heaven”. The founder of the feast. We all get sent his notes, his version of Hamlet’s advice to the players. He still looks down on us as we solve these problems again and again.

The last few times they’ve sent As You Like It, shit went down. Lockdowns and so forth. We will be the first for a while. We want to do it justice. And we think we will.

Worrying though, going to a place as a visitor where there’s an active militia that seems to have no repercussions for murdering their own citizens. There are parts of Africa I would definitely avoid for that reason. I’m nervous about it in a way I’ve never been before. If there’s nothing to address the latest incident, I can honestly see the same guy shooting people in frog suits with live rounds. If this isn’t addressed quickly we are redefining the rule of law to suit our personal agendas. Which is generally not gonna be good for civilisation. This has to be addressed, or nobody is safe.

I guess the algorithm knows I’m off to America. I got sent a video of a woman being murdered this morning. A guy is deliberately near the front of her car that she is driving slowly away from him. He knows that he can take a pop at her and be protected if he pleads self defence. He takes the shots when he is already out of danger. He’s a man in a uniform. The thing she did wrong from his perspective was to not respect his fragile authority. She was never driving at him. She was ignoring him and knowing if she drove slowly enough away from him he would stop walking into her car to try and stop her.

How can we be expected to respect the authority of someone who does that sort of thing in a uniform? What world are we building? There are humans capable of writing in complete sentences who I have met in person who are already putting out posts to openly state that she was in the wrong and deserved it. I am very close to blocking them but we have to be able to see the “sane” face of madness. So I don’t block them. But because she was queer and clearly disapproved of the immigration militia in her area, there are people who can’t see past their opinion of that sort of thing.

If that is your tendency, watch the videos and take your personal politics out of it. If you can’t, do a pretend and pretend that the man in uniform with a gun is the silly baddie who is stupid and believes in all the baddie things, and the woman is the goodie protecting and enforcing the nice good things. Anything you can do to trick yourself into just… being able to watch objectively. If you’re still capable of such things. Surely you are? If not we are truly lost.

Because objectively it is a spontaneous opportunistic act of murder. And yes, ideology is wrapped up in it. Because the shooter surely is in the militia for personal ideological reasons. I could almost hear him think “I’m in contact with her car. I’ll show this liberal bitch what’s what. Pam Pam Pam” If a beast takes human prey, that beast is stopped. This guy has to be has to be has to be has to be taken off the job for good, banned from guns and ideally put in prison until he knows what the fuck he did.

The fact he took the shot is awful. The fact that ANYONE is now trying to say it wasn’t awful is almost impossible to comprehend. The fact that people in positions of great power and responsibility… I can’t, I just can’t. I’ve got to go there. La la la la la

We have a thing in the AYLI company now where if things get too hard to contemplate we find a nice photo of a tree or a sunset and we all go “ooh look it’s a lovely tree/sunset/tree in the sunset.” Isn’t it nice? This was taken in Edwardes Square in autumn by Lou. Ahh those happy summer days. Make England Spring Again. Happy tree. Happy tree. Happy tree.

When will this fever break?

A moment of distraction. A chance to see other people working.

Sam is staying in Clapham. I walked with him to his girlfriend’s place. It’s about two minutes from where we rehearsed Othello. From one big wooden floored hall to another. This town is full of them, but if you can’t be in one without complication you can’t make art. Then I walked on to Clapham Omnibus.

I was thinking today, as the five of us threw detail about, that we are unbelievably lucky to have the room we have. If you’ve got the space you can make the things. ’twas ever thus, but you can’t get space without money. If there is a large hall empty, anywhere, right now, and you have control over it, and you don’t mind people coming every working day in the week to build something, TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME. I’m SURE there are unused halls scattered over this country. I’ve been in them, belonging to friends of mine. When this is done all I want is to have a shot at making something bright with the people I already know who have their creativity stunted. It can’t happen easily without a room for it to happen in. God, the lack of space in this world… I wish I wish I wish I still had Eyreton… But maybe not in the Isle of Man.

We are making something we are proud of here, sure, and we are free to do it – because every moment doesn’t eat into our life. Yes we have a limited amount of time, but it’s always creative. We have a big space, an urn, and awesome people. I’m always excited to get into that room. I know I’m gonna be held but challenged.

I’m tired though. My back is playing up. My brain is foggy. Socially tonight I was anxious. I went to see a piece written by a friend from Scene and Heard, involving Minnie, read at Clapham Omnibus for development. It’s always a lovely thing to support. And there were people from my past and present who happened to be all there afterwards. Ellie and Min both hope to come to our only London show. Ellie and I met at 14. Really strong to connect with her again. And I met some nice people who care about theatre. This fucking world. It’s weird. It’s wonderful. It’s obtuse. It’s cruel.

I love it even if it is often an abusive relationship. I’m stuck in it. Onwards.

So, Machado has apparently said that she wants to share her Nobel Peace Prize with Donald Trump.

In 2009 Barrack Obama was given a Nobel Peace Prize. I doubt he was looking for it or expecting it.

Earlier this year on my Halloween tours, I would knowingly talk about Sir Henry Dale. Nobody knows who the hell he is but he was awarded a Nobel. “He won the Nobel competition in physiology,” I would say and then leave a momentary pause. I would hear the cognitive dissonance. “It’s not a competition. Ohhhhhh. Ha ha ha.” Cos suddenly there was someone very obviously trying to WIN the peace prize.

I am not happy with my sources on Machado saying this FYI. It might be just the usual internet noise. Even if it isn’t true, it helps me with some transitional thinking.

Growing up I consumed the idea that our leaders want the best for us. In early adulthood I started to learn, from the likes of our Willie Shakespeare, that perhaps the king is deeply human and deeply flawed. I never really examined it further even though I saw international racketeers rise and fall and rise and fall again.

I think I finally, in my middle age, can see the truth. That the lot of them are racketeers, the whole fucking thing is a massive racket, every single one of them is bent. Sure Putin. Some people make it obvious. But every single fucking one of them. If someone is building to leadership for optimistic human reasons they are attacked until they cannot stand anymore, and if they win somehow they are reputationally firebombed into extinction. The media is an arm of this, but we too are contributors because we get swept up in narratives designed to sweep us up. I’m even thinking back to people who defied the hierarchy from the top over here. One of them died for it, her son lives in exile, his wife is officially hated by all the organs of idiocy, with extra emphasis on her not being Aryan.

Right now there is no truth left. If you’re bent power you can say what you like and then just say it was AI. And hate is being normalised. So much self protection, ignorance and fear.

My tax bill leaves me broke again and having to work hard to stay here. My own fault for choosing a career outside the norm. But fuck I’ve worked hard this year, and so have we all, and here we are standing still while these people who haven’t a shred of human decency spend our money on their lifestyle.

I might have believed that the opposition to Maduro had integrity. The Nobel committee clearly did think so. They fucked up, if this news is true. Just another fucking noisemaker. Disappointing.

Ahhh yes phew. We all danced in a circle for a moment when the message came in that our US Visas were approved at last. We are going to America. Can start to frame it now, to think about packing etc.

Not that there’s much time to do all that. Messages on the WhatsApp group are all about luggage allowances at the moment. It’s gonna be cold in some states, warm in others. But this is not a standard tour. We have only got five weeks. Things are curtailed. There’s just no funding for stuff like this over there right now. Or anywhere. Last few times it was a ten week tour.

Still, off we go. Hooray.

I’m still loving the room and still knackered when I get out of it. I got home and had a hot bath. Early bed for sure. The cats aren’t on their usual food so they wake me up to have a moan about it. Misty was licking my beard at 5am today.

Brian and I hurled out Christmas. The tree was mostly desiccated. We hauled it down three flights and it is gone now. A coating of pine needles down the stairwell, but a mild allaying of the guilt of it since we were evidently not the first flat to do it. Twelfth Night innit. Our poor caretaker only just got out of hospital… We tried to pick up the worst of it.

I’ve been building up to this for a while so it is weird to think of the reality of things now. This will go so quickly this job and then I’ll be back in London and back on the train looking for work. Hopefully will be able to get into something quickly. The myth of momentum in this industry… But it is true that work breeds work.

I’m bodily tired though. My back is talking to me.. Longevity is important in this mad game and that comes with self care and prevention. I’m gonna go beddie byes until either Boo hunts my foot or Misty gives me stinky kisses.