AlBarclay

Oh man I’m knackered. What a lovely creative start though. The Arsie Annie intimacy coordinator type work definitely helps with a shorthand into trusting each other.

Start the process with a stagger through. Why not? Helps us identify the moments we don’t properly understand. Helps us look for the snags. Script is in hand this week and it is so clear that it needs to not be. We can’t work out of reading brain in this stuff. There’s too much to think about physically. Some interesting helpful decisions coming up already when all five of us are engaged together. The collective brain is always gonna be better than plans we made in the bedroom two weeks before we started rehearsal.

The afternoon was music but inevitably that fed character discussions and some scene work. I didn’t have my accordion but I really don’t like the one I have at the moment. Silly old thief, I hope he got more than it cost to repair my car window out of it. I’ll probably have to spend some money and buy one I can look at. Mister Allodi is mostly retired now out in Lewisham. You might persuade him to repair one but the shop is shut. I’ll have to go further afield.

—

Hot bath. I’m zonked. Very early start tomorrow to go do US Visa type things so I’ve got myself into bed and it is only just nine. I don’t think there’s any need to stay up. I think I’m gonnan have some sleepy drink and just sink into oblivion.

First day of rehearsal. I’m feeling a lot less anxious now. Still got a mountain to climb.

The morning was visa logistics and general admin, and then we had a moment to talk about scheduling before lunch. I think from the light of that that we’ll be able to work together nicely. It’s a funny thing to do, to throw 5 actors into a room with a play for a few weeks and no director and see what comes out the other side. You need a good balance of order and chaos, and I think we have this. TC had said many inspirational things over the time I’ve known him, but one of the ones that sticks is “Great theatre is a balance between the fixed and the flowing.”. You need people who are super organised and together and you need people who are gonna keep coming up with big offers. Knowing which one of those I am and which of them I’m not gives me comfort that we have things covered in this particular room. I’m not gonna be the only one doing my best end, but the other end is covered too.

The afternoon was RC-Annie. Sounds like “Arsie Annie”. People sniff at this sort of thing but it’s important. An intimacy coordinator. She comes in on day one and helps make a safe environment to build the show. We never had that on the previous tours I’ve done and we definitely could have done with it. A language where we can negotiate potentially difficult interpersonal dynamics. It was a day well spent even though we are all looking at what needs to be achieved right now and the time we have for it and quietly freaking out.

We will be making a whole darn Shakespeare play together, and playing all the parts, and trying to do it well by whatever standards we have in our brains about what doing it well means… But we will hopefully arrive at an accord where we all share the meaning of that well. And negotiating these unspoken personal boundaries is where arsie Annie really makes sense. I’m so glad the company programmed it. I was worried about being seen as the old guy etc etc just as I’ve got some years on them. Now I feel safe. And I feel like I know the others better. We are gonna be in each others pockets, so we need to.

Pub quiz tonight though at Vaulty Towers. Ugh. Mel has always wanted to go, weirdly. She loves a pub quiz, she’s only here for a week. Someone has given her the idea it’s a “the best” one. “I’ve always wanted to go but never had a team.” Shotgun Carousel and Mel and our BAC youthcrowd built the place. I’ve sent various event friends there and they love it. It’s not cheap but it has character. Gotta go. No phones.

—

Hours later. A Christmas tie break drag catwalk performance from Brunhilda won us the five bonus points to make our team of two win the first pub quiz we’ve won since the one where Harriet and I on a very early date guessed the right number of bottles in the cellar of The Windsor Castle as a tie breaker. The prize at Vaulty is a £100 free bar tab. Mel goes back to America soon. I don’t need a bar tab. We will work out how to blow it with friends. Any sense of victory was removed by timing, with a loaded conversation landing on WhatsApp exactly as the winners were announced. It has left me completely flooded.

I didn’t want to go out tonight at all… I did though. Mel is so rarely in town and she’s a great power of a friend. We won a thing together. I think that might be good? I feel a bit sick.

I’m in bed. Looking forward to tomorrow. Wishing it could all be easy.

Ahhhhhhhh

And relax.

Mel isn’t around much these days so I invited her for a Sunday roast.

The first thing I did today was just… not wake up in the morning. No alarm. Oh joy. Just the ambient Brian and Maddy and cats. At about ten I was having an eerily specific dream where Bergie got stolen. This is anxiety brought on by the fact that there are two eurocrates of ratchet straps and hard hats visible in the back. A chancer might thing “ooh and there’ll be tools”. I’ve had my window smashed once before and that accordion never came back to me. I woke, got up, realised nobody was in the flat but the heating was on. Naked coffee and then back into a blanket heated bed. This Sunday is the Sunday things Sunday.

Mel showed up in the afternoon. Good and late, hurrah. I wasn’t functioning until it was getting dark. We went to Waitrose and I got a bird and veg and tatties. She got a bottle of pre-mulled wine and I told her to send it back. “The alcohol will be cooked off!” Maybe, but I’m not drinking that shit when I’m starting rehearsals tomorrow morning. Headache juice.

I like this tomorrow bunch, they seem really focused. But I’m gonna be the old guy and empathy only works backwards so I am worried I’ll come across as old fashioned or whatever. I doubt it but one can worry. We will all be making this thing together and it is really exciting and will be lovely. But it is a negotiation. We make it TOGETHER. Until I know them I don’t know what the dynamic will be.

Mel and I chatted while I prepped the roast. Nothing too complicated, this is a meal that’s a frame for a catch-up. Coincidentally my gravy was one of my best for ages. It’s always about what’s kicking around in the cupboard, but also it turned out to be a good juicy chicken plus we ended up mulling just half a bottle of merlot so the other half went to sauce.

And now it’s bedtime. And I’m up for it tomorrow. But want to be fresh and fighting fit. So I’m off to sleep.

“We’ve almost made it through silly week,” says Izzy briefing the waiters. 25 of them with varying degrees of competence. Some green, some vets. They have to brief in our changing room today. No room elsewhere. It gives me flashbacks to my work as Restaurant or Kitchen manager for big events. It was never paid enough for the hours, and when they brought in a toxic Floor Manager it killed the point of it for me. I enjoyed building the teams. I was good at it. He wouldn’t let me. I suffered and so did the event.

It really has been silly week here though, and in London generally. Last night my rabbit hat got stolen from the changing room and I didn’t notice until half eleven. The fucking DJ had grabbed it cos he thought it looked cool. Thankfully one of the bar staff said “Have you checked the DJ booth – he was wearing a hat sometimes.” Too late, too tired. By the time I had found it I had missed the last westbound tube from Mansion House. I walked up St Paul’s. Central and Vic run later. Got myself as far as Victoria before it was dead end. Went to look for a bus.

London is funny at the moment, it really is. Lots of people have been activated into genuinely believing that there is some sort of Islamic takeover happening. It would be funny if it wasn’t so angry, but these frightened fragile people are empowered by world politics at the moment and their fragility makes London feel unsafe. According to the narrative, “they” are trying to breed “us” out etc etc. As a result, a certain type of nervous person is taking what they think of as positive action, while also trying to frame themselves as a minority/victim. Like John in Hamburg customs who told me “You’re not allowed to ask for a white coffee in my police canteen.” “That’s ridiculous,” was my response. Because I reckon he was lying. “Yeah it is ridiculous.” The only context in which that is the case is if our John is going every day to the staff members: “I want my coffee white here please. White. That’s how I want it. Yeah do you understand?” And some staff member has been like: “I think there’s something going on with John. It might be easier if we just ask him if he wants milk with his coffee.”

There was a very very drunk man with glasses by my bus stop. Very similar type to John. He was telling a taxi driver “You’re racist for not taking me.” That old banana. He thinks he’s clever cos he’s turning it round. “We’re in the minority now us britshers etc”

Silly fucker. He’s all over the place. He comes up to me looking for support. “He’s fucking racist, doesn’t want to go south of the river.” He wants a response and his thought-things don’t go together. I try logic. “Maybe he thought you might be drunk? Cabbies worry about it cos of sick” I’m not throwing it at him at this point, that I think he’s obviously being an idiot. I’m just nudging him – it might help him get a cab if he doesn’t open the interaction with “Salaam Aleikum do you speak English language yes yes?”

I’ve got eyeliner on though from work. And I’m wearing a Stetson. He takes me in. “Look at you, fucking council estate middle class. That’s what you are isn’t it? Fucking council estate middle class.” I’m so bemused by this that I am momentarily totally flabbergasted.

It’s a funny thing we do in these situations. It’s an assessment. I can see he’s focussed on me now. He might flail at me. “Will I win in a fight?” I can see how drunk he is, he’s smaller than me and he’s wearing glasses. Yes. I know I’m not gonna punch him first though, just as I know that if he tries me I can avoid it and worst case send one quick jab to his nose. He’s too slow not to get hurt. I don’t want to have to do it though. I’ll avoid it if at all possible. But … I relax my shoulders and my hands and ease my breathing, get myself into a state of readiness. I’ve been in these fights before but not for decades. Nobody really wants to throw a punch, a single punch usually ends it. It’s just the usual nonsense from him of talk shout push hope you don’t get someone impatient and quick.

He’s right up in my grill. “I’m gonna decimate you, fucking council house middle class.” It’s the eyeliner. He thinks I think I’m Russell Brand. I’m just watching him for a draw back or a butt forward, something that will hurt me and needs to be squashed. He raises a hand slowly, puts it right up pointing in my face, but … slowly. I stand my ground as he’s just talking shit and putting his hand near my face. He hasn’t got nasty long nails, I’ve got reaction time still. But I haven’t considered my hat. He takes it off and throws it into the road with a little flair like he’s just done a clever. I go and pick it up and a black cabbie is coming past who watched it happen. He pops the door. I get in. “Thanks. I can’t be bothered with this guy.”

He doesn’t put the meter on until we are halfway home. I tip him well. Cabbies are still amazing. The knowledge… They ain’t cheap but they’re iconic and they really have to learn the streets.

Missing the last tube turned into a right odyssey and he got me to my door, and out of the myopic view of that particular Cyclops.

“Council estate middle class.”lol

I’m under the globe again, dressed as Shakespeare this time. It’s hot down here and the costume is not easy to remove. It was made with fastenings that then got damp when the show it was used for was flooded. It looks fantastic but you’ve got to think to do it up. And I can’t get my ruff on alone.

Ruff needs washing. It has old make-up on it, yellowing it. The yellow is from the actor whose name is sewn into the top of it. I actually auditioned for that job, in a moment of weakness. Did a fine audition but politics. I dodged a bullet. It was an early model of the using actors as facilitators and paying them in farts by ducking equity. I’m gonna have to soak my ruff with vanish I think, but that might make it all less white and just spread the contagion. This is still a useful costume – they spent on the build – but it’s high maintenance and it was already barely worn but much damaged when it came to me.

Gotta use the resources we have though.

Mel is upstairs in the foyer of the exhibition space, reading tarot for people. She’s on for a few hours. I finished officially some time ago but I never see her and I know that it helps to have people run the queue and give her breaks etc. Right now I’m writing this to you as it is the early rush and it’ll take care of itself.  I’ll go up again when I’m done writing but it is an eleven thirty finish so I’m not gonna be able to write when I get home. Tomorrow morning NO WORK. YAY.

Lou is still working all the hours God made and I wish I could help lighten her load. Big old show she’s on. And Riyadh is not a nature park.

I’m gonna go up and check the Mel situation. I’m still in full Shakespeare. Every time I’m out there I need to be adding value. “There are more things in heaven and earth (horatio) than are dreamt of in your philosophy”. Shakespeare does tarot… Hmm

Thursday is the new Friday. I’m in the Swan. Just finished and thought I’d write before tube. Tomorrow feels like a holiday, I’m not in until 11am. Tink blew a gasket because they hadn’t got round to telling her that we have two events tomorrow, and one is Alice and the other is Shakespeare. She’s got a Titania stilt costume she made. Nobody told her it was gonna be needed.

I’m used to the events team running around dropping everything. I work in a very different hat on events quite frequently at a surprisingly high level, where my job is to pretend to be the bottom of the pile but work out how to access all areas and then find all the things that everyone passive aggressively thinks is someone else’s job and make sure they all get done. With that in mind I can help pick up the drops. Which is why I dropped the info to Tink.

They had an idea that Ffion and I would perform for the client on the globe mainstage. I immediately knew that would never fly. I would be open to a conversation with Michelle, frankly. We could likely build some content for corporate clients that has integrity, considering the team of humans I know. Factory alone with Ffion and I and we are golden. My best mate is a fucking associate artist here. Just because I do the corporate and sometimes the education absolutely shouldn’t obviate me from the main. But this is a heavily boundaried space. And there are some literal actual idiot actors working the exhibition space. I’ve seen some woeful stuff done by then. I got involved in some once. Atrocious clueless dross. Thankfully I was largely anonymous and it was entirely forgettable.

Event work is a skill. But this industry assumes everyone is a specialist. It’s annoying. Many people can wear many hats – you get to my age still doing it and you can do the things. Loads of people I know can use a drill but can also use an angle grinder. People can do screen acting and theatre acting without exploding. People can do event acting and theatre acting and screen acting and still be the same human. We are not works of art. Yes, sure, sometimes someone gets famous on the telly and they literally just can’t. But I’m talking about people like me who have consumed themselves into learning a craft ignoring the fact that the gates are frequently kept by the blind.

The theatre industry, the mainstream theatre industry, has always felt spectacularly closed to me thus far. My first job was a film. And somehow that means I’m allowed to only meet for film. So I’ve done that and it’s been good. But I’m weirdly not able to meet for mainstream theatre. It’s heartbreaking.

I used to say I’ve literally never auditioned for a theatre you’ve heard of. For over 20 years I said that and then I met and recalled recently for Hull Truck. Didn’t get it dammit. 1 strike.

Yes, I did work at the RSC but I didn’t have to audition. The director, bless his heart, asked for me. He lives and works in Canada though so that’s not something to rely on. And I got that life changing offer through hard graft on The Odyssey.

Meh. I love this stupid industry full of weirdly high status presenting tits who left drama school two years before me.

I’m going home to eat pasta and sleep deeply and dream of finding my Katie Mitchell.

Stopping for a moment. My car is still parked outside Imperial. Had some corrections which meant the exam overran, so I had to sling myself over on the tube to The Globe, consuming a ham and greve baguette and a large latte with an extra shot as we moved. I’ll go back and get him before bed as I’m back at Imperial at 8:45 tomorrow and driving there makes so much more sense than any other way. I can park outside. It’s a hard wired routine now, the commute to that strange day job. I reckon I can go from bed to exam room set up in just over half an hour if I’ve done my prep before sleep. Fifteen minutes drive to park outside, walk up to ACEX 3 get the trolley. 5 minutes walk to the room. Ten minutes set up. “Hold the room a moment I’m just gonna check the toilets.” That was roughly what I did this morning. Brian had cooked surprise breakfast for Maddy and myself. I noticed it sitting cold and sad upon the table as I left and momentarily regretted that extra fifteen minutes in bed. Still the loo check can usually take in a visit to the campus branch of Pret a Manger which seems to be taking over the world right now. The higher quantities needed of any ingredient the more the quality inevitably suffers, I find myself thinking. Pret for breakfast, pret for lunch. I’ll only have emergency coffees there though as it is made out of ground up arses. If they did decent coffee I’d get the membership but they don’t so it would be a sentence. I went to Blank Street for my evening post work pre work pick me up instead. They still use beans. Beans taste better then arses.

Only a few more of these multi-job days and even though I won’t be able to stop, there will be a shift of focus. A change is as good as a rest. I’ll start the business of “How shall we best serve this scene?” and bunny will fall by the wayside. I’ll miss the bankside team though. They are a positive and fun bunch, hard working and full of personality. I’m getting on first name terms with lots of them now. Never been one to behave like I’m different or special. Probably a trick missed with the arsehole brigade who run the world, but I am happy in my niche. Visible friendly odd. “Unthreatening Alien” said Jethro once and it resonated. But I am always open to working the big jobs, and thriving when I am.

The client tonight was a theatrical fellow. Big on his musicals. Twin sister was in the original Starlight Express. Works for a bank. “You’re doing what my parents wanted me to do,” I told him. “You’re doing what I wanted my children to do,” he responded. It’s pleasant to remember when your balls are stapled to the train that this job is aspirational to some. Oh the glamour. “Why yes. Every night, sir, I work at The Globe as an actor, why yes indeed.” SMALL PRINT: (dressed as a bunny rabbit just for corporate parties not allowed to be thought of as a real actor in this frame technically not even supposed to be visible on the ground beyond the cast iron gate in any form of costume)

I liked the client. The ease of privilege. Some people get engaged in the arts. He goes to the theatre all the time, drags his kids, sends them to acting classes. He’s the guy who I see in the interval buying a bottle of champagne at the theatre bar. Without the likes of him we would all be paid even less.

Now I’m waiting for Mel who is reading tarot in the balcony room. Frankly though I just want to go to bed.

—

Evening went swimmingly. I’m home with happy cats. Didn’t see Mel, I hadn’t been able to brief her beforehand about the client so she kept working thinking someone would break her. I needed to get home so called it before she realised.zzz

Back in the Swan. The S(am) Wan(amaker). The bar at The Globe. Once again at the door bringing the energy and the style, this time for a party of just 112 mostly french people. A different stilt walker.

I was tired. Didn’t land until late last night and up early to invigilate in a horrible room. I was the lead with Angela. She’s been doing it for as long as I have and she’s good at the bossing people around bit so I did the announcements and she told everyone what to do. I didn’t really have the headspace for organising people but I’ve been doing this on and off for long enough that it comes as second nature so solving things live was fine. They are experimenting with taking away seat numbers and it is such a lot of extra work for us all. Never underestimate the human capacity to make a simple thing more complicated for no benefit.

After work, across town immediately, no stopping at home, straight here. I grabbed a soup at Pret Mansion House and ate it with a coffee in the café upstairs. Then make-up on, bunny hat attached and squeeze into my great big rabbit arse to tell everyone how late they all are.

I’m using water based makeup. It washes off faster. Still I’ll look like I’ve got a double life when it is time to tell a load of management students where to sit tomorrow morning at arsehole o’clock. I knew this week was coming. Now its here. The thermal baths of Budapest already feel like a distant memory and they were YESTERDAY. This world, we are so fucking clever to have made everything so achievable. At what cost? But we’ve done it.

I’m gonna happily absorb myself in work for a week before rehearsal starts for AFTLS. This is an accumulation time. I’ve needed one. But it will involve me having no headspace at all and just going from job to job to bed. I have a happy flat though with good friends and fluffy creatures.

Rudas is just down the hill from my friend’s pad. It is a bathhouse built around one of the many natural springs here in Budapest. In the morning, after a coffee, we drive there. Entry costs about £16.

They built this in about 1580 and much of it has barely changed since then. Generations of people have communed with the water spirits here. When we get there it is already pretty crowded but there’s space.

The main bath chamber is one huge dim room. We start in the saunas that gradually get hotter as you go deeper. Then a quick plunge and we get into the coldest bath. Each of the pools is fed by a different spring. The whole room whiffs of sulphur. Some of the springs are so complex with mineral that they have developed huge whorls of calcification around the feeder area. People lie and bob about in various states of torpor. There are 5 baths. The first four get hotter as you go. Then the fifth is body temperature, to readjust after the hottest one which is 42 degrees. By the time we have gone all the way round once I’m feeling absolutely whacked out. I almost fall asleep in one of them for a moment.

“My dad told me that the water is radioactive,” says Maté after an hour or so. “It’s probably good for us.”

It’s been so good to see Maté. We sat next to each other when we were told we had gotten into Guildhall. A shift in the life course, for sure. He works over here now. And he’s carved a good life for himself. This was always a flying visit, but despite the airmiles I’m very very happy to have made the effort.

Apart from Rudas, he showed me much of his town. It’s a good town, full of fine things. We have rested well and eaten well. Many dumplings.

From tomorrow it’s two jobs a day plus line learning for the next week. I didn’t have to go to Hungary to relax but it helped. In early afternoon I caught Mariann as well, a university friend, I haven’t seen her this millennium. Astonishing to think of the passage of time. If I break it down I know how busy I’ve been, but 25 years is a frightening amount of time. She was much the same. We had coffee.

I’ll be back to Budapest, back to the springs in spring I think. Now I’ve carved the path, I’ll carve it again and see Maté play his Hamlet in Hungarian. What a treat though to see him, his mum, his brother on this flying visit. To remember his dad. And he knew my mum, too, she was active meeting my friends when I was at college. I’m grateful for it now, for the shared memories she brought. For old friends and the passage of time.

I’ll be exhausted when we land though. And then I’ll have to drive home past that dastardly speed camera that is in process for me right now.

Last night I watched Gaslight in Hamburg. We don’t have much opportunity to see these chocolate box dramas these days. There’s a self conscious cleverness in the writing, the gender politics sit funny to a modern ear, everyone is at pains to distance themselves from things. Often the result in performance is a play that no longer works because everyone’s trying to modern it up. The English Theatre of Hamburg is letting the play sit in the era it was made. I was genuinely surprised there wasn’t a hatstand on the stage. This is a 1920’s show about the 1880’s. So it would have played like a piece today set in the 1980’s. There’s a sharing of delight in how backwards everybody was back then, and a smugness in the writing about how modern people understand theatre so much better. There are little jokes and tricks about staging and the fourth wall, the characters decide whether to go and see a comedy or a tragedy while the audience wonders which one they’ve gone to.

Five actors make it all. I think they’re being paid the same as the actors were when it was founded in the seventies. Still, nobody does theatre to get rich. My friend was playing the lead – she’s the reason I was there. She’s working really hard every night for the people of Hamburg.

The house was packed. Long curtain, tiered seating. The auditorium is very reminiscent of Frinton. They obviously don’t have a big storage unit though. A chaiselongue, some attractive pieces of brown furniture, but someone has gone down the AI art route. You have got to be really good with prompts to get away with that and they aren’t. There are three great big generic paintings that have no individual style and are saying nothing, ultimately generic, dead art. They take up a lot of space on the back wall, like vortexes of mediocrity sucking the beauty from the people breathing and feeling things so close to them. We used AI to bulk up Christmas Carol one year. 3D printed canvases. Adam took his time though to get things right. They looked good and it was them or a blank wall. I dunno though, you can get shitty old framed landscapes for virtually nothing all over the country. It’s not hard. Is there ever an excuse for making artistic humans share space with that dross? I like that the generation at school have started to use “That is AI!” as an expression of disappointment. “It’s RAINING! THAT IS AI!!!!” “You broke your phone? So AI for you.”

So the art on the walls was AI. But the show itself wasn’t AI – I was glad I made the effort. The audience was mostly German but they enjoyed the nuance and particularly enjoyed it when people talked about tea. “Let’s go and look at the funny English”. I like this of the people of Hamburg. It speaks well of them. There’s no German Theatre of Plymouth. Perhaps there would be an audience, but I doubt it.

I enjoy these things – we used to be able to see them all the time on regional tours. Does London Classic Theatre even still exist? They were one of the last outposts of it. Alastair at Original Theatre Company, but he’s been quiet lately too, or I’ve missed it. It is so easy to go under particularly with the cost of storage / warehousing. Very few people can be Sonia. Brian and Louis have spent decades of full time hard work and risk and disappointment and luck and joy to get to the stage they are at. If you can solve storage perhaps you can weather something like COVID as a small scale theatre company. Frinton are still going! But with your main income being ticket sales you’re fucked if you stop moving. I’ve often dreamt of making a theatre company, banking a few years in that, making work for people and joy for people. I’ve got the bare bones in a storage unit that’s costing me too much already. Perhaps it is something to turn my eyes to when I get back from America. We need the rep. It was how we all learnt. Now everyone is cutting their teeth in these large scale immersive shows where the audience is cattle and the actors are paid in lice.

For now I’m in the air again. Landing soon in Budapest.