The World Turned Upside Down
I’ve just finished reading James Shapiro’s 1606: The Year of Lear. I was struck by the organisation with which London society coped with thirty years, on and off, of waves of plague. When infections rose above a certain number in any parish, mass gatherings were banned, infected households were quarantined, theatres were closed. Year after year they did this. Just one wave of a plague has laid us low. The whole performance industry is struggling, theatres are sacking all but their core staff, panto season will not be happening as we have known it. There is loads of innovation of course; new companies and initiatives popping up in gardens, sports grounds, parks. Much cause for hope. But it feels like the winter is drawing closer now, and much outdoor...
Read MoreBlind Lady Fate
It is now mid-March, and the world is uncertain. I finished the tour, 145 or so shows in 14 venues, a few weeks ago, and a joyful and triumphant thing it was. There were ups and downs of course – a very tough Christmas run at the Alexandra Palace Theatre – but weeks in beautiful theatres in Cheltenham and Chester were high points, and a wonderful time in Edinburgh OUT of festival month for once! What an extraordinary city. Now it’s back to bits and pieces – some teaching, a short prison project in Leicester last week – and finally the HG Wells project. What will happen in coming weeks and months with the spread of the new flu virus nobody knows. We can only take it one day at a time. But there’ll be adventures in there...
Read More2019, a year of months
Every time, can’t believe how the months have sped by. This year has been filled with all kinds of projects. Two conferences about improvisation: The Global Improvisation Initiative, hosted in London in May by Improbable, where Susanna Howard and I presented a very successful workshop on Living Words’ ‘Listen Out Loud’ technique; and then in August the Applied Improvisation Network’s gathering at The Alan Alda Institute in Long Island, New York (yes, that New York!). Lots of new connections. The School of Night has been at its busiest for a while, with three gigs so far this year – The Shakespeare Institute in Stratford, The Holbeck in Leeds (our first ‘variety’ bill nestled between a magician and a stand-up) and a...
Read MoreHalf a century
My autumn was principally taken up with two long projects – King Lear with second-year students at RADA, a very exciting and probing development, and an opportunity for them to explore and develop their own process; and training as a ‘writer’ with the Living Words programme in Folkestone, working one-on-one with people who have advanced dementia. Intense but extraordinary. I also hosted a celebration to mark the tenth anniversary of Ken Campbell’s death at The British Library; delivered a lecture performance entitled ‘Adventures in the Dragonlands of Theatre’ at Slung Low’s home in Leeds; did another ‘Read not Dead’ script-in-hand reading at the Wanamaker Theatre; and appeared as Jacob Bronowski, reciting his...
Read MoreThe Whirligig of Time
Blimey. An awful lot can happen in nine months. Another Shakespeare project, on ‘The Tempest’ this time, with Mountview postgrads; re-staging two one-person shows I directed; impro teaching at Drama Studio. These months have been mostly teaching and directing – most recently on Max Dickins’ third play, the powerful two-hander ‘Kin’, which is playing in Edinburgh as I write. But there’s also been R&D at the National Theatre Studio on Nina Conti’s latest project, ‘Dad’s Play’; trips to Amsterdam and Brighton for my first motion-capture work (A virtual reality environment launched this autumn, details still hush-hush for now); and to a very sunny Rome for more teaching with international schools....
Read MoreAnnus Mirabilis
Impossible to understand that it’s already six months since I last posted here. Cosmic Trigger is over, the might Flood project is over, I have MC’d for Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty for the Welcome to the Dark Ages 3-day event in Liverpool (July) and again for their more modest but equally anarchic Burn The Shard event just a few days ago (named for a central event in their novel 2023, the source of all – much of – these events). Somewhere in the middle there I squeezed in 3 sublime, candlelit performances of John Lyly’s The Woman In The Moon at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre. But Flood was so huge, such a massive effort and achievement for everyone involved, it’s the hardest to imagine gone. Hull, beautiful Hull (yes it is) became...
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