Dickens & Winter
I’ve tried to keep these up every six months, but somehow nine of them have dashed past since I last managed it. In May, The School of Night returned to the very wonderful Willow Globe in mid-Wales (see https://www.shakespearelink.org.uk/home-willow-globe for more details), and we’ve already been invited back for a third trip next year, date TBC. In July I was back in the bosom of my Slung Low family, opening the magnificent Shakespeare North Playhouse in Prescot, near Liverpool – the community’s first purpose-built theatre in over 400 years. An honour to be part of it; there’s a sort-of-review here https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/all-the-joy-that-you-can-wish-shakespeare-north-playhouse-prescot-slung-low-review – but it was...
Read MoreBeauty and the Future
Well, I managed a full Christmas run of Beauty & The Beast at the lovely Rose Theatre in Kingston (with the obligatory Omicron hiatus, of course), so eight shows or more a week is still possible in this mad climate! A wonderful cast, including two groups of 23 amazing young people who made all the effort worthwhile and fabulous songs from Eamonn O’Dwyer. Since then, translation work and teaching improvisation has been the bread and butter; but a reading of Coriolanus in Stratford for the wonderful ‘Shakespeare’s Coming Home’ project has kicked off the spring, and gigs for The School of Night and with Austentatious! (a first for me) are lined up in the coming months, as well as an in-house VR film for Sky. With a...
Read MoreSweet Willow in the valley
A ray of light this last weekend, in a dark world. Fresh from the stimulation and excitement of The Holbeck Moor Conference for Slung Low, an outdoor programme of talks and meetings for all kinds of artists and theatremakers, I made my way across to Wales to the environs of Llandrindod and the amazing Willow Globe. Built (for which read planted) in 2006, it is a living Elizabethan space of modest proportion but great beauty. There, with my friends The Nameshifter, The Troubadour and The Word Serpent (Joseph Chance, Dylan Emery and Sean McCann) we performed two excellent School of Night shows, my first live improvisation in 2 years and first live performance of any kind in 18 months. We were welcomed, accommodated, listened to, and we entertained 70 or so keen,...
Read MoreThe Haze of Spring
And so the strange flow continues. It’s getting warmer, days are getting longer, nothing is getting clearer. So it feels. Though I’m vaccinated, I’m still reading about plague (William Rosen’s Justinian’s Flea), and there is still no live performing (or teaching) work in sight. But I am blessed in pretty much every other way. Coming up: a podcast on Shakespeare and impro, a reading of a powerful new Belarussian play, a launch of Daisy’s illustrated script of Cosmic Trigger and a School of Night workshop for NSDF. But, as is so often the case, in ten days that will all be done and who knows what’s next? Time to start planting the veg…
Read MoreThe 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 More
Recent Comments