“It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue…”  

Ironically enough, at the end of this wonderful adventure, I’m finding it tricky to know how to  begin. Jet-lag has taken me out at the knees these last few days, and has resulted in a brain fog  the likes of which I haven’t known in a good while, so you’ll forgive me if my reliably compelling  prose isn’t quite as sparky as usual. Disclaimer: if my sarcasm hasn’t bled through these last few  entries, let that prior line be proof that it’s very much alive and well. 

Yes, we’re home. I’m writing this from my favourite Soho coffee shop, and as I’m typing I’m  suddenly reminded that the last time I was here was to pick up a coffee before our first script  readthrough, the very first day this whole adventure kicked off. We’re still not quite finished,  however; Sunday sees our homecoming show at the Cockpit Theatre, and next week our final  college residency at Notre Dame’s London campus, including the first time an AFTLS  performance has been held at the London campus. A handful more classes and performances  before, to coarsely paraphrase, what was once prologue becomes past. We’re in a bit of a limbo  state at present – not quite finished but not quite in the thick of it – and I’m sure my sleep  deprivation is contributing to that feeling of unsteadiness. I can blame a percentage of that on jet  lag and my total lack of sleep on the plane home, however if I’m being entirely truthful I think our  final week mentality of “we can rest when we’re home/dead” (delete as appropriate) may have  been something of a contributing factor. 

For all we’ve only visited four stops this tour, they’ve all felt incredibly distinctive and individual,  and Austin was no different. We stepped off the plane and into the blast of a warmer climate as  you may imagine someone who’s walked for days in a desert might step into the sweet relief of an  oasis. We were positively giddy – so much so that a two-hour kerfuffle at the rental car desk  couldn’t quite dampen our spirits, though I can assure you they gave it their best go. When we  finally decamped at our hotel we decided that the best course of action was to hit the ground  running; our hotel was dangerously close to the Texas Chilli Parlour, so naturally that was an easy 

choice for dinner, and afterwards we wandered the city centre until we stumbled into an  underground jazz bar. I managed to see live music every night we were in the city – not that it’s a  particularly hard thing to do in the self-proclaimed live-music capital of the world – and sitting in a  basement jazz club watching aspiring musicians rotate their line-up to equally astonishing effect  whilst chatting with good friends over cocktails is pretty close to heaven for me. 

I exercised a little restraint, however, as my first class the next morning was an early kick-off and I  didn’t entirely trust myself not to get lost in the enormity of the UT Austin campus. To give you an  idea of scale, Shenandoah had around 4,000 students enrolled – Austin has a little over 50,000.  It’s mind-boggling when you lay it out, but I managed to find my way to the creative writing class I  was taking over that morning and lead the workshop I’d planned – half on public speaking skills to  hopefully help them share their own work with confidence and ease, and half on character  development to give them an idea on how one may approach building a believable, fully  developed human being from the inside out. The engagement, creativity, and lack of ego these  students exhibit across the board is something I’m in awe of; everywhere we’ve visited, I’ve  prefaced workshops by saying that the only outcome I want to guarantee is that they have fun,  and that for all we may throw some strange or unusual exercise at them the last thing that we  want is for them to feel uncomfortable. They’ve then proceeded to dive head-first into improv  games, genre experiments, human statue exercises, without hesitation or complaint. It’s incredibly  heartening to see the way students will take creative prompts and run with them, seeming almost  unaware that they’re being creative in the first place, and I’m truly going to miss leading the  workshop element of the job.

With an early class finished and no show that evening, the rest of the day was my own. Sam was  determined to show me east Austin and I was determined to let him, so we met up after class and  wandered to the city’s most eclectic neighbourhood – coffee shops, vintage stores, trendy food  trucks and craft breweries, one notable spot thrift store in somebody’s house wherein we did have  a slight moment of panic that we were unknowingly breaking in and rifling through somebody’s  wardrobe wardrobe. I was introduced to the simple delight of Mexican Coke on a very hot day  and was once again floored by how insane it was to me that I was being paid to be here. Jo  headed out to join us, all of us still not entirely processing the fact that after weeks in thermals  and knitwear we were suddenly in t-shirts, and after taking in the sunset on the roof of our hotel  we made the pilgrimage to Cuantos Tacos, Michelin-starred food truck and, as a foodie, a big  cross off my Texas to-do list. The plan for the evening was to see the Longhorns take on  Louisiana State at the Mardi Gras basketball game, and if ever there was living proof of everything  being bigger in Texas it was this. Pyrotechnics to introduce student athletes, the entire crowd  springing to its feet every ten seconds, the mini-blimp floating around the stadium at halftime  dropping barbe-coupons. Jo and I spent half the game looking at each other quizzically at each  new spectacle, and the other half screaming for the Longhorns as loud as our show-conscious  throats would allow us to. Sam had decided on an evening to himself taking in a little more of the  city’s music scene, so naturally Jo and I decided to crash his solitude and head out to the  Continental Club after the game to meet him – it’s at this point I’ll refer you back to the “sleep when we’re home” mantra for this week. The three of us were deposited back at the hotel by  driverless car (another Austin novelty – I’m not so sure I enjoyed this one as much as the others  we’d encountered) further past midnight than may’ve been sensible, but having had as full an Austin day as I imagine one could possibly experience, barring a rodeo of some kind.

Wednesday was a biggie, as I was meeting yet another mythical figure in the AFTLS canon – I had  my class as part of the Shakespeare at Winedale outreach programme, run by the one and only  Clayton Stromberger. Way back in rehearsals Al beguiled us with tales of the beauty of Winedale,  a UT programme-come-summer-camp which serves to cultivate young performers with an  interest in classical text, with Clayton being one of the leaders. He was currently working on  scenes from As You Like It with kids from several nearby elementary schools, to be performed in  the lobby of the theatre we were performing at before our final performance that Saturday – he’d  tasked me with working on some group scenes with them and we had an absolute ball looking at  the scene between Audrey, Touchstone, Martext, and Jaques. When the students weren’t  performing as the characters, I tasked them with doing what we do so often in the show and  populating the scene as human set pieces, building the Forest and Audrey’s goats. The kids are  intelligent, receptive, curious, respectful, and totally blew me out of the water with their talent and  aptitude for Shakespeare, qualities I’m sure Clayton has honed and encouraged in his time with  them. I went into our final tech that afternoon with a new wealth of energy from the enthusiasm  and joy we’d found in an elementary school cafeteria that afternoon, as well as with excitement to  head to a local line-dance bar that Clayton had recommended for us that evening.  

Our final few days went by in something of a blur, all of us so eager to maximise every aspect of  our remaining time in the States. I went full Texas tourist and queued for Franklin’s barbecue –  Sam joined me just as I reached the front of the line, and thank goodness he did or else I fear I  may never have eaten again for the rest of the week. We went two-stepping at the Broken Spoke,  Benjy spinning me round a dance floor like nobody’s business and me having the time of my life  pretending I knew what I was doing. We went swimming at Barton Springs, me desperately trying  (and eventually succeeding!) to get Jo to dive into the beautiful cool waters looking over the  Austin skyline. Somewhere in all of this we even managed to squeeze in a few shows, our final  performance being particularly special as we got to see the ‘curtain raiser’ – the showing of  scenes by Clayton’s elementary school students before they come and see us in the play that 

evening. The kids were spectacular – for all I’d only worked with them for one workshop, I could  have burst with pride seeing them doing scenes from our play, and what a gift it was to hear it  anew and belonging to an entirely new cast. We’ve come to almost take this story for granted;  we’ve been with it since our readthrough at the tail end of November, a long time to stay the same  words. For all we go into each show mining for the newness, it was endlessly refreshing to hear  the students make it their own and have it chime afresh – or, even in some cases, see them  interpret the lines in very similar ways! As if they hadn’t spoiled us enough, they also made for an  exceptional final crowd – as Jo, Benjy and I were in the midst of the banishment scene I realised  that the student who had worked on it and performed it in the curtain-raiser earlier were mouthing  the lines along with us, like Shakespearean karaoke. They were fully in our corner and having a  blast, and it was an incredibly special one to end on. High on adrenaline and the bittersweetness  of closing out the US shows, we spent our final evening in a honky tonk joint on the outskirts of  town, fittingly named Sam’s Town Point. Clayton asked the band to play Dancing In The  Moonlight, and that’s exactly what we did until the very small hours of the morning, until we all  ventured out to find pizza and a cab home at a time I don’t know I could admit to. Thank  goodness for an early evening flight the next day. 

And now here you find me – home, after five weeks of wayward adventuring, and not quite sure  how to finish this thing. It’s a great feeling to know we still have shows to come – I’m a nervous  wreck for our London show, but mainly because I’m lucky enough to have such wonderful friends  in my corner who are all coming along to see this thing I haven’t been able to shut up about for  the last few months. I can’t wait to show them what we made in that room in Brixton. 

One thing I would like to end on – I came across this blog when I was first auditioning for AFTLS  and wanted to know a little more about what I was potentially getting myself in for. At the risk of  being presumptuous, there is a chance that somebody reading this is doing the exact same thing,  and I was thinking about what message I would like to give somebody who may be considering  taking on this bonkers, brilliant job, and I landed on this – grab it with both hands. This company  is a remarkably special one to be a part of, and I’m honoured to count myself amongst such  intelligent, adventurous, and, most importantly, kind people. It’s the sort of job I could never  conceive of doing the I first began my career and one that I am so grateful I got to be a part of; for  how much it’s challenged me, for what it’s afforded me, and for everything it’s taught me. It can be  daunting, and it will be, but the control and freedom it affords you across all of its many facets is  worth every moment of feeling afraid of it, which shall hopefully be few and far between. I wish  you luck, and hope you can have just as much of an adventure as we did. 

To the entire AFTLS network – thank you for letting me be a part of your brilliant ranks, and for  your words of wisdom and encouragement when we were figuring out whatever this show was going to be. To each and every one of our many friends in the US – thank you for welcoming us with open arms and a wealth of kindness. To you, dear reader, thank you for following our  adventures, and I hope you’ve found a little bit of joy in these ramblings. 

Al, Benjy, Sam, and Jo – thank you for being my co-mates and brothers in exile. I won’t ever forget  this. 

“…when I make curtsey, bid me farewell.”  

– Grace x

“A traveller! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad…to have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.” 

Now, look. I love Rosalind. Like, love Rosalind. Playing her is without a doubt a  high point in my career – her dialogue is sparky, her relationships complex, she  is incredibly, fallibly, human, and my daily ritual of deciding which element of her  story to bring my focus to on each particular show is one I always look forward  to. 

I do not always agree with her. 

For example – in Act III, whilst waiting for Orlando to show up for his wooing  lesson, she’s telling Celia about how she ran into her father in the forest – her  banished father she hasn’t seen since he was callously driven out of his home  and rightful dukedom by her uncle, and whom she knows has been living in the  forest but has had no clue of his condition beyond the rumours she’s been  desperately seeking out at court. After describing to Celia how her own father 

didn’t recognise her in her disguise as Ganymede during their long-awaited  reunion, Rosalind then brushes all of that significance off by asking Celia, “what  talk we of fathers when there is such a man as Orlando?”. 

Girl. 

Another point on which we disagree is her view on travel. She scolds Jaques,  telling him that he has “sold his lands to see other men’s” and that that is the  reason why he’s so miserable all the time. She is, notably, neglecting the fact  that she herself isn’t exactly on home turf in the unfamiliar landscape of Arden  

pretending to be a shepherd boy, but that’s neither here nor there. I count myself  incredibly lucky that the acting jobs I’ve taken in the last year have all had an  element of adventure about them, and a brilliant group of cast mates that have  been willing to make the absolute most of those opportunities. Al has told me on  a few occasions that I’ve ‘lived a lot of life’, and I’m glad to be among like minded company. 

The last time we caught up, you found me holed up in a coffee shop in  Arkansas. Our final days at Hendrix were joyous, made so largely by the  wonderful team of students and faculty that worked incredibly hard to not only  make the show so smooth but also to welcome us into their community. We’d  been warned before our final show that we’d be partaking in a Hendrix theatre  tradition once we were finished, which turned out to be an en-masse Hokey  Cokey (and much discussion about how it varies on each side of the pond – they  don’t even “ra-ra-ra”!) paired with perhaps the greatest chocolate chip cookies  I’ve encountered in my storied biscuit-eating career, thanks to tech department  head and all-round wonder woman Lauren. We went out for dinner with Antonio  and Bridgette, our spectacular staff contacts for the week, with most of the  student tech team in tow – our chilled post-show celebration quickly evolved  into karaoke at the bar next door and me introducing anybody who would listen  to me to the wonderful world of mezcal picklebacks. I’d foolishly confided that I  regretted not doing karaoke at White Water Tavern when we’d gone earlier that  week, and found myself suddenly having to put my money where my mouth  was. We all gave it a go bar Benjy, who was otherwise engaged in a pool  tournament with the locals as well as being an incredible hype man whenever  one of us did get up, and I am once again reminded writing this of how grateful I  am to have a team that takes “work hard, play hard” to a level all our own. 

We’d planned a hike for our Sunday off which, as I’m sure you can imagine  based on the previous evening’s antics, was maybe not the wisest move in  terms of self-care. Petit Jean State Park was among our most popular  recommendations when we asked the locals what we should check out, and so  we piled into the cars to make a valiant effort to make it to the waterfall there. 

Summer in this part of the country must be beautiful, but there is something  unique about seeing it in snow, in a quieter season where everything feels stiller  as it begins to come back to life after winter – much mirrored by each of us  emerging from our varying levels of alcohol-induced mental debilitation with  each lungful of mountain air inhaled and icy rock successful navigated. That  evening, we retreated to the Mexican restaurant within spitting distance of our  hotel to watch the Superbowl over vats of tortilla chips. As hangover cures go, I  can recommend a day like this one. 

You currently find me on the Metro back to Winchester, Virginia after venturing  out for a solo Sunday in D.C. to end our week working at Shenandoah  University. I have 20,000 steps and a very poor night’s sleep under my belt, so  I’m a shell of a woman, but there was no way we were going to be this close to  the capitol of this great nation without me seeing what it was all about. It’s  overwhelming, really, just how much ground we all want to cover during our time  in each location. Any spare moments we could snatch between classes and  shows this week have been spent exploring high and low – over state lines, 

across civil war battlefields, to historic houses turned wineries, even into living  rooms on one occasion. One of our wonderful professors for the week, Valerie,  invited us over for pizza and bluegrass music; she and her husband open their  home to local musicians every Wednesday night to jam, and they were kind  

enough to let us sit in after our tech rehearsal. I’m a huge music obsessive, and  seeing these people who may have only met that evening passing melodies  around like it’s second nature was a truly special thing that I think it’s safe to say  we were all moved by. Other excursions included a day out to Harpers Ferry,  planned meticulously by our resident historian, Jo; we drove over the border into  West Virginia blasting John Denver’s Country Roads, looking at the actual Blue  Ridge Mountains on our way to the Shenandoah River. A bucket-list item that I  didn’t know I needed. We climbed to Jefferson’s Rock, so named because the  man himself proclaimed it as a view worth crossing the ocean for – I can see his  point – before hiking a small section of the Appalachian trail, crossing a bridge  that took us over two rivers and into our third state of the day, Maryland. This  was all before noon, as the afternoon was designated for carrying on to  Antietam, site of the bloodiest single-day battle in American history. It’s a  sobering thing, looking out over a view that was the last thing so many people  saw before they died – I don’t know if I anything I could write can do justice to a  feeling like that. 

It was a quieter week on the workshop front – for all we had four shows, we only  had five workshops to plan for, and we decided that it would be a perfect  opportunity to double up and work with each other on the sessions we had on  the roster. Sam and I teamed up for Acting Fundamentals, and I shared a  workshop with the student-run Shakespeare society with Jo. It’s always  incredibly rewarding applying the actor’s toolkit to a study that may not  necessarily seem like an obvious choice to utilise it in – for example, Benjy and I  went into a class last week entitled “Writing In Response to Art”, and were  thrilled at how willingly the students dove head first into work that may feel alien  or daunting – but the enthusiasm that theatre kids have for the work we do is, as  always, potently galvanising. Shenandoah is a conservatory school, and boasts  a staggeringly well-equipped theatre department and students with a real  appetite for as any styles and perspectives on performance as are to be had.  Sam and I put them through their paces in terms of where to begin with building  a character’s physicality and making bold, committed choices, and Jo and I ran  a crash-course on navigating prose and multi-roling. I was incredibly nervous as  to the workshop element to this job however it’s consistently been one of the  parts I’ve looked forward to each week, especially when coupled with the  chance to work with these brilliant, intelligent people beyond the world of the  play we’ve made (but don’t tell them I said that, I don’t want to massage their  egos.)

It’s our second week performing in thrust, and we dedicated time back in  Hendrix to reshaping the performance to accommodate the audience we now  find surrounding us. For all that work carried over well to Shenandoah and  meant we didn’t have to re-stage again, none of us are willing to entirely leave  the director’s chair; the show is very much still malleable, still subject to our  curiosities and refusal to settle for ‘serviceable’. Sam and I checked back in with  the love story between Rosalind and Orlando as we both felt it was losing a bit  of its lustre, and Benjy and Sam have been workshopping the scene between  Touchstone and William as both feel there’s some missing element to it – 

considering I have to make a concerted effort not to corpse in that scene every  show I may be inclined to disagree, but far be it from me to quash the creative  process. Al has been opening ‘all the world’s a stage’ out to cast different  audiences members as each stage of life, and it’s a dream to watch the journey  that he takes the speech on every night. It’s a reminder that for all we keep a  close eye on the play internally, we have to check in with our audiences, too;  what’s landing? What may they be missing? How do we keep them from the  opinion that Shakespeare is fusty and irrelevant and hard to understand? There  are some elements that can’t quite be avoided – for example, a crowd always  seems a little stunned when we go into the jig that ends the play – however it’s a  rewarding feeling to hear the crowd respond well to a moment we may have felt  was a little sticky or circled back to rework. Our final show in Shenandoah was  one of my favourites we’ve done so far; it felt like a real balancing act between  the things we’d revisited and a receptive, eager audience, mostly made up of  students who were spending their Valentine’s Day evening with us. That level of  engagement from a younger crowd is exactly why I love classical work – it’s the  words, exactly as they were said all those hundreds of years ago, but ringing  with fresh meaning and perspective. I got a little emotional during our final  curtain call – it’s this kind of show that made me fall in love with acting and  Shakespeare, and maybe (just maybe) we’ll be that for somebody else.

Somehow, tomorrow we head to Austin to commence our final week in the  States – I’m firmly planting myself in denial for the time being, as I am far from  ready to be finished with this work or this adventure. We already have a to-do  list as long as all ten of our arms put together, each of us pulling the other four  towards a restaurant, a live music venue, a sports event, a hike. I’ll be going  home a more experienced woman than when I left, and I’ll be all the more richer  in so many ways because of it. I hate to disagree with my character, however on  this one occasion I think I have to put my foot down.

“I like this place, and willingly could waste my time in it.”

If I was to ever find myself in some kind of Miss-Congeniality-style Q&A scenario of ‘describe your perfect day’, I would tell you in detail about four days I’ve been lucky enough to experience in the span of the last week. I would then probably fall flat on my face during the catwalk portion of the competition, but that’s beside the point. 

Perfect Day Number One fell in the kind of week that’s busy in the way that makes you grateful to be busy with so many wonderful things – our second week at Notre Dame. Scott and Peter gave us the challenge of trying to get three runs of the show in before we got in front of our first crowd, and throw that into the mix alongside my first time planning and leading workshops, plus just generally living our lives, and my diary got stacked up pretty quickly. The workshop part of the job was something I was definitely intimidated by at first – I’ve never taught anything before in my life, and going into prestigious establishments where these students are going to be not only intelligent and perceptive but also have the potential to be intimidated at the prospect of using tools from an actor’s toolkit, rather than their tried-and-true methods of learning, was a challenge I was nervous to rise to.

Benjy and I sat in on Jo’s class on Monday to see a true master at work and get a little bit of inspiration as to how to run our rooms – how to coax out some students that may need a little more encouragement into our way of working, or distributing the confidence of the folks who threw themselves straight into things. We got to see which activities were best suited to which focuses, and what level of interaction to maintain with our professors to make sure they’re getting as much benefit from having us there as possible. Jo is one of the most diligent workers I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with – academically, as an actor, and as a social scheduler, a brilliant friend to have across the board – and she was gracious enough to let me pick her brain during my planning process so that I felt I had a solid foundation by the time my first classes rolled around.

I was fortunate enough to get a real mixed bag of subjects on my ND class roster – an English class, a seminar on collaboration in written media, and new readings in transgender studies (side note – As You Like It is a fascinating play to examine from a trans/queer perspective, and there’s so much woven into the very fabric of the play that’s interesting to dive into if you are so inclined). My first class being 9:30am, I was expecting to be greeted by half-asleep students that I would have to really energise into the work – and frankly, I owe the students an apology. ND is a truly special place, with students across every subject that are curious, engaged, and willing to throw themselves into whatever crazy things I asked of them (such as mime-constructing a sandwich or moulding each other into a physical representation of safety, for example). As a first-timer to this kind of thing, I couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome – something of a recurring theme across working with this company. 

But the first perfect day in question – Wednesday. Also known as show numero uno. My day began by sleeping through my alarm, so I was off to a sleepier and more hurried start than I would have liked, but pressure makes diamonds as they say. My class that day was Introduction to Somatics for Singers; a group of 10 lovely grad students and a large studio full of natural light and fabulous amplification. As you can imagine, I was immediately in a better mood. My plan was to lead them through the vocal warm-up I’ve been devoted to for the last five years and use religiously before every show, hopefully giving them some exercises they may find useful in connecting breath to diction to support to sound – a perfect check-in for myself before our first show, too, as to why we make these strange noises and what the outcome of making them manifests itself as.

With plenty of time to kill and plenty of nerves to thwart, I spent the rest of the afternoon in the campus’ art gallery, with Arden and Rosalind at the forefront of my mind as I strolled from impressionism to sculpture work mining for any fresh inspiration. To my caffeine-addicted delight, the cafe there also did the best latte I’ve had since leaving London, so I managed to steal a bit of time there to consolidate the mad scrawlings that populate any blank space in my script and get my head in the game before the show that night.

We all arrived early to the theatre, excited and anxious for whatever will happen on that stage in a few hours time. We check in with each other, as we do before starting any work day – how are we feeling? What might we need from each other? It’s been a practise we’ve implemented from day one, and I think has been crucial to the alchemy of the five of us – I keep coming back to that word, ‘alchemy’, but it feels an appropriate mix of science and magic for describing how we all work so well together. We pre-set, we fight call, we run our music one final time, and before we know it we’re marching out to Al’s militant drum beat and we’re a train on the tracks, with no idea on where the route may take us next. I, for one, am grateful that Rosalind’s arc finds her a little less confident at the start of the show, as it’s a wonderful mask for my nerves, but I realise pretty quickly that we might very well be onto a winner.

The whole show felt buoyed by this electrical current that the audience gave us, and the play we’ve been with for six weeks now felt undiscovered all over again; one of the many pearls of wisdom that Scott gave us was to add in a ‘doing!’ moment for Rosalind and Orlando, where they first see each other and there’s this instant attraction. Hearing the audience gasp and giggle when Sam and I first made eye contact let us know from early on that what we’re doing not only works, but resonates – it’s what I love about Shakespeare! It’s five hundred years old and written in prose or verse but we see these moments of things we recognise and it sings out to us! Having people to talk to in the show’s epilogue and really lift the text off the page and into their eyes made a little emotional that first time around – to really see people listening and engaging and wanting to hear this story and the way that we’re telling it is all you can ask for as an actor.

We celebrated in O’Rourke’s after – naturally – and the whole evening set us up to sail through our remaining two shows in Indiana with a focus on urgency, clarity, and not letting things drop now that we have the audience to factor in. It was a glorious first performance – not perfect, by any means, but it never will be and that’s a beautiful thing to realise and let go of early doors. It felt like leaving something behind when we said goodbye to ND to head out on the road just the five of us, which is a testament to all of the talented, passionate people there who welcomed us and our work with open arms. It’s a special place, made so by the people there, and I’m incredibly grateful we got to be a part of that community for a short while. 

Perfect Days 2 and 3 comprised our weekend in Chicago – I’ve been fortunate enough to tick off a few of the larger American cities, but this place was, excitingly, new to me. Plans had gone awry once again, this time in the form of too much ice on the Chicago River for the architectural boat tour I had booked to go ahead, so instead I dragged Sam and Jo to accompany me on a quest for a bonafide Chicago hot dog, which we found in a place called Portillo’s and I can confidently call the best ‘dog of my life. Jo has family in Chicago so headed off to catch up with her cousin, and Sam and Benjy had plans to see a play at Steppenwolf, so the afternoon was my own to do my favourite thing to do in a new place – walk around until I get the perfect balance of immersed and straight-up lost.

That evening we had a proper blow-out planned – a seafood dinner at Shaw’s, followed by drinks and music at Andy’s jazz club, and then a good old-fashioned dive bar until we all piled in an Uber to retreat back to our hotel in the early hours of Sunday morning. Oysters, martinis, and running a jukebox like I’m a Navy drill sergeant – I couldn’t ask for anything more. There was also the added novelty of seeing each other out of our rehearsal joggers and T-shirts – I may be biased, but we scrub up pretty well. Coincidentally we had to scrub up pretty well the next morning and shake off any residual hangovers that may or may not have been hanging around from the night before, as Sam had a tour of the Art Institute planned for us – I told everybody in no uncertain terms that I would cry the second I laid eyes on ‘A Sunday on La Grande Jatte’ and was nothing less than a woman of my word. It’s a gorgeous gallery and I really lucked out on the opportunity to take in art alongside fellow artists, followed swiftly by a pilgrimage to Chicago’s Chinatown to eat an inordinate amount of Szechuan food alongside them as well. Al, Sam, and I wandered out for a little bit of exploring before jumping on the L train and then into our beds before another travel day. If they made my ideal weekend in a lab, I think this is what the final product would look like. 

The final perfect day is, funnily enough, the one I’m currently in the midst of. I’m writing this in Conway, Arkansas, specifically in the very good coffee shop over the road from Hendrix College, our very lovely home for the week. The welcome here has been as warm as we can hope for – it’s a difference in size from ND by roughly 10,000 students, but the passion and curiosity still burns as bright as ever in both students and faculty alike. We have a slightly quieter week on classes and workshops, however we have been carpe-ing the diem all over the place – so many people have been kind enough to send recommendations our way, and we’ve been working our way though them at an alarming rate.

Last night we drove into Little Rock in the Toyota we’ve all fallen a little bit in love with, blasting a playlist of pure Americana my best friends presented me with before I left the UK. I can’t explain it but there’s a certain something to the sunsets here – that heady mix of golden-pink light and highway and great music and better company – that makes every evening feel that little bit more unique. We had dinner at a gorgeous farm-to-table cafe and then hit up the White Water Tavern, a roadside dive which apparently is the place to be on a Tuesday. Two words – karaoke night. Four more words – Sam doing Sweet Caroline. Arkansas, you’re far too good to us. 

But that was last night – today, in this sun drenched little cafe corner, I’ve started my day with no cancelled plans or unheard alarms, but instead by looking at the Act IV prologue of Henry V with an Acting Fundamentals class. The particular challenge I threw at them today was the focus of intentions and how to affect the person that you’re speaking to in order to get what you want from them – what words do you emphasise? How do you alter your pitch, or your pace? They performed the speech as a billion-dollar sales pitch, as a half-time locker room pep talk, as a marriage proposal. They ran head first into the challenges I threw at them at nine in the morning, and they knocked it out of the park. Still riding that high, Sam and Benjy picked me up after class to head to a local yoga studio to get a brief but very needed practise in, before we headed in to set up our space for the week ahead of tech rehearsal this evening and our first show tomorrow. And now here I sit – a great week behind me, a cardamom latte before me, and who knows what ahead. Based on the experience so far though, I think things might just turn out alright. As a friend of mine once sang, good times never seemed so good. 

“Here shall we see no enemy but winter and rough weather…”

Greetings from South Bend, Indiana!

I’m writing this in my hotel room, exhausted after our first day off since touching down a week ago, full of the famous O’Rourke’s combination of French onion soup and pretzel bites. It’s a different world here than the one we left in London, in terms of both routine and landscape. It’s a balmy -11°C, up from the -20°C we enjoyed earlier this week; I have never seen so much snow or been so cold in my entire life, and my faith in my northern blood being able to withstand extreme cold has been truly shaken. Needless to say this is all a stark contrast from where you, intrepid reader, left off in my last entry – I have plenty to catch you up on.

Firstly, our final few days in London (which, frankly, feel a lifetime ago already). The way that the days leading up to the all-important showing work is we have an AFTLS alum come in to be on book for us – ‘on book’ meaning that while we work through scenes they keep an eye on the script, so if we forget a line we have somebody on hand to remind us of it rather than one of us jumping out of a scene to check the script. We were lucky enough to have the brilliant Anna come in to work with us – I saw Anna’s work in AFTLS’s The Tempest, and as well as being incredibly talented she’s also a wonderfully warm, intelligent, and thoughtful person to have in the room. Annoying, frankly. Not only was she a great reader, but in those final days of tightening and refining she was a vital help in being an experienced outside eye for what we were working on. Act V Scene IV has had roughly four different forms in our rehearsal room thus far – it’s a beast, and without a doubt the hardest scene to stage in the entire play. There are roughly twelve characters on stage at the same time, and those of you good with math(s) will have crunched those numbers and realised there are only five of us in the cast. Trying to seal up a somewhat bizarre ending in a fashion that makes sense, whilst also hitting the emotional beats of the piece, whilst ALSO trying to be three or four characters simultaneously in ways that are as clear, concise, and efficient as possible has been one of the more frustrating challenges of my career thus far – mainly because none of us wanted to choose the easy way out. Yes, we could have character signifiers on chairs as a way of keeping them alive, but we haven’t established the use of chairs anywhere in the play prior to this – why bring them in for the final scene? Yes, we could all stand around in a semi-circle with easy access to the costume pieces we need to change characters as quickly as possible, but is that compelling for an audience to watch? We have to introduce an actual God into the mix, for pity’s sake, no part of this is going to be straight forward. It takes us the majority of an entire day and all six of us working as hard as we possibly can, but we eventually strike the balance of chaos, efficiency, tongue-in-cheek, and grounded emotion that feels like we’re honouring the final moments of a rather special play. Then, naturally, we go into a Charleston. I think Shakespeare would be proud. We have just enough time to get a final run under our belts before we fling open our rehearsal room doors to our first audience of associates and friends.

The sharing was a blur, and while we were happy with some of the more ambitious elements of the show, at its core it galvanised us into focusing back to the basics of acting and conversation – what do the characters want from each other? What are their motivations for speaking? What will happen if they fail to get what they need from the other person? It was adrenaline-fuelled and messy and enthusiastic and spoke volumes to how much we all want so badly to make this not only good, but great. It’s nerve-shredding, to show for the first time this beautiful, brilliant thing that we’ve made together in a room over just about five weeks, but the fear kept us sharp and conscious and alive. We celebrated at the pub after with a few of the brilliant AFTLS associate directors who were kind enough to share their time and expertise, and I stayed far too late considering my hour commute back home to east London and the fact we’re back in the room at 10am the next day for final touch-ups on music, and the all-important packing of the suitcase we have to fit out show inside. We manage this by the grace of whatever Gods were listening to us, and after a light bit of boot rearrangement and tartan scarf Tetris we said our final goodbyes to the Karibou Centre, and the brilliant Francis and Elaine who have taken such wonderful care of us the weeks we’ve been rehearsing there. It is here when it all started to feel a bit Real – the only thing we have to focus on now is packing and getting to Heathrow on time, and there begins the next chapter of this brilliant job.

Our biggest challenge with travel was, mercifully, trying to beat our jet-lag; we were delay-free from Heathrow and managed the whole process safely and smoothly, but the decision to try and stay awake until a reasonable hour in Indiana was harder than I’d thought. It’s unrelenting in the best way, the schedule we’re on here – we were straight back into rehearsals on Monday after landing the day before, and had our first proper introduction to Notre Dame and our fantastic team in America. Cate and Deb have made transitioning into the routine here feel remarkably easy, and getting Scott and Peter’s eyes on our work and having them give us the ‘quarter turn’ it needs to sharpen it into performance-ready shape has been transformative; quite literally, in some cases, as my take on Audrey has completely shifted into something that feels more truthful and interesting whilst still loyal to the interpretation of her that I wanted to bring into this production. The privilege of being able to make contact with so many different characters on this project has blown my mind somewhat – I get to be Rosalind AND Audrey?! I still can’t really believe my luck.

It hasn’t, of course, all been non-stop work, and we’ve been adjusting to campus life pretty well – my voice is a little hoarse still from cheering on the Fighting Irish, at both the women’s basketball and the ice hockey. We’ve been gripped by the playoffs, ransacked our local Trader Joe’s for wine and cheese and ramen nights, even eaten Peruvian-Mexican fusion inside a repurposed church to celebrate Scott’s birthday. That last one gave us one of the biggest laughs of the week so far – me being gobsmacked by a genuine mountain of chicken being placed down in front of Jo, and when (me being me) I started cracking wise about what she’d ordered she informed me she’d asked for the same thing I had. Everything is bigger in America, kids, take it from me. Needless to say, we’re taking advantage of every opportunity that makes itself available to us, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a huge week next week, with things fully kicking off in earnest – our first classes, our first public performances, our first time showing a paying audience what we’ve been putting our heart and souls into for the last six weeks. Wish us luck – for now, the only opportunity I need to take advantage of is my bed. 

“Sir, I am a true labourer.” We have just finished our first run of the whole thing and my brain feels like it may melt out of my ears. I’m brimming with adrenaline and residual anxiety, my carefully styled hair is a distant memory, I’m sweating more than I’m willing to admit to, and the rehearsal room is a bomb site of purple drapes, fake fir tree branches, and tartan scarves. It’s utter carnage.

We have A Play.

I hope it isn’t bragging to tell you how hard we’ve worked the last week or so to get ourselves to this point; the process of going back over the scenes we sketched out and digging for the detail has been intense but so worthwhile, and it’s paying off in how emotionally wrung out I feel by the time we get to the end. The five of us are properly in our rhythm now, and for all we’re working hard it certainly isn’t all blood, sweat, and tears; there have been plenty of times where we’ve busted up laughing because someone’s found an innuendo in a line, or it gets to the end of the day and we’re all so delirious there’s nothing else to do but descend into manic giggles. We have to be colleagues – we get no say in that matter – but to be friends and to look out for each other in the way that we are is something you hope for on every job as an actor, and it’s an utter gem when you’re fortunate enough to get it. One of our Saturday rehearsals fell on my birthday, and I walked in to balloons, a banner, a card, and a birthday cake – I don’t know if there’s an American equivalent to a Colin the Caterpillar, but if there isn’t I beg you to Google it and try and imagine my joy when my gorgeous team presented me with one. January is a miserable time of year to have a birthday – my mother apologises to me around this time every year – but with these lovely folks in our little room in Brixton, it was a joyous way to kick off the big 2-7.

That supportive energy between us is invaluable to fall back on when we’re building the world of the play – our characters are lovers, enemies, families, best friends, and it can be a strange thing to be crafting a relationship like that with a person you’ve known a little over a month. Our deep-dive proper into Act III Scene iii felt like a pivotal moment in that exploration this week; it’s the scene wherein Orlando meets ‘Ganymede’ (Rosalind’s male alter-ego) in the forest for the first time, and the lack of court pressure or gender oppositions means that Rosalind has a chance to see if he’s really as in love with her as he claims to be in the poems he’s been sticking up everywhere. It’s one of my favourite scenes in the whole play, but a daunting one – there are so many dynamics at play as the two are sizing each other up, dominating each other, and figuring out for themselves what they might be feeling towards the other. It’s also, dare I say it, kind of sexy, and that can be a rather formidable thing to tackle if you don’t trust yourself and the people you’re working with. Luckily, that wasn’t something we had to worry about. Sam is, to put it simply, brilliant – it’s his third go-round with AFTLS and, as a first-timer, to be approaching these scenes with someone as intelligent, generous, and insightful as he is takes a significant amount of fear out of it all. But it’s a room with five directors, and even if one of us isn’t in scene we certainly aren’t resting on our laurels. We had Benjy putting us through our paces, extracting every nuance from all of the layers going on – what is Orlando feeling towards this stranger? How good is Rosalind at the ‘Ganymede’ character? Why do either of them stay in the conversation, and what do they want from the other? Al keeps us in check with our verse speaking and loyalty to every minute piece of punctuation, and Jo even pauses the scene as Celia to build in our given circumstances and really challenge us to hold the tension and stakes of who these people are to each other. It’s a challenge, but one we sure as hell give our all to, and a scene that may have been perfectly serviceable when we first revisited it is now enriched with a subtext that keeps us playful, cautious, flirtatious, and alive.

The thing with Shakespeare is, you can read and analyse and research and talk about it all until the cows (or in the case of this play, the sheep) come home, but you don’t know until you get up on your feet with your fellow actors and have a swing at it. It’s the only way to own it, and to have fun whilst you’re doing so. We’ve found games within the scenes, things to focus our objectives and remind us of what the characters are trying to affect in each other; a game of tag between Phebe, Silvius, ‘Ganymede’, and Orlando was a particular standout, but one-on-one pick-up basketball to work our way through Rosalind and Orlando’s power-flirting definitely gets an honourable mention. That being said, perhaps the biggest game of all this week was all five of us trying to figure out the best way to cut the fabric we have for our boundary into three equal strips – not as easy as it sounds when you’re trying to wrangle 20 feet of purple satin and keep fraying to an absolute minimum. That last part was, of course, a fool’s errand, and triggered a manhunt through Brixton to try and find someone who’d be willing and able to hem that much material for us. LoLo, wherever you are, you’re a God among men, as we ended the week victorious and with our idea for the transition between court and country firmly cementing itself as (thank goodness) possible. With a little more rehearsal and tightening, we may very well get our magic there.

It’s an intimidating thing, getting down to the wire in the way that we are. We’re only a few days out from our final sharing, where we perform the show in its current iteration to AFTLS company members who are tasked with finding ways we can streamline the chaos of the thing and make scene and character transitions as efficient and seamless as possible. We got an email the other day with our full schedule, itinerary, and travel information, and I had to hide under my duvet for a little while because it all felt suddenly incredibly real. It sounds silly, but I haven’t processed the ‘America’ part of this job – I’ve toured before, and I know that the next phase of this whole journey is getting to perform the show we’ve built together, but the travel and the adventure of it still feels slightly far away and unreal. I’m hearing so much about the near-mythical things we’re going to do and see and experience – the pretzel bites at O’Rourke’s, Super Bowl watch parties, the Chicago architecture boat tour, hyper-specific Texan dive bars – and it all feels a bit abstract. I think what it boils down to is I still can’t believe that someone’s paying me to do this amazing thing. I’ve been warned about the extreme cold of Indiana, the madness of early wake-ups and class planning and internal flights, and for all I’m a little nervous there’s this overriding sense of heading into the unknown that I’m so excited by. It even felt this week like London tried its best to give us a little taste of what’s to come, when we had to pause the scene we were working on to rush to the window like kids to look at the snow that was falling over the city. It won’t be a patch on the cold of South Bend, but it’s enough to make it all feel a little more immediate. Bring on the showing, bring on the bittersweet stresses of plane travel, bring on Indiana in all its icy glory. We can take it.