The campus at UT Austin is pretty vast so we were assigned volunteers to help us get around. They were wonderfully helpful, to the extent that it felt disingenuous to be independent. I ended up one morning going in to town to buy cowboy boots, and a Stetson, supervised by a relative stranger. Thankfully I think her taste was good, and I now have a full on cowboy disguise. With flames on the boots. Until I open my mouth I am mistaken for being Texan. I expect I’ll be wearing them a lot when I get back to London.

By now we have found confidence with the teaching aspect of the job, helping them gain understanding and confidence and challenging them within that. Perhaps the most heartening thing is that the show itself still feels very much alive. Still, most nights, something new is offered in the moment which makes sense. That the five of us, who have been living in each other’s pockets for such a long time now, can still surprise each other and positively play with each other is a wonderful thing. Much as the small community can cause tempers to fray, we have really had a chance to get to know one another, and learn how to serve one another best in the context of the show.

A vindication of that took place on Saturday night, when we drove to Winedale to put the show on right there, in the barn. Since the seventies there have been young Americans spending their summers doing Shakespeare in a lovely little converted barn in the middle of the Texan countryside. Shakespeare has seeped into the wood. There is a community of alumni that stretches through the generations, and they meet and make lifelong friends over nine hot weeks of hard bard in a warm barn. For us it was a totally different space, with stairs and multiple entrances, with the audience right on top of us, and no time to think about it. And it was lovely. Because we know each other.

Now we are approaching the end of the tour, I’m more aware of how intensive it has been, being in such a small and diverse community for such a length of time, and working so openly and hard with one another. The fact that we still seek each other’s company in the downtime is testament to the fact that, even though we are really different, we are connected by our passion for the work we do. We have just arrived in Denton, and for the first time since Notre Dame we all taught a class together. And it was fun, and not restricted. Here’s to a great last week in North Texas.