By Michael Wagg

It’s about quality not quantity, of course. But late last night, weary yet buoyed by a second consecutive two-show day, we kicked back on the moodily-lit mezzanine of the Union Club Hotel here in West Lafayette, and crunched some numbers.  

This week between us we’ve led 20 workshops for 600 students of Purdue University; most of them STEM majors (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) taking secondary humanities courses on ‘Transformative Texts.’ Purdue is well-known for taking giant leaps in engineering and aeronautics. It’s the alma mater of Neil Armstrong and the airy stomping ground of Amelia Earhart.  As the welcome card on our bedroom pillows whispered, ‘storied history and tradition are all around you.’  

Back to the numbers. We’ve performed four shows, including an abridged version for bussed-in high school students, to a collective crowd of about 1200. We’ve also hosted a workshop demonstration for dozens of donors, who financially and heartily support arts projects like ours; this was a hoot, by the way, and included a committed ‘story whoosh’ through Hamlet (see pic of a participant in full and unexpected ‘trust fall.’ Which in other words means ‘falling over and hoping someone catches you.’ Thankfully Esmonde and Jack did. 

The point is, I guess, it feels like we’ve made an impact here. We’ve also felt very much part of this college and town community. As we’re only ever in situ for five full working days this is relatively rare, and it’s a testament to our hosts here that we’ve felt so involved. It’s been lovely to be stopped by students in the street who’ve seen a show; both Hamlet and last year’s Dream. We’ve got stuck in and loved being part of campus life; including catching college basketball, gulping root beer at the famous Triple XXX chop house, nattering to various brewery bar tenders (in my case) and bowling in the bowels of the student union. 

Jack and I didn’t wait for an invitation and headed straight for Harry’s Chocolate Shop on day one. Despite the name this much-loved institution is a lively pub where the motto is – as everywhere across the Purdue campus – ‘Go Ugly Early.’ The aggression of the phrase belies the friendly, good nature of the place and if these words found their way into the graveyard scene on Friday night, blame the clowns! 

Incidentally, I’m back in Harry’s now to file this report and just asked some students for a fact about Purdue. They said that if you leave your bicycle unlocked here it won’t be stolen but it will end up high in a tree. That’s the deal and I can believe it. This is a place of thinking different. How else do you get someone ready for the moon?

Back on earth, this sense of being part of the life of the university is helped hugely by the basics. Mainly, where do we live? The location of the lodging during these touring weeks is vital and can have a real impact on how we experience, and contribute to, each place. Take note, hotel bookers. Down with freeway-hugging, anti-pedestrian isolation units!  

Here at Purdue, it’s the best possible scenario. The hotel is right in the heart of campus. In fact, what offers at ground level a tranquil, beautifully designed and detailed hotel, reveals at its lower levels the Student Union itself, complete with food court, bars, games rooms and those Rack ‘n’ Roll bowling lanes. It’s the best of both worlds. Added to which, it is possible to walk from the comfy style of the hotel bedrooms straight to the stage where we played without even stepping outside. I like stepping outside, but the point is proximity. I’ve said it before, but in this country of cars, walking rocks.   

You may wonder at the glibness of the observation – but anyone who’s ever been on one of these tours, or any tour for that matter, will know what I’m talking about. Location. Or, in the spirit of Hamlet’s repetition of three: location, location, location. Ease of access to the places we drop into and have limited time to explore means so much and might just deliver Purdue the plaudits when we look back in wonder from our end of tour awards night.

What Purdue and Lafayette achieve is an almost optimum tour triangle: between hotel, theatre/classroom, and downtown. To feel part of campus life, while being able to explore the community it sits in, whether good, bad or ugly, is part of the story; perhaps part of the obligation of travel. Therefore as a stranger give it welcome. The nature of this triangle makes a difference to what we take away from each place, and I’m sure on our ability to leave something behind too; to make that impact we’re leaping for. Nice pillows help, too. 

As does a piece of the moon. Thanks to the small step that sort of started here – alongside a comical train celebrating The Boilermakers of this town and one of them called Purdue Pete (pictured meeting Jo) – there’s a piece of the moon right here. It’s just a few small steps from where we lay our heads. On those plump pillows we dream of stepping into the unknown each time we tell our story and, vitally, wake to remind our students and ourselves to dream big. There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Harry, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

By Michael Wagg

We’ve been treated to a really warm welcome here in Cleveland, Ohio, at John Carroll University. The kindness of the staff and students particularly appreciated, after a mammoth travel day to get us here and a week of deep snow and busy toing and froing between lodging and campus. We’ll have to imagine the lolling about on grassy quads of this small, handsome university the students talk of, but the sight of it snow-covered was a blinking delight. Once we were able to open our eyes against the biting wind, swirling flakes and early starts!  AFTLS have visited JCU seven times since the first residency here twenty years ago, including a previous Hamlet in 2006. So a shout out to Geoffrey Beevers, who I’ve never met but whose Polonius-sized snow boots I’ve stepped into.

It’s been the most beaverish of weeks in terms of classroom commitments, working with students of Classical Mythology, Detective Fiction, Statistics, Business Law, Irish Literature, Climate Change and American Song, to name but a few of them. Jack grabbed the session on Alcohol in Amercian Literature that I had my eye on, for the thought of wetting my whistle on a Friday afternoon! But that had to wait for the lovely post-show party on Saturday night with faculty staff and student volunteers, and a saunter to the Winking Lizard Tavern on Sunday from where I report, over a local St Fatty’s red ale. 

Despite the demanding, and always rewarding, education work that we do in the early part of the week, we have to somehow try to keep our blinking eyes on the production itself, ready for when it comes round towards the end of the week. Each time, we might not have played the show for over a week and will have had our minds fully absorbed in meetings and session plans for the current week, as well as the one to come, so this is another part of the challenge and the rhythm of life on the road. I could use this phrase in every one of these blogs – and probably will until someone tells me not to – but the readiness is all.

Running the lines and using technical rehearsal time to revisit and tweak certain moments helps with this. But in the end, it’s probably just about diving back in and finding it afresh. The beginning of the first show of the week can sometimes feel like a grasping for some half-forgotten territory; and at its best feels like landing in an undiscovered country. One that’s covered in snow, surrounded by oversize guitars and sits on the banks of Lake Erie, maybe. And always while trying to remember words, words, words. No one said it was easy!

As a side note, and thinking about that Undiscovered Country, we’ve been amusing ourselves through the making and running of the show in noting just how many titles – of plays, films, books, songs – come directly from the Hamlet text. There are loads of them, adding to the long list of common phrases for which we have Hamlet to thank. I intend to make a full list of the titles taken from or inspired by Hamlet by the time we get to Washington State, but as an appetizer I’ll add to Undiscovered Country (Stoppard and Star Trek), Murder Most Foul (Miss Marple and Bob Dylan), The Motive and the Cue, and of course, The Mousetrap.

But back to re-finding our Hamlet. It’s not always the case but it’s felt like our three shows here at the Kulas Auditorium at JCU, have each been a rediscovery. A few of the faculty staff commented that they saw the show on all three nights and enjoyed the differences; perhaps in variations of pace at certain points, perhaps in a new focus, stress or energy at others. I have to hold my hands up and confess that the words that come out of my pipes as the Gravedigger offer some peculiar variation from show to show! But then s/he’s a clown so that, in my book, is as it should (or shouldn’t) be. Let those that play your clowns speak no more than etc. etc. 

I think the five of us agree that the shows this week each had their own particular feel, or groove maybe, with each of us finding new ground at different times. It’s felt very alive. It always should and that’s the very heart of the challenge, but sometimes it holds more than others. Maybe deep snow, slicing wind and a punishing schedule helps!

As does warming up. After quite some time at this game, Jack and I have finally cracked it this week and found the perfect way to prepare and summon readiness: Northern Soul. We are on the banks of Lake Erie after all, with Canada just beyond, and Wigan somewhere over there. I’ve no idea how we found ourselves throwing shapes pre-show on Friday night, but we haven’t looked back since, dancing silently in our best attempt at the style. And if a snippet of its driven bounce found its way into the graveyard scene that night, blame the clowns!

The summoning of the groove and the pounding of the floor at this point in the tour is as it should be, too. I didn’t know it before landing here, but while Memphis may be its birthplace it is, perhaps surprisingly, Cleveland, Ohio where the phrase to describe the music as Rock ‘n’ Roll was first coined. Hence the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame standing here in Downtown Cleveland. I popped in to its funky pyramid-shaped home on the way to look at a frozen Lake Erie. Gazing out across the vast, icy emptiness, I struck an air-guitar chord. Imagining Elsinore, and the twist and shout of our show. 

By Michael Wagg

Here in Texas, it’s work, work, work. In Hamlet’s hands it’s words, words, words. And, in wonderfully weird Austin, it’s all fun.

The University of Texas at Austin is a stalwart of support for the AFTLS project. Apart from our historic bases in Notre Dame, Chapel Hill and Santa Barbara, UT Austin has welcomed our week-long residencies more than most. Since the first one here in 1979 happy bands of five have touched down in this singular pocket of Texas almost thirty times to share Shakespeare. And the welcome here is as warm as ever; if not the weather, which has been rather chilly.

We’ve had an action-packed week: of shows in the theatre at the vast Bullock State History Museum, and of workshops across this equally vast and bright campus. So, just as Joanna did at Barton Springs this week, let’s jump right in. 

I’ve led sessions with students taking courses in Leadership in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (which included a chance to hurl Shakespeare insults at their Professor); in Performance & Activism, in which we developed site-responsive readings of the opening scene of Hamlet in the spaces around campus green; and on Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine. One of the real treats of this work is how we’re encouraged to explore texts new to us, in the context of our production, or as in this case, encouraged to return to a text we might have read many years ago as uber-keen drama students, like the mirrors we’re often faced with. 

Midweek, Esmonde, Joanna and I were thrown bleary-eyed into the storm of a cavernous lecture theatre to make a choral reading of the opening of The Tempest with 200 students, all of them participating as wind, rain, thunder or human. The racket created, at 9am on a Wednesday morning, was quite the tonic.  

Meanwhile Jack led sessions with students of Global Teaching Methods and Human Rights, as well as Shakespeare workshops in both High and Elementary Schools. Sadie tackled Early Celebrity and Masterworks of World Drama (as did Esmonde and Joanna; there’s a lot of ground to cover!). Sadie also worked with students on the marvelous Shakespeare at Winedale course. We now all proudly wear our Winedale t-shirts on which Shakespeare proudly sports his Texan Stetson.  

Sadie and Esmonde paired up to explore Greece and Rome in film; while Joanna and Esmonde did the same for an Intro to LGBTQ Studies. Sadie and I finished the week working with younger Shakespeareans at their Saturday morning club, before watching their performance in the lobby of the Bullock Museum prior to our final show of the week. 

The variety of subjects we’re asked to engage with is the real joy of this project: how much ground we can cover in the course of a week, always in direct connection to the spirit and endeavour of the rehearsal room, is the challenge and the thrill of it. We don’t always have the answers, of course, but together we’ll find a way to give it a go. 

At any given moment this week any number of us were in classrooms exploring what Shakespeare’s text shows us of the world around us: here and now, in Austin, Texas. The only downside is that for the most part we don’t get to see the sessions the other four deliver. But the buzz of sharing ideas for exercises and checking back in with each other at the end of the day about how the class landed – before we put our acting hats back on – is a nourishing thing. It’s great when one of us comes back from a class, as is often the case, and declares a hit, a very palpable hit. 

It’s not for me to say, but it does seem that we might be bold enough to think that of our shows here too. Three sold out performances were met with whoops and cheers in Austin style. At least I think so, as my ears are currently blocked thanks to a pesky cold. We continue to develop the show, and after a line-run in the Texas Chili Parlor, to the bemusement of our server, we tweaked the story of our Fortinbras and his Norwegian troops. It was a refreshing reminder that the show will never be made, but is always in the making.  

It’s not all work and we’ve loved exploring Austin. Joanna’s covered the Capitol Building, the LBJ Presidential Library and the Big Bullock among other things. A committed historian, Jo leads the way in diving into all this for us. Jack and I enjoyed the excited hush of the Harry Ransom Center: a veritable treasure trove of literary archives. Jack settled in with the papers of his beloved Edgar Allan Poe; while I read letters between Tom Stoppard and Homer ‘Murph’ Swander, the heart and brains behind the original AFTLS dream. 

Jo and I grabbed the chance of a gig at the legendary Hole in the Wall, taking in the country blues and the player’s advice to ‘stay up late, with Todd Day Wait.’ Sadie, meanwhile, deserves serious hats off, including Stetsons. Not only did she stay up late and then early the next morning run the Austin 5k, but out of a field of 1000s she finished second in her age group and top ten overall!

Esmonde never stops working, but I’m pleased to report that he’s just found a joint called Shakespeare’s Pub. So I’ll head off for some froth ‘n’ elbow, leaving Austin with a warm, fuzzy feeling. Warm, thanks to the welcome of the folk here and from the satisfaction of a week of Hamlet’s words. Fuzzy, thanks to blocked ears! These darn ears stopped me from joining the others for a well-earned Texas two-step at the glorious Broken Spoke last night. Until I find some olive oil, the rest is silence.  

By Michael Wagg

The US is sport mad. And so are we. Here in Virginia, propelled by the lacrosse locker room antics of last week, we’ve joined up good and proper. Back home in south-east London my wife and I have a strange habit of substituting the word ‘stupid’ for anything similar. Don’t ask. Weston Stupid-Mare, for example. Or, of course, the Stupid Bowl. But I can report that this Bowl is anything but. The Super Bowl is in fact both super and bloody brilliant. 

The five of us Hamleters embraced the game from the off, warming up by cheering on Notre Dame in the College final, before settling in for the pro Championship finals (essentially the semi-finals) in our first week away. We each picked a team, but most of us came up short. Which made most of us Philadelphia Eagles fans for the big one, since the Eagles were underdog to the Chiefs, winners of the last two Bowls in a row. Back home in south-east London, we’re also often shouting Eagles (the moniker for Crystal Palace FC) with an absurdly elongated ee. So it all makes sense. Somehow.

In fact, we’re equally likely to be shouting about Hamlet. But I’ll come to that in a moment. Back to the Bowl. We ensconced ourselves in Revolution Golf & Grille for the main event. To the untrained eye this game can seem like four hours of aggressive advertising peppered with the odd bit of chucking a ball about; but it’s far more than that. It’s a bloody good – if funny old – game. 

As the ebb and flow of the action met the ebb and flow of beer and wings, the 59^th Super Bowl became a glorious turn up for the books. Prompting a hasty rewrite of this blog! The Eagles dominated from the off. The Chiefs appeared strangely out of sorts and, despite a late attempt at a comeback, Philadelphia triumphed 40-22. The Eagles soared as quarterback Jalen Hurts did the damage. 

But back to Hamlet. Or rather to that bit of it that is forever south-east London. I promise I’ll talk about the work we’re doing at some point! But I can’t let this tour pass, nor contain my excitement in celebrating its resonance for me and those dear to me, without mentioning our beloved Hamlet. 

I don’t expect you to have heard of Dulwich Hamlet FC – also known as The Hamlet – but it’s a lower league football/soccer club that plays in pink ‘n’ blue and I spend an inordinate amount of time engaged with it. The club sits at the heart of its community; which I’m sure is true of the midnight green of the Philly Eagles, too.

Sarah and I got married on the Dulwich Hamlet pitch 14 years ago; we scored a goal as a surrogate kiss, enjoyed speeches in the main stand and a punk party in the clubhouse after. I’m proud to sit on the board of the Supporters’ Trust and write about the club regularly. I’ve never been in a production of Hamlet before; but have bellowed the word countless times beside muddy pitches here, there and everywhere. I’ve long dreamt of making a Hamlet for The Hamlet and it might just happen now!

The ‘Hamlet’ of the football club refers to a small village, but never mind that. Hamlet, the drama, is part of the club’s folklore. We sing songs on the terraces about ‘reading Shakespeare’ – once again with that elongated ee. We sell t-shirts in the club shop (a shipping container where I often put in a shift) with Yorick emblazoned across them.

Yorick is one of the most famous Shakespeare characters, despite appearing only as the skull of a man who died 23 years ago. The misquoted ‘Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well’ does him a huge disservice. The more accurate ‘I knew him, Horatio’ forces the actor to stress the verb. Hamlet knew him. As a youngster he sat on his knee and laughed at his brilliant nonsense. Yorick is the spirit of Hamlet. 

And Hamlet is the spirit, for me at least, of the art and the sport. Among the five of us there are of course other teams making our hearts flutter. Arsenal looms large and Liverpool too. But as the First Gravedigger I wear a bobble hat in the pink ‘n’ blue of Dulwich Hamlet. 

Right, as promised, what work have we done here in Williamsburg, Virginia? Not that much to be honest. It’s been a very light week, but a lovely one. Joanna and I led a workshop on interpretations of The Tempest; while Sadie and Jack tackled the difficult ending of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 

Our show at the Glenn Close Theatre went down really well. A trip to College Creek Beach rewarded us with the special sight of two bald eagles (there to spur on Philly, no doubt) and we’ve enjoyed exploring the peculiar spaces of this history-dripped town. 

I’ve not the words left nor the insight to describe it, but it’s very historic. That much I know. I also know that Glenn Close was a student here at The College of William & Mary; as were four US presidents, including Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe (pictured, as a Hamlet fan). The college is the second-oldest higher education institution in the US, founded in 1693, exactly 200 years before The Hamlet. 

Adding to the Sport, there’s an intriguing graduation ‘triathlon’ tradition of jumping the walls of the Governor’s Palace, streaking through the Sunken Garden, and swimming in the Crim Dell. We waited in vain on the pretty bridge for a view of the action. The downtown of ‘colonial’ Williamsburg is like no other and has to be seen to be believed. It’s somewhere between Stratford-Upon-Avon and East Dulwich. Which is no bad thing. I grew up in Warwickshire and get my kicks at The Hamlet. Football’s the winner!

By Michael Wagg

True hope is swift

Here we go.  Ahead of us are ten US cities, across eight states, in three time zones. A play written 425 years ago which may be the most famed of them all; 26 characters, just five actors to inhabit them. A company with 50 years’ history, making and touring almost 80 full productions of Shakespeare plays, alongside classroom residencies for thousands of students since 1975. And now it’s our turn: we are Esmonde, Jack, Joanna, Sadie and Waggy, raising our bats for a half century. 

The weight of all this, the hope itself, could feel immense. Added to which are all those Hamlets behind us, all those Ophelias, Horatios, Osrics and Yoricks, hanging round our necks whispering ‘remember me.’ But with Shakespeare as some sort of engine, here at Hope College in the thaw, what I think we feel at the outset is the opposite: lightness, swiftness. A murmuration in blank verse. The readiness is all.

Someone stop me, before I lose myself in a vortex of theatrical-ornithological nostalgia. There’ll be plenty more of that along the way, by the way! And incidentally, starlings exist in the US thanks to their mention in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. But what are we actually doing here? 

Well, we’ve rehearsed our production of Hamlet for five weeks at the Karibu Centre in Brixton, London, followed by a week consolidating the work – while opening bank accounts, getting social security numbers and slurping French onion soup – on the campus of our home base at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. What Homer ‘Murph’ Swander and Captain Jean Luc Picard set in motion, among others, 50 years ago is stronger than ever and still true to its original aim: Shakespeare, front and centre. 

We are a five-strong company of actors who have made our show with no single director, designer, composer or stage management. The stuff of our production, like all of those before us, fits into one suitcase and it can be played anywhere, with no depending on set or costuming and with very little stage tech. Though we do have a few tricks up our collective sleeve. Our motto from the off has been ‘for the good of the play.’ 

We’ve already previewed to a focused audience at the Westville Correctional Facility in Indiana, and this week opened the show proper at the Knickerbocker Theater in downtown Holland, Michigan. Which is a lovely town by the way, full of breweries and tulips, somewhere under the ice.

As always, we’ve also spent the week working across campus with students of all disciplines at this handsome Liberal Arts College on the east shore of Lake Michigan. It’s been a relatively light week so we’ve been lowered gently into the plunge pool of learning. I led a workshop for Creative Writing majors coming to the business end of their course and then one for Acting students on Waiting For Godot. Sadie and Joanna led sessions with Psychologists exploring sleep and global child rights.

Meanwhile Esmonde ran a workshop on improvisation, while Jack was thrust into the locker room to work with the men’s lacrosse team on dealing with ‘trash talk.’ Shakespeare’s dynamic, juicy insults are never not needed, and if ever there was an example of how this work works – where something of Shakespeare meets, head on, something of the world – Jack’s raucous, brilliant session was it. As they say at the Sport, or at the original Globe for that matter: scenes! 

Our first shows, at the glorious Art Nouveau Knickerbocker and at the Muskegon Correctional Facility, were warmly received – the prison performance in particular, a forceful reminder of the concrete value of this work. Research shows that by committing to this four-year degree program, of which our performance was part, our audience are reducing their chances of reoffending by 75%. One student thanked us afterwards ‘for taking me out of here for two hours.’

The shows have bolstered us to continue to refine and reinvent our telling of this soul-searching story. Particularly after Sadie overheard a potential audience member outside the theatre asking ‘What the f*#k is Hamlet?!’  It’s a good question and we hope the answer lies on the road ahead; but since brevity is the soul of wit – something I ought to know by now and have spectacularly failed to achieve in this first missive – I’ll share more about the show in the coming weeks and dive into some of the history of this singular company, AFTLS & Shakespeare at Notre Dame.

To call it a company is right, but it’s far more than that: it’s a life-long project, certainly a way of life for us five hopefuls for the next ten weeks; it’s a labour of many, many loves, and a creative commitment to share Shakespeare’s words, not on the page, but in the air between us.