By Michael Wagg

Journey’s end. And it ended in triumph. In more ways than one. Firstly, with a great week here at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington state. It’s the first time AFTLS has worked here and we’re sure it won’t be the last, after lovely, lively workshops at both the university and a local high school, as well as two well-received shows at the excellent, and startlingly clean, Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center. The theatre’s a stone’s throw from the house where Bing Crosby grew up, now part of the Gonzaga campus, so we were Swinging on a Star for the final throws of the tour not least at the prospect of bubbles in the fridge for afters, courtesy of our kind hosts here. 

Bing studied Law at Gonzaga, before packing his drums into the back of a pickup and heading to LA and the big time; while our Jack declared his class with students at the Law School this week the best of the tour. If only we’d been here a century ago, he might have encouraged a young Bingo to throw some verse around the courtroom and changed the course of showbiz history.

Jack’s declaration signaled the time for our end of tour awards – a lively, at times fierce debate over cocktails in the Ruby River Hotel to determine our favourites in various key categories. In fact, the Ruby River Hotel took top spot on accommodation, thanks to an excellent breakfast (picking up that prize too), riverside location, extensive happy hour and hot tub to boot. 

Honourable mentions in other areas went to the Grand Opera House in Meridian, Mississippi – an absolute stunner. To The Boxcar bar on the roof of the Threefoot Hotel, also in Meridian; to the swimming pool at the Sheraton Hotel, Boston (much to my umbrage, as a fan of the warm waters of the Garden Inn, Williamsburg, Virginia); and to the many breweries of Holland, Michigan. On a side note, I’ve taken the brewery research seriously and clocked up a half-century on Untapped beer app. 

We’ve met many top people along this road and are grateful for all their kindness and expertise. But special plaudits went to our colleagues at the University of Notre Dame (take a bow, Brian); similarly at Hope College and the Knickerbocker Theater in Holland; and to the students and faculty, particularly the brilliant Jean Feerick, at JCU in University Heights, Ohio. 

Purdue University ranked highly for its students, teaching and producing staff, as well as its unique hotel (bowling in the basement; whiskey in the bar). Austin, Texas is a marvellous place and was never far from the top of our lists. While despite quiet weeks, both Willam & Mary in Williamsburg and Mississippi State in Starkville picked up tributes. But as we squabbled late into the night over more cocktails and chocolate cake (happy birthday, Jo!) we had to find a champion. It was nail bitingly close, went to a second-round count, as both Meridian and ND pushed it all the way. But ultimately we agreed, perhaps surprisingly, that this small city with a river running through it, complete with waterfalls, strangely beautiful 1970s structures, an abundance of brilliant breweries – and a hot tub! – steals it.  Spokane rocks!

We took our awards seriously, as silly as they sound. They are, in fact, both. This touring life makes it so. And there was one more silly-serious issue to settle, and one more triumph to come. Between shows on Saturday, we sat down together for the ridiculously tense Great Pen Count. Yes, for the past ten weeks, four out of the five of us have been furiously and furtively collecting pens (Jo was the VAR). The rules were strict: the pen must be branded with the place where it was found; the player must have been to the place and have proof if necessary; the pen can’t have been bought; the pen must work! Here we are warming up for the count:

It was clear after our early reveals that this was going to be a close-run thing. Players panicked as they realised they’d mislaid significant pens, or they bemoaned the realisation of duplicates. As the credentials of each declared pen were debated passionately, a front runner emerged – only to have several entries disqualified late on for lack of ink. By the end of a fraught count there was just one pen in it. Breathless, the champion sank to his knees. I’d like to thank my wife, my mother and father, William Shakespeare, our cats Vince and Kenny…  If I achieve nothing else in this winding, ink-stained life, they can never take from me the fact that I won the Pen Wars of Hamlet ‘25.

Joking aside, as we head west to Seattle, before back the other way and home, I would like to say some serious thanks. To our colleagues at AFTLS and Shakespeare at ND who make it all happen, against all the odds. Here’s to another 50 years, bellowing ‘Just Shakespeare’s work!’ And here’s to celebrating this remarkable company in London, at the Cockpit Theatre and Dulwich Hamlet. But most of all I’d like to thank four people: for this journey, five months in the making, the carrying and the playing of our Hamlet. It’s a pleasure to be part of this team. I’ve been round similar bends many times, but I can’t think of a better bunch to do it with. 

Here’s to you: Esmonde Cole (Hamlet, Marcellus, Fortinbras, Pirate, Tech 2, social secretary, crack case packer); Joanna Clarke (Ophelia, Laertes, Guildenstern, Bernado, Player-Queen, Tech 1, history wayfinder, Bananagrams seeker); Sadie Pepperrell (Gertrude, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Player, Travel genius); Jim-Jack Whitam (Claudius, Ghost, Francisco, Captain, Player, fellow Gravedigger, Edu coach and theatre-maker to his very bones). Thank you, all. You are the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, etc. Etc. 

See you in London for more of the thing. The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail. 

By Michael Wagg

Looking back, from a Chicago thunderstorm and the shelter of a brewpub to our residency week at the University of Notre Dame: it was back to The Bend (South Bend), back to base and back to basics. Three shows, eighteen classes and a chance to regroup with a home crowd and our much-loved colleagues at Shakespeare at Notre Dame.

The ND residency often happens at the beginning of the tour, after the final rehearsals, but in this case we returned for the penultimate touring week after eight on the road – weeks that we all agree have both flown by and taken years! – so it felt very much a homecoming. There’ll be another one when we head back for our residency at ND London (at its swanky-placed base just off Trafalgar Square) and shows at the Cockpit Theatre and Dulwich Hamlet Football Club. Yes, Hamlet at The Hamlet is happening. 

Three sold out shows in the intimate feel of the Decio Theater at Notre Dame gave us an opportunity to get some momentum back after three unusual weeks – a split location in Mississippi; a week off (in which we covered New Orleans, Nashville and New York City between us) and an academic Shakes-fest in Boston. Back at base we grabbed the chance of stage time to continue to develop the show; as well as refueling on French onion soup and pretzel bites at O’Rourke’s pub. 

The enthusiasm of the audience response over three nights suggested either one of these paid off as all went well. Apart from my personal malfunction with a harmonica and a bit of fluff at the very business end of Saturday’s performance, rendering the tragic debris of our stage briefly ridiculous. We did equally well to hold our giggles together and, thankfully, the rest was silence. 

It was great to get back into the classrooms too, with the variety of subject that is the very joy of this job. Jack covered a course on Philosophy and Self-knowledge. Joanna led on Collaborative Theatre; Esmonde on The Bible; and Sadie on Wellbeing: writing and rhetoric. I explored The Tempest and Milton’s Paradise Lost, site-specific in a chilly campus quad; as well as an introduction to The Bacchae – which gave me a chance to try my Euripides/trousers joke for a second time. [Read: you-RIP-a-DEES]. It went about as well as the first time and I now concede! 

Esmonde encouraged his students to Outwit, Outplay and Outlast each other in a session exploring the Dynamics of [the TV gameshow] Survivor. Jack led a class on Alcohol in Irish Literature to add to the American version he staggered through a few weeks ago. While Sadie got perhaps the best course title of the tour so far, joining a class on Sex & Power in Irish Literature: From Warrior Queens to Punk Poets.

Meanwhile Joanna and Jack visited a local high school; while Sadie and I worked with the lovely (Not So) Royal Shakespeare Co. – a society for student Shakespeare enthusiasts across this pretty regal campus. 

Jack also went to work with the young men at De Paul Academy, a secure program serving male teenagers with mental health needs and behavioural issues – back to the basics of why we’re here and close to where our American journey started 10 weeks ago. 

We head to pastures new to all of us next week, as this windy city blows us (but mad) north-north west to Washington state and, appropriately on this zig-zag journey, about as far away as possible before our flights home. So it was strengthening to be at our home-from-home last week and to take some time to reflect before heading to Chicago, the city of big shoulders.

The pull and rhythm of these tours can perhaps focus us inward. We have a job to do, on stage and in the classroom, and try to keep on track. I rarely turn on the TV in my hotel room. I currently limit my viewing to the March Madness college basketball season. But my colleagues keep in tune far better and, of course, we can see and feel the tenor of the current climate here in the US. We have conversations with faculty and students. Some are scared; some are angry. Many are scared and angry. I’m also aware that these conversations happen in a particular liberal context, that the picture we get is from the campus quads and that the wider world is broader, and wider, and almost certainly harsher.

Before I took shelter from this brief storm here in Chicago, I stood near a man shouting. I guessed he didn’t have a home. He was beating a stick against the corner of Starbucks and howling above the rain and wind. He brought Lear on the heath to mind, and he pulled my focus sharply. There are currents buffeting this country, across all aspects of society including the fundamentals and freedoms of our art, from which there seems no shelter. 

Lucky enough to be sitting in the dry I thought again about why we’re here – I mean telling this story, sharing it with students – if not to explore how it is to live. How it is to be human. To try to make us better at it. Perhaps to make others, including the powerful – particularly the powerful – better at it. When we hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature the image is bleak. But those classes that we deliver, to the best of our ability and care, with young people exploring self-knowledge, wellness, collaboration, stories of heaven and hell, we need to cling to them. I feel scared and angry too.

And I think we’re going to need to cling to each other. And to our conviction: that this art nudges the world, and that telling stories of how we live is more vital than ever. The play’s [one of the things] wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the King.

By Michael Wagg

The suitcase is dead. Long live the suitcase. 

For fifty years, twice a year, intrepid bands of five have toured the States performing Shakespeare and teaching ways to explore the plays in action. There have always been five of us. There has always been Shakespeare’s text and a list of places to play. And there has always been one other given: a suitcase. Or to be precise, the showcase. The stuff of our show, like all of those before it, travels in one poor, put upon piece of plastic. And, sadly, the most recent Rocinante to the AFTLS entourage has given up the ghost.

Rocinante was Don Quixote’s horse; as well as John Steinbeck’s pickup truck. This particular Rocinante started life on the tour of Macbeth in 2022 that I was lucky enough to be on too (a much talked-of tour among green-eyed AFTLS alumni for taking the extra lucky five to Hawaii, Bermuda and all points in between – did I ever tell you about the time I swam with turtles in Hawaii, etc, etc). Our Rocinante has since completed a further three tours: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, before staggering to the halfway point of this stint on Hamlet.

The significant thing about the showcase is that it carries everything any given production needs. Apart from the actual five actors; though that wouldn’t be a bad idea. Nothing else is required. Shakespeare’s text comes too, of course, but that travels free assuming we’ve learned and remember our lines. The showcase invariably carries things like hats (numerous), a foldable walking-stick, torches, random pieces of fabric, a Priest’s stole, creamy paper (for letters), a thunder drum and a load of kazoos. 

For our show it also carries three fantastic puppets, designed by the brilliant Vi & Sly. But the other significant thing about the old case, and I’m sure of its ancestors too, is what’s on the outside of it. What’s there tells a graphic story of our collective journeys. The showcase that died – and all we mourn for – was bedecked with stickers from ports at which this Shakespearean workhorse called. The latest incarnation included emblems of Kansas State, John Carroll, Rice, BYU, Wellesley, Oswego, Muscle Shoals studios, and a bespectacled Hugh-manatee from Grace College, Winona Lake.

Our UK Liaison Jen Higham – another AFTLS workhorse – will attest to the beauty of its stickered self. But the showcase was also a piece of plastic and fabric bought from a shop in Brixton, and it’s never gonna last forever. So, as we dragged it to its final resting place in the dusty dock corner of a theatre in Indiana, I thought of you, Jen. Forgive me for equating you with a luggage solution, but you get the idea! And I know you loved this Rocinante as much as I did. Lay her i’ th’ earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh, May violets spring!

It’s been replaced with a younger, smarter Rocinante, starting to earn its tour stickers and stripes. My only real sadness is that the old case didn’t quite make it to this week just gone. I would have loved to see it here in Boston, floating on a sea of Shakespeareana. We’ve spent the week surrounded, engulfed and uplifted (literally, in crowded elevators) by Shakespeareans from far and wide – at the Shakespeare Association of America annual academic conference. 

Our show begins for the audience with the sight of a suitcase – the showcase – on a bare stage with Yorick’s skull perched on it. Centre stage for the showcase, then, at this centrepiece celebration of Shakespeare academia. All five of us on this tour, as well as Jen and our Shakespeare at ND colleagues attending the conference, and our family and friends who joined us here in Boston, love Shakespeare. But this crowd we found ourselves part of – often in a lift with – were something else. They live and breathe it. There were seminars, for example, on The Early Modern Undead; on Re-weirding and/as Re-wilding; and on vegetal presence in Shakespeare’s texts. (Hence how I couldn’t resist referring to a lecture on vegetables during the gravediggers’ scene). It was a literal feast of Will.

The session we five delivered on Shakespeare in Performance on Thursday morning was a lively success, complete with bean game, insults and a raucous reading of the Hamlet, Ophelia nunnery scene. It was also a great chance to show our prospective faculty colleagues just what this work can bring to their classrooms. 

Then after the treat of seeing the exceptional Sonnet Man – who teaches Shakespeare though hip hop – our show on Saturday night was the conference closer and went with a bang and a genuinely joyful response from these Shakespeare aficionados. I’m sure we felt extra pressure to deliver the goods, to prove it from the workhorse’s mouth; and I think particularly so because of the heritage of the AFTLS project, and the timing of this gig during our 50th anniversary year.

As Shakespeare at ND Artistic Director Scott Jackson explained poignantly pre-show it was here at this very conference that Homer ‘Murph’ Swander pressed upon the gathered crowd of academics the need to teach Shakespeare as a live and living thing, as a proposal for an event, always lifting the words off the page and into lively action; always shared. What Murph started back then continues good and proper and 50 years later the crowd stood with us to celebrate it. What Murph started also continues in the focus on five actors, one text, and one suitcase. The showcase. 

I’d half a mind to rush back up in the elevator to grab it and give it a whirl round the dance floor. For we danced with the Shakespearoes too, as this whole Shakespearean shebang finished with a glorious disco in the ballroom. What was described rather erroneously as the Malone Society Dance had, in fact, all the tunes, and saw Shakespeare scholars and actors alike throwing shapes into the night. I didn’t fetch the case, but we did hold a cardboard Bard aloft on the dance floor. As did many others. Proof – we know because we carry it with us through airport security – that Murph was right. Shakespeare’s for all of us. Alive and kicking. I rest my case. 

By Michael Wagg

I will be brief (ish) after a particularly light week here in Mississippi. It’s the first time AFTLS have toured to Mississippi State University and I hope it won’t be the last. The Magnolia State and the Bulldogs of MSU keep on giving. Southern hospitality is palpable – everyone says hello, all the time – and hidden gems reveal themselves round every grand or shabby corner. 

It’s a state wrapped in an extraordinary creative, particularly musical, heritage. A trip to the modern Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience here in Meridian reveals, for example, a list of the brilliance born in Mississippi: Jimmie Rodgers, the father of country music; Howlin’ Wolf, Bo Diddley, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Sam Cooke, Tammy Wynette, to name but a few. Not to mention Elvis himself, born just up the road in Tupelo. Such is the talent here that when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll entered the Jimmie Rodgers competition in 1953, he came third!

We started our week in Starkville, home of the main MSU campus and a tidy Main Street, with a workshop and performance at the handsome Bettersworth Auditorium; before heading 100 miles south to Meridian. It’s a small city, with a smart downtown where rejuvenated late-nineteenth century buildings rub up against ghostly shells yet to be; scratch below the surface and the delights come thick and fast. First stop, the impressive Threefoot Hotel. Its 16 storeys, including roof terrace bar on the 11th, recently restored to their late-1920s Art Deco glory dominate the skyline. 

Having celebrated closeness last week up north in Indiana, it turns out it’s Meridian, MS that takes top prize. Just a skip across the road from the Threefoot Hotel is not only the Threefoot Brewing Company (where I whiled away some hours in the company of a cat called Sarcasm) but also the stage door to the theatre where we played on Friday. So close it’s possible to throw a line of verse between the three, or from the roof terrace for that matter, the real delight came once we stepped inside. 

What’s now known as the Riley Center houses Meridian’s Grand Opera House. I’ve been lucky enough to play in some beautiful theatres over the years, but this one might just be the loveliest of them all. Built in 1890, its lavish, compact auditorium, with gently snaking circles and layer upon layer of rich wallpaper, is also known as The Lady after the portrait painted above the proscenium arch. The Lady watches over the stage of this very special building, hauntingly.

Stunned and humbled, I gazed back at her from my bed at the Threefoot Hotel opposite (before heading to the brewery to tell Sarcasm all about it) grateful that our Hamlet’s Ghost got to travel across its solid wood. We’ve walked in the footsteps of Sarah Bernhardt, Gladys Knight, Bo Diddley, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys and Ibsen’s Ghosts among many others. Such a treat. 

And here in Meridian the treats kept coming. They included a late-nineteenth century German-built carousel (the only remaining two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in the world, I’m told, so I had to have a trot, much to the bemusement of the watching adults).  A restaurant opened by a Swiss chef in 1870 and Mississippi’s oldest (think fried green tomatoes and Black Bottom Pie). A quiz at the Brickhaus Brewtique (the less said about our score the better!). A forest hike for Sadie and Jo; and a swirl around Jimmie Rodgers’ place to the sound of the Blue Yodeler himself, for me. A lively community street party with live country rock topped it all off.

After a cracker of a time here in big-hearted Mississippi – and small but endlessly surprising Meridian – we now go our separate ways for a week, before bigger cities to come. Propelled, by the pulse of the Delta blues and the promise of the open road.

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.