“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. 

“Well, Time is the old justice that examines all such offenders, and let Time try.” Everyone told us it would feel real after Christmas. Everyone I spoke to who had done the job before, especially the winter tours, was keen to share the spooky story of how quickly reality would set in once we were back from the festive break. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve always been aware that we’re somewhat against the clock, however this week has felt like something of a crash-landing into the minutiae of everything that goes into putting a play on. I’m suddenly a dance captain, a set dresser, an aficionado of scrolling every possible clothing website to find the exact right cut of long sleeve white blouse for the best possible price. And somewhere in the middle of that, I need to figure out how to be an actor, too. No pressure or anything.

We began a truncated week last week with a day and a half of finishing and consolidating the first two acts of the play – the approach we’re taking right now is to paint the scenes in broad strokes until we have a serviceable version of the whole play, then dive back in with our magnifying glasses and see where we can really get our teeth into the details. That being said, for a first pass at things, I really think we’re doing the play and ourselves justice with the diamonds we’re beginning to mine. Stakes are beginning to come to the surface, character mannerisms beginning to cement and develop, humour and tension and chemistry certainly beginning to make themselves ever more available to us. We work 10am-5pm, which is certainly not the most grueling rehearsal hours I’ve ever worked, but by the end of it I think we all feel the exhaustion of giving our whole, undivided focus to whatever might be in front of us that day. I may be speaking for myself on that, but when we went for drinks after rehearsal last Monday, I managed one 0% Guinness before I had to go home or risk falling asleep on the train. Reader, I am suffering for my art.

For all it was close to Christmas, that day and a half was certainly not spent winding down. By the end of Tuesday morning we’d had, essentially, six full days of rehearsal, and with two acts, five songs, and a jig (we have a jig!) to recap we made use of every possible minute available to us until we all ran off for respective trains to loved ones. And we managed it! Yes, that time pressure was there far in the background, but to have a few days off to enjoy the festive period and to not worry about the state we were leaving the show in felt like a real luxury, and one I’m grateful for. Barring a Zoom line-run to keep things fresh and indicate what might need a refresh before coming back into the room, our focus was off the room and firmly on our families, blood-related or chosen. And then back to London for that post-festive break reality check.

By the way, I’m making it sound like some horrible, crushing, all-consuming fear of what we are about to embark on, and that is far from the case. It’s a wonderful kind of fear, anticipation of the adventure of it all more than anything – there is an overwhelming amount to do but I have no doubt that it will all get done in time, and done to a hell of a high standard at that. Dribs and drabs of costume and set are starting to creep in, like tree roots and vines in Arden – from the internet, from the treasure trove that is Brixton market, from the Mary-Poppins’-bag-esque cupboard at the back of our rehearsal room that houses a veritable museum of past AFTLS productions. Our confidence in our music is growing exponentially, both in instrumentation and vocals – Benjy and Al are taking on the mammoth tasks of not only learning Shakespearean lines and vocal parts, but will be providing the underscoring for the show as well. Jo has also learned several accordion chords so she can accompany when it wouldn’t make sense for Al’s character to play. I’m in awe of them.

We’ve had a group outing to scout hat possibilities for character signifiers, and to purchase material for our boundary – the 20ft x 20ft playing space we mark out and then build our world inside of. This has posed its own challenge, given that the world of the play begins in the oppressive court of Duke Frederick and transitions into the forest, with a few flashes back and forth between the two. A problem to solve for sure, but an opportunity to make a little big of magic too. We certainly ain’t the type to pass that up. The word that keeps popping up for us is ‘ambitious’. It’s been a recurring theme so far, and driven again by our determination to beat that pesky clock. This week we’re aiming to finish the entire show and get a run in of our second half. Ambitious, considering we’re down a day for New Year’s Day, but it all feels quite doable. It’s a hefty schedule, that kicked off on Monday with us crashing right into the 15-page behemoth of Act 3, Scene 3 – Corin and Touchstone arguing! Celia telling Rosalind that Orlando is in the forest! Orlando meeting ‘Ganymede’ and setting up the game of wooing! It’s all kicking off! But I love the way the room works, each of us excited for an opportunity to jump out of a scene to see it from a different angle, or being inside it all and charting a path through.

One challenge I’ve been trying to personally tackle is sitting in the discomfort of trying to figure things out; Al pointed out to me that I have a tendency to try and exorcise tension if my characters are in a bit of a pickle, by moving away or overcompensating with gestures, and he wanted to see what happened to the scene and the character if I held onto that tension. Yes, it can be uncomfortable or vulnerable, but I trust the company and the room and the attention we give each other in it, and for all I know I still have a long way to go, the work we’ve done has already developed beautifully. Seeing Al and Sam being as polite as possible whilst resenting each other under the surface in the scene between Jaques and Orlando had me beaming, and watching Jo and Benjy as Celia and Oliver immediately fall in love the second they clap eyes on each other has had us all giggling like kids.

For all our ambition, we’re sailing through our schedule and we’re largely on track with where we want to be – the thing I keep saying in response to our scheduling is “it’s ambitious, but ambition’s gotten us this far”, and so far ‘this far’ is a pretty great place to be. I’m writing this on New Year’s Day, sitting on my sofa with my partner next to me, one eye on the Middlesbrough game and the other on the scenes we’re looking at when we get back in the room tomorrow. It’s the time of year for taking stock, for assessing where we are and what we want – for making resolutions, famously. Mine is to be kinder to myself, to give myself the grace to not worry about failing as we explore deeper into this beautiful play, to open up and see what possibilities might appear. The conditions are perfect to do it, and there’s no time like the present. From our rehearsal room to wherever you may be, wishing you a very Happy New Year from the five of us, and may your 2026 be filled with as much love, humour, and new opportunities as our characters face in this crazy thing we’re making together. 

“Now go we in content to liberty, and not to banishment.”

I reread As You Like It for the first time in years when the audition for this job came through, and Celia’s line at the close of the play’s first act was what initially galvanised me to want to be a part of this production. I’d encountered As You Like It before, however never with a great amount of (God forgive me) enthusiasm – it isn’t Shakespeare’s plottiest play, or his goriest, or his most magical. After that first re-read I felt almost ashamed to have been so ambivalent towards it as it may, I would argue, be Shakespeare’s most romantic play, however Me-In-October is not yet aware of this. Me-In-October is instead thinking that it’s the play with all the monologues that remind her of drama school auditions – and no one who’s gone through those wants to be reminded of them.

But speaking of first acts, I should begin this properly. The above ‘me’ in question is, well, me – Grace, 26 years old, and originally from Middlesbrough in the North East of England. As an incredibly clumsy child, my parents enrolled me in ballet classes to try and improve my balance and co-ordination; ballet turned into tap, tap turned into Saturday morning theatre groups, and before anyone really knew it I was eighteen years old with suitcase in hand moving to London to try and be an actor. Several years down the line and here I am, doing just that! The beautiful irony of this is that I am, of course, still as uncoordinated now as I was back then, except now I have a degree to break my fall.

You join us on a particularly rainy afternoon in Brixton, smack in the middle of our first week of rehearsals – Al, Benjy, Joanna, Sam, and I, the intrepid troupe taxed with bringing As You Like It from page to stage. Five actors, no director, twenty-or-so characters, as many props and costumes as we can fit in a 22kg suitcase, and five weeks until we head out stateside to perform at venues from Indiana to Austin. The word ‘daunted’ has never come out of my mouth as often as it has these first few days. I’m a newbie to AFTLS, and I’ve never worked in an environment like this before; self-direction and collaboration and relying on your fellow actors to really build up whatever this weird and wonderful process may take the form of. Not only that, but we’re staring down the barrel of some of Shakespeare’s wittiest, wordiest, and most wonderfully written characters, with so much to unravel and discover in the text and the relationships – as well as how in the world we’re going to do that whilst also, in several cases, playing both characters involved in the relationship in question. Sometimes at the same time. My head’s spinning all over again just writing this, but the reason why I wanted to do this so badly was because of how intimidating I found the prospect of it all – if something scares you just the right amount, all the more reason to sprint towards it screaming.

It must be said, I’m thrilled I sprinted. It’s been a wildly positive start, and I’m already immensely proud of the rehearsal room we’re cultivating together. It’s a room I look forward to walking into every morning, one where we solve problems not by simplifying things but by leaning into the complexities and seeing how best we can unknot ourselves from the tangle we make. Our lack of director may seem slightly bonkers at first, but it’s fascinating to see what springs from us just getting a scene on its feet immediately and working our way through it, via whatever Shakespeare leaves for us on the page blended with wherever our instincts may steer us. Our first proper day was spent running the whole play, beginning to end, with zero preparation, just to see what would come to the surface. It’s mad. It’s exhilarating. It’s brilliant, and I’m having a blast.

And beyond just the work, the five of us feel like a really spectacular team. Truly, if you have people around you who can carry you through a 5:30am alarm for appointments at the US embassy, they’re people that are worth putting your trust in. We’re all vastly different individuals – in approach to the work, in life and perspectives, even in experience working with AFTLS – but we’ve gotten each other few a fair share of challenges already and I look forward to seeing what the next ones we’re facing will be. Today we tackled the wrestling match in Act 1 – which, in our version, sees Sam doubling as Orlando and Charles and, therefore, having a boxing match against himself – and had our first deep-dive into the music of the show; the extremities of focus and laughter and silliness and ingenuity and just sheer joy have all been in full swing. I don’t think we’ll get very far at all without that last one.

As You Like It is a tonally fascinating play – it’s pastoral, but also at times a parody of pastoral, and the main character is a woman but also a man but also a woman-playing-a-man-playing-a-woman, and it’s a love story and maybe even a musical but also there’s war and hatred and bad poetry and identity politics and queerness and, naturally, sheep. To find the joy in all that variation, and so much joy at that, is something I’m grateful for and look forward to us diving into deeper, even as we’re thinking about how best to draw out some of the darker aspects of the play. I’d reassure you we weren’t going too dark by telling you all about the mouth trumpet/kazoo duet, but I fear that may be giving the game away too much. Like all of Shakespeare’s comedies, that vein of darkness can be found easily if you look in the right places; tyranny, murder, fratricide, refugees, it’s a hard tightrope to walk and still keep your audience certain that it’ll all work out alright in the end. And it does, in spades – As You Like It ends with (spoiler alert) no less than four marriages! But then again, when so much of the play is about duality, it makes sense for us as actors/directors/designers/musicians/stage managers/candlestick-makers to feel that duality just as much as the characters do. Throughout this whole adventure there will be good days, and hard days, and even days we will likely neglect to share with this blog entirely, but much like the courtiers venturing into the unknown of Arden, I’m certain we’ll be changed by them. I truly can’t wait to see where this particular liberty might lead us – it feels like somewhere special already.

PS – one of my favourite parts of mounting a new project is creating a character playlist. I love using music as a way into a character’s state of mind, or to explore their tastes or circumstances, plus it’s nice to have a vibe-appropriate warm-up playlist to hand. Hopefully this will work in this format (I am typically something of a tech disaster…) but if you care to have a listen to the music I’ll be using to inspire my spin on Rosalind, a link should be available here:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1nnViaCPfpWQfaGSpgVkQ6?si=xCl_5aQNQRKNCAj9EADEaQ&pi=SxLDk14wR-uSr