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.

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.