From Austin Texas, it is a long windy drive northwards to Denton. Early in the morning the five of us crawled stinking into a rented minivan and began to fight our way up. By the time we got to Waco it made perfect sense to stop for a Burger King, by which you can all imagine the sort of state we were in. But Denton was a long way and eventually we had consumed enough water to be vaguely human again, if a little sloshy and greasy. Mark Packer met us at the hotel. Mark is very enthusiastic and playful. He likes to talk. The five of us had been communicating monosyllabically over the course of the journey so his stream of consciousness as he drove us to campus was a new energy. His personality was gentle and amusing though, the exact opposite of his driving. By the time we got out of his van we were unsure whether to laugh or vomit, so did a little bit of both. To give you a sense of Mark, by the time we had left Denton he had burst into one of our classes dressed as a serial killer, he had expressed delight at driving us “off-road” on his golf buggy at 15mph, and he had become thoroughly overexcited at being given his first ever chai latte, which he was still clutching an hour later. He kept us laughing with his total abandonment. The man has two daughters. They must adore him. We did.

The English department, who were at the heart of the residency, were extremely helpful and generous throughout the time we were there. Sadly the theatre department were less involved with the project, and the theatre we were placed in featured a gargantuan unmovable organ between us and the audience. The stage was very high, but sight lines were still tricky over the organ. It’s very much a recital hall, or large lecture theatre, and lacks adequate lighting. So to compensate for that, they had brought in some floodlights and mounted them on the balcony. The effect of all these things together meant that we were totally blinded, vertiginous, and partially blocked from the distant audience. An attempt was made to win the space a little bit; “ah, the prince and Monsieur love, I will hide me behind the organ.” But playing the pit had to be limited as it is a long way down from the stage, and not lit. For the people that came, I feel we told the story as well as we could have done in the circumstances. But it was a shame, particularly after Winedale, to have such an enforced disconnect at the end of the US run. And doubly so when we taught one of our classes in a theatre that would have been perfect for our purposes, but sadly was being used for a student production those nights.

We did have time to kick back, and on Halloween some of us went to Dallas and inspected Dealey Plaza, where they have an X taped to the road where JFK was shot. And then we all dressed up and went out for a small town American Halloween. Here we all are.

We ended up at a house party right out of Superbad, with a crate of beer and a thumping sound system, surrounded by screaming jumping drunk American students dressed up as radios and kings and devils and princesses, dancing like maniacs and punching each other by mistake. When we finally left we all felt a little older than we did when we arrived, and entertained ourselves singing catches and old spirituals on a half an hour walk home through the arctic. Winter has caught up with us it seems, even in Texas.

The classes were a joy. The kids were bold and often outspoken, not seeking to get it “right”. The college’s request to always have multiple actors in class proved a lovely thing as we shared the burden and learnt from each other even as we taught. Having started this job concerned that I might dislike the whole teaching aspect, I have finished it surprised that I found it less tricky and more interesting than I could have imagined. Bernard Shaw has a lot to answer for in his famous encapsulation of the teaching stigma, (the whole ‘do’ ‘can’t do’ ‘teach’ thing that gets trotted out every five minutes) and as a practitioner I felt a twofold pressure. “I am not a teacher,” “I have nothing to teach.” Both of these things were wrong. Because I am so obsessive about my craft in practise, I always had ways to impart my understanding of it to young academics in a way they could process. And it helped that my own personal journey was to unlearn the academic understanding I had of text in order to approach the human.

This company is almost as old as I am, and over the years it must have been responsible for giving so much agency to so many actors. I will miss the work, and the little community we formed within that work. We have one more show in London, a celebration of our time together and the work we did. Coming on the back of Denton I expect we will all be hungering for a crowd of people that we know, people that we can actually see. The RADA Studios (The Drill Hall) at 7.30pm on 12th November. There’s your chance. Come!

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

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

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

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

A whole week in Austin and no work. Some of us took the chance to zip off to Georgia or New Orleans to see friends, but some of us succumbed to the twofold temptation of not getting on a plane, and of hanging out in this reportedly great town a few more days.

I can confirm that Austin rocks. Not least because we have English summertime weather here right now. And that’s English summertime without the constant rain, bouts of plummeting temperature, wind, hail, snow, frogs etc. And it’s English summertime with air conditioning. Everywhere. There’s air con in the garden. Probably.

First night out we hit sixth street, and found a bar with music. Which is a little like looking for a straw in a haystack. The band we found felt like a working man’s band, and one that’d been together for years. I fantasised about their day jobs. The bassist drives the schoolbus. The lead rhythm is a cop. The frontman works reception in a bank. The music was great. Committed, skilled and persistent. Nothing like an old band.

We managed a good few day trips. First to Mount Bonnell. Mount Bonnell is a pimple. “Things are big in Texas” is a mantra I have known since my childhood. Mount Bonnell is the exception that proves the rule. We wanted a walk so ended up going up and down a couple of times. The peak, though, shows the span and size of the flat country around it.

Hamilton Pond was our next destination. Long before we got there in the car, with our trunks in the back, we had seen fleeting signs about bacterial,contamination. We partly ignored them because we were more concerned about finding somewhere that sold cans of beer, and partly because we didn’t want to see them. We clambered down the path to the spring, a longer walk than Mount Bonnell. At the bottom we are met by Dan. Dan works at the pond. “Ha!” he says, as we contemplate a puddle of brown swamp. “I bet you got taken in by all those photoshopped pics of azure water. You can’t swim in this. It’s full of cow poo.” It’s a beautiful place though. A hymn to erosion and the passage of time. With a soupçon of bovine effluent.

Not to be outdone we took our swimming trunks to Barton Springs instead. And there, we lay on the landscaped grass in the evening sun, occasionally jumping in, and periodically being tempted to throw Claire Redcliffe in for being such a wuss. By the time the short guy kicked us out for drinking beer we were perfectly satisfied.

We also played Peter Pan Mini Golf, where they don’t kick you out for having beer. They encourage it. And I was glad of it as it made me overexcited. Beer makes things fun. Then for the nature lovers, millions of bats emerging at dusk from Congress Bridge. We watched from above in case they shat on us. In retrospect we would have had a better view from below, despite a higher chance of fecal impact. We thought about biting the head off one, as a sure fire way of gaining international fame, but in the end made do with chickensteak – (essentially kentucky fried beef). A better meal was to be had the next day. They do good beef in Texas. Cows are important. The college team here is The Longhorns, and their image is everywhere. After enjoying eating them so much, we thought it only right to go to one of their matches and cheer them on.

I think I understand American football a little now. It’s much smarter than I thought. These big guys are fast and they hurt each other. And the quarterback is an amazing responsibility. And usually called Tyrone, Trevor or some combination of the two, as far as I can tell.

Obviously the whole time we were drinking beer, swimming, watching games, stuffing our faces, walking, dancing, jumping, laughing, shouting “bats”, driving, and talking we were also working very very hard on our lesson plans for this week, and deepening our thoughts about the play. Obviously.

We are now at UT Austin. Four shows this week, starting October 22nd, Wednesday to Friday at 7.30 in the B Iden Payne Theatre on campus, and then Saturday 25th at 7.00 in the Windedale Theatre Barn. I’m looking forward to getting properly stuck in again.

In the grounds of Wellesley College, Hilary Clinton’s alma-mater, there is a wooden replica of Shakespeare’s birth place. It is the home of The Shakespeare Society. It stands incongruous, a mock Tudor sanctuary surrounded by stone colleges and sorority houses. A short walk from there and you find the alumni hall, the two tiered college theatre, haunted by the lazy ghost of “Top hat man”. The Shakespeare Society provides a twofold service for the Actors From The London Stage. It provides a buffer zone of enthusiastic audience members at the front of the stalls cheerleading for the actors, and it provides an equally enthusiastic stopping place for the tired actors when the show is done. The company has been coming for nine years now, and the routine is well established. “The Shakespeare Society traditionally kidnaps the actors on Friday, but I’m sure they’d welcome you every night if you have nowhere else to go.” So I am informed on the Thursday by Elena our stage manager, (herself a member.) And it does indeed. Although going there carries a burden, as you will end up staying up all night talking about verse plays and poetry and acting and theatre.

So by Saturday night the need to wind down after the show was taking precedence over the desire to see the dawn, no matter how much I love to geek out. But it’s a lovely little bubble, and I know I would have been a member had I been a student there. It felt very familiar from my student drama society days, right down to the fact that there were no men involved. I was very excited to see that they had some huge working log fire places but “They were last lit in the ’20s. Someone almost burnt the place down.” I know for certain that had I been a member I would have been expelled from the society for lighting them with smokeless fuel and getting caught.

Wellesley itself is a dry town close enough to Boston for it to be easy to visit. I wanted to get a lobster and clam chowder, and Georgina had been tipped off as to where to go. We really felt the “New England” vibe when a bearded man in a cap growled “f*ing tourists” at us as we finished our meal. Aside from the fact I was on the receiving end, it made me feel right at home. And it was clear proof that we had come to the right place, as had we been in the equivalent of an Angus Steak House there would have been nothing but tourists for miles, and nobody to growl at us.

New England is familiar. I got my first Flat White in America, a bacon sandwich, cheddar cheese. I also had to wear my coat and jumper. The people drive like lunatics on bad roads, they randomly insult tourists, the portions are normal sized, people don’t do their utmost to make your life pleasant, it rains. I could live in Boston and not feel too homesick. And as per my previous post, the colours are astonishing in The Fall.

Now we are in Austin Texas, again. Chasing the tail of summer. I just walked into the most beautiful hotel room. Life is excellent.

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

It feels right that, shifting into my forties, I should walk through the New England Fall and think of Robert Frost and Shakespeare. Still the soldier, seeking the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth. But seeing some around me shift to magistrate. This fall is deep and bright. Wild and sharp. And I am aware how fortunate I am to be here, and to have had a snapshot of the diversity in climate and flavour of this land.

Let me tell you a story.

Many moons ago, in the far away time, Deer crossed the rainbow bridge into the land of the sky. But Bear, in his pride, disliked that Deer had gone alone across the rainbow bridge and up, up and again up into the sky. He flung his great weight on the rainbow bridge, and across it he bounded, up, up and again up and into the sky land. There he found Deer, jumping and dancing and free, like a bright golden cloud in the summer. “How dare you come here alone, to the sky. How dare you leave us on the land, and ignore us.” growled Bear. But Deer had his horns, and his pride, and although Bear was strong, he was not Wolf. He had no authority here. “Bear, you are strong, but I have my horns. Too long have you thrown your great weight into things that should not concern you.” And with that Deer tossed his head, and pawed his great hooves, and his flanks shook as he lowered his antlers to charge. But Bear was not afraid. With a great roar like a crack of thunder, he rose on his hind legs, and he met the charge with his fearsome claws. The fight was a long and a fierce one. The sound of the struggle was great, and the sparks from the horns and the claws in the sky land were seen by the animals below. At last Wolf decided to act, and he leapt and he pawed up, up and again up into the sky land and he howled them to stop.

All animals must obey Wolf, and so it was at the sound of the howl Bear and Deer fled across the paths of the sky. And as they fled the blood from their wounds scattered and fell from the sky and down, down and again down. And it landed and spread on the leaves of the trees. And so they fled across the sky land and all the land below them was stained red and orange, and umber and brown from the wounds of the Deer and the Bear. And this is why the Deer and the Bear are no longer friends. And every year, at time of their conflict, the sky land remembers their fight, and the trees stain again with their blood.