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.