Chicago to South Bend and Back

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by Wela Mbusi

We’ve landed! Our jet-lagged arrival at Chicago O’Hare airport is ameliorated by a stretch limo waiting to whisk us away to our hotel rooms whilst darting through traffic. LoL. Well…maybe it isn’t actually that glamorous but Shakespeare at Notre Dame’s generosity with Debs’ logistical skills certainly made us feel that way. No rest for the wicked as daily chores had to be fulfilled if we were to have a smooth couple of months.
Our first task was to familiarise ourselves with the rigours of the upcoming schedule with the workshops, followed by a scary but painless tax exemption form filling session and a bank trip to open checking accounts.
Finally the evening was capped off by a wonderful meal at a steakhouse where I had the John Adams special which was an assortment of meats skewered by a sword. It’s stature certainly personified the second president.

We continued with rehearsals through the week but we’re starting to feel the need of an audience and performing to a feedback-giving audience one last time (though necessary) further induced our need for one. Having incorporated notes from the London associates, we felt we needed to prioritise in terms of time and the best use of our energies, as we’d not had a break from rehearsals for nearly five weeks. But we also felt that autonomy was the best cause of action as well, as some of the notes were personal preferences rather than things that would enhance the clarity of the story or AFTLS’s convention of five actors playing all the roles.

We were glad to find a cohesive enough ideology with regards to the notes session from Scott and Peter Holland and the London associates and that solidified our confidence in the show, but at this point we were craving for an audience at Wellesley College, our first stop.
Notre Dame was a phenomenal school and with its strong Catholic roots I couldn’t help but wonder how it would be received when we returned to perform as the themes of the play are palpably resonant.
Leaving those worries for another day, we made our way to Chicago (courtesy of Debs) to try and get some rest, especially as the long-awaited football game between Notre Dame and Georgia was on. The spectacle of military flyovers and marching bands during the run were not enough to intrigue us to stay because the Windy City called.

Ready to Launch

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by Wela Mbusi

Week five. Hooray!! The long wait has finally come to an end and the finality of it is solidified by the associate actors sharing their collective notes after our final run in the UK. Our spirits are buoyant but only because we know, that after the seemingly torturous, but necessary, ordeal of receiving notes from them, we will have ascended three thousand feet in two days towards another welcoming collective of practitioners and audiences.

Alas! The notes session proved to be the remedy we needed for the majority of this isolated rehearsal process, as they were very informative coming from an outside perspective. It was also comforting to know that every single one of them had gone through this the same artistic gauntlet as well.

A sense of ownership has been instilled in us having gone through this, and aptly reinforced by Martin, is the idea that what we created can only be understood and given by us with full conviction, as it is a testament of the best of ourselves as artists.

Moving Limitations

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by Wela Mbusi

Week three of rehearsals and our actors’ imaginations are being called upon to stretch beyond their known limitations. Whether it’s by choice or not, exhaustion can sometimes be the thing you need to transport you from the dull and austere to the absurd. From the mind-bending task of watching Ben transform from one character to another a dozen times in a single scene, to Peter frantically scratching himself in the hopes of finding some semblance of a character. Anna has also been tirelessly donning multiple outfits for Isabella as I’m spinning in circles also trying to find the internals of my characters. The highlight of the week has been a visit from Siân Williams who is a choreographer, movement specialist, and theatre practitioner. Her invaluable knowledge on how to produce movement from the root of the play and the convention we’re using, has not only been intellectually taxing but very fruitful as we’ve been learning to merge the two languages. This has been a test for all of us this week, but how we’ve managed to overcome our frustrations, has also meant that we are developing a shorthand in how we communicate our idea, and by the time we get to America, we’ll be a well-oiled hive mind.

The Journey Begins

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by Wela Mbusi

An epic journey is underway for five actors creating a magical piece of theatre from scratch; using nothing but our skills, imagination, and the love of theatre. Did I also mention without the all seeing eye of a director?

AHHHHHHH!!!

The first two weeks of rehearsals have been about shelling out the play for its meaning, not only for clarity of storytelling, but for us to really grasp such a complex and rich play as Measure for Measure. After the initial shock of being left alone in the room with nothing but the text and our collective training, we managed to slowly, but surely, decipher the scenes one unit at a time. It has been a tremendous learning curve for all of us in the company so far as we’re coming to terms with different ways of working. On top of that, there’s the added responsibility of being all of the other figureheads responsible for the creation of a piece of theatre. However, not having the constant objective eye of a director, it has also meant enjoying the freedom of playing with the text in many ways that a ‘normal’ rehearsal wouldn’t allow us to. We’ve been paraphrasing our lines together and that has helped us not only understand our own lines but the other actors as well.

The breadth and depth of understanding that the process has given us has and hopefully will continue to enrich the play. Foursquare seems to be a regular pre-rehearsal pressure reliever and we are constantly enthused by the epic journey that we’re about to take in the States.

Blizzards, blobs, and beer | Ursinus welcomes AFTLS

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And so we reach our final week, heading for Collegeville, Pennsylvania and Ursinus College. The college, pronounced Yer-sigh’-nus, was founded in 1869 and is located 30 miles from Philadelphia. It’s the first time we have even got near to a coast – unless you count Lake Michigan, which does indeed look like an ocean. It’s a bit of a shock, this two-flight journey, as we go from 25 degrees Celsius to -4 (77 to 25F). The frisbee will not be coming out again. Actually we get here just in time; by Monday evening Winter Storm Stella has arrived, bringing with it 18 inches of snow. We were warned about this and there was a quick panic-buy trip to the supermarket when we arrived. Beer, cereal, crisps, all those essentials, you understand…

It also means I’m back in electric shock land. I’m not quite sure why, but Will and I seem to be more susceptible to the shocks, in colder weather, from light switches, from door handles, from each other sometimes. A couple of days ago Jas looked accusingly at me after I had made her jump, as if I was suddenly Marvel’s new creation of Electric Shock Man and doing it just for my own amusement. I’m getting scared to turn the light off at bedtime…

The Kaleidoscope, home of Ursinus College’s departments of Theater and Dance.

Tuesday saw a late start because of the snow, and Sarah and I had to dig the car out of the hotel car park to make it to the first class. We were asked to go in a directors’ class and do a couple of mock auditions for them. So Sarah went in as Nervous-Auditioner, stumbling and drying [click HERE to learn all about “drying”] her way through a speech, and I followed that with Mr. Know-It-All, who refused to redo his speech when asked to try it more melodramatically. “You don’t understand,” I spat back, “I’ve just played this part at the Royal Shakespeare Company!” Thankfully, Sarah and I got a chance to go back in (this time as Ms. Couldn’t-Care-Less and Mr. Couldn’t-Care-More) and make them realize that we weren’t really like that. Honest.

Meanwhile, on Friday, after we had done our first show the previous evening, Will went in to do his class and was promptly asked four times, by different people, to give a rendition of one of our songs in the round, “Rose, Rose, Rose, Red” – I think, having agreed to sing it the first time, it was hard to get out of it after that. Arise Jukebox Willy. Interesting how popular the use of song in the show has been over here.

As for outings this week, the weather put paid to the first half of the week, and I’m afraid none of us made it to the Liberty Bell – the closest I got, in fact, was a full-size replica back in Houston. Interesting that it and the original were both made in London. Sarah and Waggy (her husband, who came out to join us this week, along with Jas’ boyfriend Kieran) did get to Philadelphia on Friday and visited such oddities as the Mütter Museum (shown on the right), a collection of medical artefacts and brains and colons, apparently. I think I might have been even more scared to turn the light off after that…

I did make it as far as Phoenixville, a small town nearby, which has a peaceful charm about it, a few streets of Victorian wooden-slatted houses made all the more picturesque by the snow and the clear blue skies. I stopped to help a man in a very little car get out of a very lot of snow and just enjoyed the chance to wander and take in the numerous iconic yellow school buses dotted about the place, all ready to chug into action. It was less peaceful downtown, where Molly Maguire’s was already doing a roaring trade at 3pm on St. Patrick’s Day. I squeezed my way in past the kilts, the bagpipes, the fiddlers and the sea of green that covered all three floors, and sipped a little Guinness. One has to fit in, don’t you know…

One oddity about Phoenixville: it has a cinema there, the Colonial, where a famous scene from The Blob, a horror B-movie starring Steve McQueen, took place. Apparently in June they hold a BlobFest every year, where they recreate that scene. Look, I’ve told you, I’m scared enough about turning the light out as it is…

There’s been a bit of reminiscing in the hotel bar this week. The line dancing, the snow, Mission Control, Indian Forest Mountain, the Hancock Tower, skimming stones on Lake Michigan; all in all we feel pretty lucky. Not only that, but I it’s been a rewarding challenge, both in the classrooms and out. We seem to be in a time, on both sides of the Atlantic, of Arts funding cuts and pushing the money into more quantifiable, more headline-grabbing areas. All I would say is that I know, by seeing it on students’ faces and from feedback from them and their professors, that we have made a difference here – for some of them, a tangible and long-lasting difference. That is the joy of this job, and long may it continue. I know, by seeing it on students’ faces and from feedback from them and their professors, that we have made a difference here – for some of them, a tangible and long-lasting difference. That is the joy of this job, and long may it continue.

So tomorrow the adventure comes to an end. Well, sort of; we will be doing two performances of the show in London on April 2nd (5pm) and April 3rd (7.30pm), so please do come to the Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone if you can. We’d love to see you.

And now it really is time to turn the light off. Thank you America. Good night and good luck.

— Roger May (March 19, 2017)