We started this week with a photoshoot around London with the 5 of us and the amazing Robin Savage. The photos range from “laughing – you love each other – front picture of a sitcom dvd” to “grungy moody brooding debut album art”. We make our way back to the rehearsal room for an afternoon of music, with the incredible Tom Chapman. Tom did music on a previous AFTLS show, and has also worked (as an actor) separately with Anna (Caliban, Gonzalo) and I, so the vibe is immediately chummy & relaxed – the perfect combination for vocal folds. We jump straight into three part harmony.
Let me tell you that I can SING like Mariah Carey… in the shower – in front of other people, those weird things called ‘nerves’ creep in and I seem to lose any hope of picking up a melody. The others support me, however, and we all work really hard. Tom is patiently plucking on his guitar (these harmonies are not messing about) and by the end of the day we could take our little band to X factor and have a good stab at being the next big thing.
By the time Wednesday comes round we’re pretty exhausted, having spent lots of the day trying to figure out how we create ‘strange shapes’ and a ‘magical banquet’. Lots of fantastic ideas are batted around and we try every one of them. Some don’t quite hit, or, they’re fantastic, but we don’t have time or bodies to pull them off as exquisitely as they deserve. In a moment of madness we try playing with ‘Laban Efforts’ under some sheets. Jokes are made about this being what we study at Conservatoires, and we try to decide if it’s slightly too silly or maybe quite genius. We zoom the American team, who are wonderful – answering all our questions, and head to the pub with giddy anticipation of the tour in our step. The other cast members relaying stories of previous tours, and I feel tipsy from excitement before the beers even touched my lips.
By Friday we’ve touched every scene of the play – we don’t yet have a proper shape to this thing, we don’t have costumes, we don’t have the answers to a lot of problems, but we have hard work, we have the text & we have each others backs.
Reflecting on this week, I am thankful for a lot of things; the patience of my other cast members, coffee, hats and string instruments, but mostly I am thankful for the people in this world who are silly enough to make shapes under a sheet with such unabashed commitment that an audience maybe just maybe will see magical creatures, and will be able to sit in a theatre with other people and disappear, all together, into our story for a little while.
Day one and I wake up 40 minutes before my alarm and lie there staring at the ceiling, Shakespeare’s gnarly act 2 scene 1 verse running through my head; I’ve slept terribly. Probably because I’m extremely nervous. Always one to have suffered from intense imposter syndrome, this is made worse by the fact I am the only one in the cast who’s never done a tour with this company before and I have no idea what to expect from the process. What if I ask a stupid question? What if they all hate me? What if I can’t do it? The kind of thoughts we all had before our first day of school. Being an actor is like having your first day of school every time you have a new job. I jump on the tube.
Brixton is like a chaotic hug from a drunk girl in a bathroom at a club; smelly, hot, too much, a bit terrifying but also gorgeous and kind.
I arrive over an hour early (I know… I have a problem), grab an iced coffee (the London heat wave is not messing about), and wait (iambic pentameter ferreting around my brain).
I’m a London girl born and bred, so I feel right at home where we’re rehearsing. The room however is like a sauna a couple of measly fans battling against climate change. The others, one by one, enter the space, and, not surprisingly, they’re all utterly charming, gorgeous & friendly (I am immediately more relaxed- maybe I’ll make friends!). Although, surprisingly, we had all dressed very similarly. We laugh about this and decide it is a good omen for our cast – same language different font.
Day one already makes me feel calmer, but day two is when we really get the ball rolling with all five of us in the room something feels electric, and I start to get excited during our workshop with the incredible RC Annie discussing our shared language as a group and how we will begin to tackle this mammoth task.
We made all priorities clear as a group and write them on a whiteboard. These include honesty, kindness, direction, and beer.
Walking into work my third day from the station I start to contemplate how incredibly is it that I get sit in this room with four other passionate people discussing the meaning of this intricate story, and stretching our imaginations like a muscle. It really is a fantastic acting exercise I’ve never experienced before. We play with creating a storm using our voices, using our bodies, using movement. 5 very sweaty actors creating magic.
We continue, fuelled by incredible Caribbean food provided by Francis & Arlene (our hosts at the rehearsal space), to navigate our way through the play. It’s a bit like being in a tempest ourselves. Sometimes there’s calm waters, sometimes waves that we have to work together as a team to overcome, but by the end of the week we seem to have something resembling a functioning system which allows us to try ideas. As Sam (playing Sebastian & Ferdinand) so perfectly put it “we are holding each other to a high standard with kindness”.
I get on the tube home on Friday, imposter syndrome has taken a back seat, this is one hell of a team and we all feel really excited about the next few weeks of discovering this island and the characters on it. Bring on week 2.
Journey’s end. And it ended in triumph. In more ways than one. Firstly, with a great week here at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington state. It’s the first time AFTLS has worked here and we’re sure it won’t be the last, after lovely, lively workshops at both the university and a local high school, as well as two well-received shows at the excellent, and startlingly clean, Myrtle Woldson Performing Arts Center. The theatre’s a stone’s throw from the house where Bing Crosby grew up, now part of the Gonzaga campus, so we were Swinging on a Star for the final throws of the tour not least at the prospect of bubbles in the fridge for afters, courtesy of our kind hosts here.
Bing studied Law at Gonzaga, before packing his drums into the back of a pickup and heading to LA and the big time; while our Jack declared his class with students at the Law School this week the best of the tour. If only we’d been here a century ago, he might have encouraged a young Bingo to throw some verse around the courtroom and changed the course of showbiz history.
Jack’s declaration signaled the time for our end of tour awards – a lively, at times fierce debate over cocktails in the Ruby River Hotel to determine our favourites in various key categories. In fact, the Ruby River Hotel took top spot on accommodation, thanks to an excellent breakfast (picking up that prize too), riverside location, extensive happy hour and hot tub to boot.
Honourable mentions in other areas went to the Grand Opera House in Meridian, Mississippi – an absolute stunner. To The Boxcar bar on the roof of the Threefoot Hotel, also in Meridian; to the swimming pool at the Sheraton Hotel, Boston (much to my umbrage, as a fan of the warm waters of the Garden Inn, Williamsburg, Virginia); and to the many breweries of Holland, Michigan. On a side note, I’ve taken the brewery research seriously and clocked up a half-century on Untapped beer app.
We’ve met many top people along this road and are grateful for all their kindness and expertise. But special plaudits went to our colleagues at the University of Notre Dame (take a bow, Brian); similarly at Hope College and the Knickerbocker Theater in Holland; and to the students and faculty, particularly the brilliant Jean Feerick, at JCU in University Heights, Ohio.
Purdue University ranked highly for its students, teaching and producing staff, as well as its unique hotel (bowling in the basement; whiskey in the bar). Austin, Texas is a marvellous place and was never far from the top of our lists. While despite quiet weeks, both Willam & Mary in Williamsburg and Mississippi State in Starkville picked up tributes. But as we squabbled late into the night over more cocktails and chocolate cake (happy birthday, Jo!) we had to find a champion. It was nail bitingly close, went to a second-round count, as both Meridian and ND pushed it all the way. But ultimately we agreed, perhaps surprisingly, that this small city with a river running through it, complete with waterfalls, strangely beautiful 1970s structures, an abundance of brilliant breweries – and a hot tub! – steals it. Spokane rocks!
We took our awards seriously, as silly as they sound. They are, in fact, both. This touring life makes it so. And there was one more silly-serious issue to settle, and one more triumph to come. Between shows on Saturday, we sat down together for the ridiculously tense Great Pen Count. Yes, for the past ten weeks, four out of the five of us have been furiously and furtively collecting pens (Jo was the VAR). The rules were strict: the pen must be branded with the place where it was found; the player must have been to the place and have proof if necessary; the pen can’t have been bought; the pen must work! Here we are warming up for the count:
It was clear after our early reveals that this was going to be a close-run thing. Players panicked as they realised they’d mislaid significant pens, or they bemoaned the realisation of duplicates. As the credentials of each declared pen were debated passionately, a front runner emerged – only to have several entries disqualified late on for lack of ink. By the end of a fraught count there was just one pen in it. Breathless, the champion sank to his knees. I’d like to thank my wife, my mother and father, William Shakespeare, our cats Vince and Kenny… If I achieve nothing else in this winding, ink-stained life, they can never take from me the fact that I won the Pen Wars of Hamlet ‘25.
Joking aside, as we head west to Seattle, before back the other way and home, I would like to say some serious thanks. To our colleagues at AFTLS and Shakespeare at ND who make it all happen, against all the odds. Here’s to another 50 years, bellowing ‘Just Shakespeare’s work!’ And here’s to celebrating this remarkable company in London, at the Cockpit Theatre and Dulwich Hamlet. But most of all I’d like to thank four people: for this journey, five months in the making, the carrying and the playing of our Hamlet. It’s a pleasure to be part of this team. I’ve been round similar bends many times, but I can’t think of a better bunch to do it with.
Here’s to you: Esmonde Cole (Hamlet, Marcellus, Fortinbras, Pirate, Tech 2, social secretary, crack case packer); Joanna Clarke (Ophelia, Laertes, Guildenstern, Bernado, Player-Queen, Tech 1, history wayfinder, Bananagrams seeker); Sadie Pepperrell (Gertrude, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Player, Travel genius); Jim-Jack Whitam (Claudius, Ghost, Francisco, Captain, Player, fellow Gravedigger, Edu coach and theatre-maker to his very bones). Thank you, all. You are the best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, etc. Etc.
See you in London for more of the thing. The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail.
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.
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.
