By Michael Wagg

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. 

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.