(Verona, London)

 

You know when you’re a child and you do a great big poster-paint masterpiece of a samurai or a dinosaur and show it to your classmates and they say ‘woah, that’s wicked’ and then you show it to your teacher and she gives you a gold star and then you take it home to your dad and ask him if he wants to put it up on the refrigerator and he says ‘That rubbish?  What an eyesore!  Just put it up in the attic with your scout badges and ballet trophies’.

 

Well, that’s a bit like bringing a touring show back to London.  You take it to the countrified masses, the kids’ eyes light up, and a gentle optimism coats the sugary goodness of the evening.  In London, you become fast food.  They’ve seen it before, they know the tricks, they just want to see if there’s any new particularly outrageous tricks to astound them.  That is why I hate (and love) London audiences.   High maintenance.

 

Our first performance is at Lincoln’s Inn for a collective of barristers (an eloquence of lawyers, chief-oracle Google informs me).  The prospect of yet another aquatic performance in the midst of a city monsoon is bettered only by the prospect of enunciating over rainfall to an audience that spend each and every day talking their knackers off.  They eat a barbecue in the rain and some go home and after the interval more desert and the rugged troopers that stay till the end are our most enthusiastic audience since the Globe.  Sodden and sniffling and limping from wayward swords in a slippery fight, I look towards the barristers’ palatial workplace and think: ‘What have we done with our lives?’

 

And then I remember that I’m the luckiest man in the world.

 

The next day is Fulham Palace, and there is certainly one thing wrong with that description.  Also, the colossal impact of budget flights hits home as I realise that a very noisy plane crosses Fulham airspace every three minutes.  That, my friends, is a lot of carbon footsteps.  We’re talking a very complicated waltz diagram of carbon footsteps here.  As a result, we bellow.  Farewell, colour and detail, I knew them, Horatio.  Ironically, in the palace itself there is a masquerade ball attended by very well-spoken people.  When I pass them at the interval they are eating foie gras and dancing to that classic 90’s ballad Rhythm Is A Dancer.

 

One of the tricks of alfresco performances is the unpredictability of the entrances.  I mis-time an entrance for the first act finale and end up sprinting to get back to the stage (‘Here comes the furious Tybalt back again!  Boy, he’s really going for it…’).  Point of reference that Stanislavki failed to mention:  It is very difficult to run and be angry at the same time.  Your face just contorts into a strange concoction of perturbed and out-of-shape.

 

Short but sweet, Londinium.  You know I’ll be back.

(Verona, Salisbury)

 

It’s nine thirty at night and you’re hurtling through a former Benedictine abbey in a hulking great van with both its slide doors open and a person hanging from each exit.  Why?  Because you’re part of the A-Team.  And ‘A’, as we all know, stands for Actor.

 

Here on the fourth leg of our tour we’re recklessly delusion-prone.  We warm up in marble halls full of long-forgotten medals and golden keys, paintings of well-to-do folk lounging by the river and Fred Astaire’s shoes in a little box.  Now that was a man with teeny tiny feet.  Poor Ginger.  The biggest accomplishment of Salisbury is the discovery that, contrary to centuries of scientific research, it is possible to perform Romeo & Juliet underwater.  The first night occurs in haemorrhaging rain, and has a positive effect on pace (why rain would make wet actors act faster is a big fat mystery).  It also lends a nice cinematic feel to the climactic knife-fight scene, in that both of us are thinking: ‘well, here’s the part where we get stabbed for real’.  At half-time we ask the audience if they’d prefer to come back tomorrow.  They make a resounding decision to stay.  I am reminded that Wilton is a military town.

 

Speaking of the British Empire, we’re staying with a man known only as The Colonel.  He’s very, very nice and intermittently terrifying.  I feel like I should be saluting more than I tend to, and we all put on ‘proper voices’, like a first-date meeting the parents.  Interesting fact:  The Colonel keeps a box of matches on every toilet in the house.  Why?  To disperse those embarrassing post-business fumes of course!  Silly civilians.

 

The local watering-hole is a bit like walking into an episode of Skins, and we kick the yoofs off the pool table and confiscate their Bacardi breezers.  Unsurprisingly, we attract some attention in an all-tracksuit/miniskirt/old man shirt pub, and they sing us away when we finally leave.  I’ll leave the story at that, but mind your manners around a troupe of travelling Shakespearians, that’s all I’ll say.  Not when you’re called ‘The Bell Inn’ and we happen to have several cans of spray-paint in the tour van.

 

I’ll finish on a serious note.  I, sires and madams, have had to deal with my first follicist.  Yes: someone who took offence at my character facial hair.  Outside a tearoom, a slovenly fellow with tattoos and headphones sulks past.

 

‘What are you meant to be?  A pimp?!’

 

‘Sorry?’

 

‘You look like a pimp.’

 

‘Right.’

 

‘Are you a pimp?’

 

‘Uh…Yes.  I’m a pimp.’

 

‘Well, you look like a pimp, whatever you are.’

 

‘Okay.’

 

‘That beard!  Shave it off, or grow a real one.  You—‘

 

At which point I’ll adjourn for the sake of our more delicate readers.  Let it be said, however, that the word he christened me with bore a striking resemblance to the colloquialism for ‘cat’.  I miss my baby-face.

(Verona, Cheltenham)

Our finely tuned actor’s intuition (which informs us, amongst other laudable feats, just before ‘last orders’ is called at the bar) was right.  The apocalyptic weather does away with our first night’s performance at Sudeley Castle — the grounds are waterlogged and the camper van that is our centrepiece/green room/tardis is still full of rainwater.  Which means that we troubled troupers receive that little-known, guiltily-hoped for joy — The Unexpected Day Off.  Obviously, we spend this in as constructive a way as possible.  In this case, watching Indiana Jones, eating mounds of extremity-blistering curry and playing LazerQuest against a gaggle of small children confused at why a bunch of loud-mouths would be ruining their half-term.

 

Cheltenham is effortlessly wealthy, Parisian in appeal, and, for reasons probably clear to everyone but me, home to a statue of a minotaur cuddling a giant hare.  The people don’t spit in the street and the boy racers don’t begin their grand prix until midnight (boy racers, by the way, appear to be our only cultural link from city to city so far).  We arrive at the venue in our cast vehicle, which I have controversially christened the Drag Queen Mab.  It is an ugly beast, but it knows its master.  And its master is me. 

 

Sudeley Castle is incredible, and I have unreasonable delusions walking through its ruined towers that I’m a triumphantly returning medieval knight, ready to ravish a damsel and spit a boar or whatever it was they spent their feudal time doing.  Our stage is set up alongside a mirror lake, and the secret garden behind the ruins of the castle contains several saucy cherubs doing such as saucy cherubs are wont.

 

Now, I like it when the audiences like my characters.  I know they like Tybalt here because when I pull out my flick-knife the children in the audience go ‘oooh’ and one kid says ‘coool’.  The pleasant ego-buff that this provides is quickly overridden by the more serious concerns of why children would ever think that a knife-fight in the rain would be cool.

 

The peacocks and pheasants are willing enough to join the circus, and riot offstage at each onstage alarum.  As I wait to carry on Juliet’s body for the tomb scene, I notice a little family of Canadian geese — mother and five goslings, pecking away by the lake, father keeping an eye out.  Ah, the circle of life.  Ah, I’ve missed my cue.

 

It’s a bit like being locked inside a Pandora’s Box and kicked around, touring with a group of actors.  We’re still getting to know each other, figuring out if we like each other etc (though any one of them might sum me up vaguely as ‘dies twice, spends too much time on laptop, funny moustache’).  Bt we’re in the battle together.

 

So please go visit Sudeley Castle.  And whilst you’re there, spit a boar and/or ravish a damsel for me for me.

 

(Verona, Brighton)

As my incalculably good-natured companion Connie put it, Brighton is London with a big fat spliff in its mouth. I’m sure there’s a more poetic way of putting that, but I’m writing to a word-count here. I was a Palace Pier virgin and I must say I am thoroughly enamoured after this first date. Brighton is very confusing for a London lad. Why is everyone smiling? Why is nobody screaming or punching or talking crazy talk? Is it the sunshine? The fun-fair? The general malaise of liberal satisfaction? Perhaps it’s the phallic lollypops.

We set up camp in St Nicholas’ cemetery, a lovely sunken garden of a thing; even the tombs themselves are small masterpieces. One of the sepulchres seems to have been blasted open from beneath — more Michael Jackson’s Thriller than Bill Shagspar’s R&J. The rustling trees compete with us for the audience’s attention — It’s not good, realising you’re being upstaged by a Cherry Blossom. Being guests of the Brighton Festival, we await the descent of ‘serious’ artistic judgement; anathema to the bare-faced optimism of a show like ours. But they lounge like big cats at the zoo, and succumb to the poetry and sunburn. The fight between Tybalt and Mercutio spills into the audience and onto an unsuspecting sunbather by the stage. A moment’s surprise and then an escalating yelp from the victim, to which the remainder of the audience hoot. With some relief we realise we haven’t entirely squashed her. Even Equity would throw their hands up at that one.

The seagulls are the worst hecklers of them all. I don’t know exactly what the good people of Brighton are feeding their sea-birds but the look like Kehaar from Watership Down on Creatine and Fitness First memberships. One feathered friend eyes me up as I devour a baguette, and I applaud his acrobatics as he catches tossed sweet-corn like a dolphin with sardines. I want to take one with me.

The response to the show is ebullient, which somewhat makes up for the motley collection of bruises, gashes and decapitations that we all seem to have acquired (Benvolio, particularly, gets a nice scalp-wound: ‘By my head, here come the Capulets…’). I get hit on by a very nice Egyptian shopkeeper who asks me which countries of the world make up my eyes (smooth!), and meet a woman with an entire theatre tattooed on her leg: audience, auditorium, actors and all, inked out in calfy loveliness. I think about getting a tattoo myself but decide that what feels spontaneous and bold in Brighton will probably just seem silly in Manchester.

Having used up all our sunshine tokens on Brighton, we are now making our way towards Sudeley Castle in Cheltenham, and the weather is apocalyptic. I feel like Jonathon Harker travelling through eastern Europe to meet Herr Draculé. If I don’t return, please toss my remains to the seagulls in Brighton, where once upon a time I had a glorious weekend.

(Verona, Canterbury)

Having teched at Wispers girls’ school in Surrey and previewed in the glorious, warm space that is the Globe, we now begin a tour of Romeo & Juliet that takes us whirling around the UK and skimming across

Europe.  The biggest question is if we’ll ever actually make it home again, for there are many perils on the quest to bring Shakespeare to the dark corners of the Continent.  This is a log charting our, ahem, missionary efforts. 

It’s the first of our tour dates in

Canterbury.  The scene is beautifully set — a barrow facing the ruins of

St Augustine’s Abbey.  The sunlight trickles from the sky and a gaggle of young lads screaming over a football appear to be tiring.  I emerge from the audience playing the ukulele and realise to my horror that in all the hurly burly of coming to the country from

London I’ve neglected to check that my ukulele is still tuned.  This is in keeping with the show — earlier in the play, I direct a line about avenging honour to a burly skinhead.  He’ll understand, I think, in my infinite depth.  He does not understand.  At the end of the speech his girlfriend nudges him and says, quite loudly:  ‘He was talking to you’ At which he grunts. 

Canterbury is a slow battle of a town.  The beautiful Tudor houses try desperately to shake off the parasitic food-chains nestling beneath them.  The proliferation of Chaucer, though not as bunny-boiler as

Stratford for Shagspar, is fairly intimidating.  They even have a Chaucer Driving School.  Because the main thing we remember of

Britain’s first poet is that he was a really careful driver. The supermarket is an anomaly.  I’d never walked into a completely silent supermarket before, and it gives the entire cast the heebie-jeebies.  Does this mean the more well-known supermarkets fill their aisles with white noise, subliminally encouraging us to buy vegetarian party bites we’ll never eat?  Time and science will tell.  The one member of staff perhaps explains the ironic conundrum of beggars outside the Jobcentre. 

We go for dinner post-show and I realise why actors can be nightmares for your day-to-day professional.  The lines become blurred offstage, and getting a reaction from people is addictive.  It’s very hard not to tease a surly waiter after three hours of prodding and poking and provoking onstage. 

Walking into a Cuban bar later we are asked if we’re with ‘the theatre’.  Why yes, we are, we reply, and how considerate of them to guess that at midnight on a Thursday we’ll be in need of free mojitos.  Except the party’s not for us.  It’s for Cats the musical, which has come to town.  We are briskly and humourlessly evacuated from the private party.  That I am, in fact, the Prince of Cats appears not to influence their decision.  Ah, rogues and vagabonds.  Give me Shakespeare alfresco over a Lloyd-Webber spaying any day of the week.

On the faithful northern line (not sure how long that will last now the court jester’s pilfered the capital’s crown), I’m trying to learn speeches.  What with a strict regime of waking up/rehearsing/one cup Earl Grey/scribbling/Scrabble/bed, this is the only place for it.   

The iambic is a boon for memorization.  Be dum be dum be dum be dum be dum.  The lines go in.  The breath goes out.  The character speaks.  The fellow passenger taps me on the shoulder. 

‘Do you mind?’ 

It’s jam-packed and several commuters are eyeing me up.  One man is patting at his bald patch with a hankerchief, ogling me suspiciously. 

‘Sorry?’ 

‘Would you mind not doing that here on the tube?’ 

‘Oh.  Really?  Okay.’ 

A

Racine fan, I presume. 

The anxious commuter gets back to his paper.  Then he sighs, and says with difficulty: 

‘It’s not that we don’t respect your religion.  But it’s a bit inconsiderate.  People get spooked easily, after everything.’ 

Ah.  Right.  He thought I was praying. 

This is ironic, because the times I’ve been approached by disreputable types on a dark street, I’ve managed to spook the spookers by throwing a sonnet their way.  True story.  Nothing confuses a would-be criminal more than an audio time-slip back to Mrs Naylor’s English class. 

It’s the age-old question.  How do you learn your lines?  Well, how do you learn your pin number?  Repetition?  Same as actors.  Hitting the right buttons?  Same as actors.  Scrawling it on a surreptitious piece of paper?  Same as actors.  I wonder how many people recite things by heart, day to day.  Salesmen with their pitches.  Lovers plan their confessions word by word.  Brawlers the ultimate ‘diss’.  Where do those pesky words live, exactly?  Michael Caine says you have to stand there not thinking of that line — you have to take it off the other actor’s face.  Contrary to this, there is a school of thought for remembering called mnemonics, which has been bandying about since Elizabethan times.  For example, in order to memorize that little-known Hamlet soliloquy, one might employ this route: 

To be, or not to be; that is the question: 

(think, dear reader, of equations on a blackboard) 

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 

(think, esteemed reader, of someone who is outrageously fortunate.  Like Paris Hilton, or Boris Johnson, or Clive who’s been working non-stop at the Nash.  Now imagine them with their arms in slings and arrows sticking out of their head) 

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And, by opposing, end them— 

(think, noble reader, of strewing limbs into a rolling ocean of unpaid bills…etc) 

Poppycock.  The human brain is a clever old thing and doesn’t need these tricks.  There’s only one way of learning lines.  Courageously.  Which is, of course, the reason why I’m sat here writing this instead of knuckling down and getting knee-deep into punctuation.  But thank you, dear reader, for indulging my cowardice.   

 

I hate complainers.  All they do is focus on the negatives.  Moan, moan, moan… Wait a minute…do I detect the deployment of irony?  Well, probably not, depending on your definition of irony, which you’re probably mentally complaining about already as you read this. I try not to complain.  I really do.  It’s a terrible habit.  I try not to complain about the Turkish Swimming Cats that somehow live in my house, spraying their acrid scent everywhere:  ‘It’s your fault for attempting to domesticate such beautiful, wild beasts’, Inner Monologue tells me.  I try not to complain about the tinny, senseless music commonly encountered on the top deck of buses: ‘Listen to the bass-line, you pernickety old sod.  It’s really rather galvanizing’, Inner Monologue reproaches.  I try not to complain as my upstairs neighbour clomps and stomps and hurls abuse at his girlfriend:  ‘Don’t go up there with a baseball bat’, Inner Monologue suggests, ‘Just call that nice policeman that spends his beat in the local Subway eating free sandwiches’.  It’s very easy to complain.  Especially in a profession built on subjectivity.  I have nothing but admiration for my first bad review.  Touching nerves makes a nice noise.  Love and hate still stem from the same old frontal insula. I’m writing a play about ex-servicemen and the difficulties they face readjusting to civilian life.  The BBC screens a depressive slice of codswallop about ex-soldiers, presented by a bilious and self-congratulatory ex-serviceman obviously desperate enough to switch from the military to brief televisual celebrity.  I mean, come on.  The program is about ex-servicemen on the streets, and he interviews, erm, three of them?  On the street.  No coffee, no sofa, no attempt to make them feel comfortable or to actually pierce the heart of their stories.  Just a wallow in despondency and kudos to him for his socially acceptable drinking habits.  And not a solution in sight.  But wait!  This is OffWestEnd.com, not OffPrimeTime.com.  Why am I talking about television?  Well.  You have to be even more grateful for theatre when schmucks like this worm their way into the public domain.  At least with theatre the very process of putting on a play denotes a collaborative effort between dozens of people.  You don’t often get a complete turkey if it has to pass through that many hands (unless it’s Hollywood, where power is wholly disproportionate).  But theatre is incredibly unique, particularly the fringe, because the very act of working for free or thereabouts ensures, if not perfection, a fellowship pledged to bagging the same prize. 

Which was why I was saddened to sit through almost three hours at one of our most lauded subsidized theatres and watch a show that appeared to have had money thrown at it like custard pies at a circus.  And all you could see was the money, loosely held together by solipsistic ideas.  So excuse the complaining this week.  It’s not an attractive quality.  We can all do a little better.  Even my cats. 

Remember the Liverpuddlian preacher who, much like a gargoyle sluicing rainwater, used to spiel damnation through a megaphone by Oxford Circus?  Where did he go?  He was admirably relentless.  Now that was mind-numbing show for performer and participants alike.  Even Peter Pan El Musical seems preferable to

Santos Pedro El Diablo Lengua.  One of my favourite comedians has a yarn in which our vociferous priest of the put-down was pointing wildly at Saturday shoppers, screaming: 

‘You’re going to hell!  You’re going to hell!  You’re going to hell!’ 

A big fellow, hooded and sun-glassed, came bouncing by. 

‘You’re going to hell!’ 

The big fellow turns, and without breaking his stride, says: 

‘Nah, mate…H-M-V.’ 

You can’t deal with damnation better than that.  It is a pity more religions don’t have the boon of a sense of humour.  It’s a useful piece of artillery in the battle royale for peace. 

Oxfam called me up today.  They addressed Miss P Snowdon, and wouldn’t quite believe me when I informed them that Miss P Snowdon was, in fact, me with the baritone.  They asked for credit card details for future donations when I’m finally off menial wage and I explained I didn’t really trust my numbers with them just yet, what with the sex change they’d allocated me and all.  He was interminably sweet, though, and confided to me that: 

‘All my family are actors too!  It’s alright, I understand!’ 

I saw a very unusual show this week.  It was called Deliverance, and was set in the convenience of my own living-room.  The performance lasted about three hours with no interval, and was a true story (though, I suspect, heavily mythologized).  Having recently enjoyed Douglas Henshaw’s turn as Satan at the Almeida, I happily entertained this tale of a lost woman’s redemption.  But my, erm, philosophical enquiries were met with scoffing and doublespeak.  This is faith, I suppose.  I join Oscar Wilde in the wish for a Confraternity of the Faithless, an order for people who simply cannot believe. 

As much as the sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins are on my constant To-Learn List, organized religion sometimes raises my hackles. Is it professional deformation?  My last Shakespeare job was crammed with devoted Hawkins enthusiasts.  Still preaching, albeit from the wolf, not the lamb. 

When the performer of our one-woman-show called Deliverance regaled us with her possession and exorcism of a parade of devils, I was surprised to hear that ‘Fantasy’ was the name of one of them.  Fantasy?  Really?  Is it so pernicious that it gets its very own demon?  Maybe we on this side of the curtain need our demons to act and write.  Maybe each performance is a duel to reclaim some unfathomable acre of soul. 

Again, I agree with Oscar Wilde.  His whole conception of humanity sprang out of imagination and could only be realised by it.  Invention, empathy, reliance on the intangible…Well, it all sounds pretty sacred to me.   

That said, HMV sounds pretty good, too.

Apologies to those anticipating a call-to-arms for Sir Alan to hit the boards of the Nash.  The lambasting of Lloyd-Webber’s thirteen-week promotion for his own musical shows off the backs of tax-payers seems mightily overdue.  Damn straight bring back the Play For Today — A venture last seen in 1984, briefly glimpsed in 2006 but now missing-presumed-dead…25 year revival, anyone? 

The question to be asked —to utilize a pilfered phrase from a presidential hopeful— concerns the audacity of hope.  You can’t deny the popularity of I’d Do Anything et al (whilst we’re on it, does the chorus of children singing that line send shivers down anyone else’s spines?  Where is The Daily Mail when you actually need it?).  It could be that the alternative of Dad’s Army reruns or You’ve Been Framed fails to stir revolt in the country’s remote-fingers.  But why do so many mindlessly enjoy these advertisements cloaked in culture’s clothing? 

Because everyone loves a success story.  That is, everyone likes to think that at some point in their life someone will notice their potential and fling them into a position of power, fame, wealth, whichever your particular poison may happen to be.  And to see a shelf-stacker catapulted into the dubious net of stardom is something that resonates deeply in the ambitious pockets of people’s souls. 

Of course, this is in a sense a right-wing coup.  The slavering desire to yank yourself to the top, cutting bloody swathes in the competition…it’s not for everyone.  As Mammet says, there’s nothing more unsatisfying than a character suddenly discovering that ‘oh, they can do it!  They do have the ability’.  They’ve always had the ability.  It’s a very romantic idea that pre-dates Young Skywalker and ‘The Force’.  But plot-wise?  It’s a cop-out.   

The reality of these shows (ha ha) is that they perpetuate the idea that anyone can, in a flick of fate (or in this case, a producer’s eye) get what they want.  Which sidesteps the idea that the best way of getting where you want in this domineering world is good old-fashioned graft.  I think it was Henry Irving said it takes 11 years to train as an actor.  Not six auditions and a televised vote-off.  

There is a reason why you’ve never seen an Olivier or Oscar acceptance speech go something like this: 

‘I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank…me.  Thank me so much.  Thank me for all the hard work, thank me for the blood, sweat and tears, the prodigious talent…’ 

Hard work speaks for itself.  But the residual talent, from whereof it comes is and always will be a thing of mystery.  You can toil over flint for fire, but you can’t stop it raining.  Which is why I’m still dumbfounded that I’ve manage to land a role in one of my favourite theatres.  Someone somewhere must be pulling some strings, because last time I checked I’m only on year 9 of my training.  Sorry Mr Irving.  I’m still learning.  Promise.

Actually, Joseph is a sore subject.  When I was eleven, I auditioned for Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, which was a veritable Hamlet to this budding attention-seeker.  I got up to sing I Close My Eyes, closing my eyes (a particularly revolutionary creative decision at the time, but I, ladies and gentlemen, have always been a maverick), and belted my little voice out.  Problem being that my little voice was experiencing a little transition called ‘puberty’.  So I cracked and wailed my way through the song and sat down with a proud little smile, as the teachers smiled patronizingly and prodded their eardrums to check for perforations.  Then my friend Hal got up.  Hal was brilliant.  Everyone loved Hal.  In fact, one of the pinnacles of my childhood was confessing to Hal that I thought he might be the one: my best friend.  We were sat in the branches of the tallest tree in the alleyway by school, and my sentiment was reciprocated. This, I thought, this, is love. 

But it wasn’t.  Hal got up and trounced my efforts with the silkiest voice we’d heard since Bryan Adam’s recent smash hit, Everything I Do.  To top it off, he usurped the affections of my first crush, Alicia Snow (a girl who had rejected my advances on account of our surnames being similar enough to insinuate incest — clever lass).  The very long point of this being that me and Joseph don’t have the greatest of relationships.  In fact, we’ve only got one thing in common: A great appreciation of dreams.  Example: At drama school, I was struggling with Gorky, playing a pre-revolutionary murderer.  I couldn’t quite get the part together, the weight of guilt was missing.  Then one night I had a dream I had killed my esteemed friend Dani (very talented and very undeserving of assassination, ala dream or otherwise).  I woke up in an icy sweat, pleading forgiveness, vowing to abandon the superficial pursuits of the arts if only she could be resurrected. 

I arrived at college, and there she was, gesticulating in the canteen and complaining about English weather.  Phew.  Our teacher agreed that dreams have an eerie power to feed into our performances.  He had to experience being shot for a telly once and, graciously, had never been so.  But he had had an incredibly grisly dream about being shot in the leg.  So he used that. There’s a Pharotic plague of drama schools these days.  And most teach the same old thing; the same broad Method/Commedia Dell’arte/Trevor Nunn style of acting.  So what about a Dreama School? 

Dreama

School is made up of a theatre surrounded by clusters of bean bags and a maze of hammocks.  And the rule is, if you want to act it, dream it first. 

As a connoisseur of sleep and theatre in equal measures, I can’t think of anything better.  Students for the class of 2008, feel free to sign up at the bottom of this page.  Zzzz.