and the road my friend?

Woah. It's been a busy summer. I'm juggling 2 part-time jobs plus the full-time job of acting, which in itself encompasses multiple jobs/projects. So I'm working pretty much 7 days a week. Last weekend I was in Derby and Nottingham. This weekend I was in Brighton. Last night on my way back to Cardiff, the coach driver saved me a seat on the coach (he spotted and recognised me in the queue in the coach station). That's a pretty good indication I'm spending too much time on the road. Yup. Time to stay put for a while (not going to happen).

So to take my mind off how stretched I'm feeling, here's some stuff that's inspired me of late.

1. Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids. I'd heard Patti Smith reading from the book on Radio 4, and had wanted to read it. But I don't generally buy new books, so hadn't got my hands on it until a friend of the Clown's from Chicago came to visit, book in hand. She finished reading it while staying here and left it for us to read. It's inspiring. And so, so sad at the end.

2. Word 4 Word. A mate of mine at the National Theatre Wales organised this spoken word/performance poetry night, which should - I hope - become a fixture on the calendar. The first night was a mixed bag of skill levels, but it's great for such a platform to exist.

3. Tanya Davis. A Canadian poet and musician. You can listen to her stuff here on the fabulous CBC Radio 3. The Clown was a National Rural Touring Conference and met her, coming home with her album "Clocks and Hearts Keep Going". I've been listening to her pretty intensely.

You might notice a theme. I've always sort-of kinda wanted to try my hand at performance poetry, but been a bit to chicken shit to do it. I think I'm getting the signs that the time's at hand to give it a go. The opportunity is there with Word4Word. I've got a picture of my secular patron saint Patti to watch over me. I've got Tanya Davis (And Patti. And Ani. And others.) to show me the way. I guess the cabaret act I do is performance poetry of a kind, though I don't sell it as such. I want to find a different voice to write from anyway. Less character.

Right, all I need to do now is make the space...

I'm new here.

Sometimes a song just knocks you sideways. I've just listened to Gil Scott-Heron's "I'm new here" for the first time, and I'm still reeling. A friend had posted a link to the video, as Scott-Heron's just died. I'd known who he was, but now I realise that's not enough. I must, must go find all his music and listen to it, NOW.

Here's the video. Listen to it.



I've been reflecting a lot these past few weeks on how I am right now compared with about a year ago. I'm trying to come off the anti-depressants that I've been on since last May. I guess I thought it would be easy - I'd been feeling really good - but storms can blow up in minutes on my personal weather map. So much of my thinking has ended with me feeling as though I've gone in a circle and that somehow I've not progressed at all. I've felt frustrated and trapped, as though I've failed. As if self-knowledge is a sort of test I can pass or fail. Gil Scott-Heron sings to me about the freedom in the circular journey. You arrive where you started, you get the chance to walk the same path, but this time with new knowledge: of yourself, of the world, of other people. Or perhaps, with nothing at all: free of preconceptions (misconceptions?) about the things you thought you knew.

I think that is what I need to remember. I'm not slipping backwards, because life doesn't have a direction in that sense. Let's see if I can hold on to that thought.

We'll always have Aberystwyth.

This is the eve of our little trip to Aberystwyth to perform the last show of this particular run of Serious Money. There may be life in this show yet, but much further down the line I suspect.

Here are some more fantastic photos of the show, taken by Cardiff-based photographer Jorge Lizalde.

Here is our glowing review in The Guardian. The print copy was out today and featured a photo of yours truly and fellow actor Tom Mumford. Ironically, I can't actually afford to withdraw any money to buy a newspaper. Ah the glamour of an actor's life...

And another great review in Buzz magazine.

Serious Money

Some great photographs of rehearsals for Waking Exploits' Serious Money, taken by Simon Broughton.

The show's opening in just over a week at Chapter in Cardiff.

a tale of two (very different) plays

I'm working on two theatre projects right now that could not be more different from each other. But it's interesting (to me at least) to observe how they're feeding each other.

The first is Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman: a play simultaneously about the aftermath of torture/oppression on an individual as well as a whole society. I'm working on this with Bambo Soyinka, who is involved in a sort of director's mentorship programme with Living Pictures, and the focus is on the process rather than a production. For me, it's been an experience of re-learning (or perhaps just learning!) the art of subtlety. I haven't worked on a naturalistic play in years, probably not since drama school. Drama school has been playing on my mind, as lessons that my particularly sodden course leader tried to impart on us keep dropping like the proverbial penny in my head (he also said that this would happen) as we work through the process of discovery in rehearsal. Just listen to your partner on stage. Just react. Don't "play" anything. Just communicate, actually communicate. All so simple, and so bloody difficult at the same time.

Case in point, the other project: Caryl Churchill's Serious Money, which will be staged in three weeks here in Cardiff. The play moves at a break-neck speed, the characters seem caricatures (and there's so bloody many of them!) and every day in rehearsal feels like two by the time we get to the end of it. I'm playing, primarily, a wealthy Peruvian business woman called Jacinta Condor. It's early days still (but also not, as finances dictate short rehearsal periods) but I feel as though I am casting about for a foothold. I'm turning to the work I've been doing with Bambo to see if that will help me; not that I'm sounding great psychological depths with this role, but because there has to be a degree of truth beneath even the most extreme caricature. Right?

I'm quite stressed, but it also feels good. I thought for a while that only devising work could provide the level of satisfaction I want from theatre-making, but I can see how wrong I was. Not that I am going to give up on devising - the right idea or project will come along at some point (with any luck it will be something like the film I made in Poland last year, which was a brilliant experience). It feels good to be doing something nominally different though, and to see what connections there are.

More thoughts may drift to the surface over the next few weeks.