Someone’s home

This evening we did Macbeth in someone’s house. The people who created the Crouch End Festival. They live in your average fantasy house. Beautiful window boxes. Loads of space. Wonderfully maintained garden. Interesting books. Clean creative happy comfortable space, in London, over multiple floors, where almost nobody can live comfortably without giving over their immortal soul. These humans have kept their soul, and gone one step further and organised an arts festival. There’s definitely someone who is paid to clean their house. It was immaculate. But also it was a beautiful home to give us an intimate frame.

I didn’t know who I was playing tonight. I ended up in a toss for Banquo, where I chose an audience champion to play scissors paper stone for the part. My little girl won, Banquo it was again. Although part of me was longing for the sergeant.

As it happens, the bulk of Banquo was cut by mistake, so in terms of responsibility I had very little to do. In terms of story it was a little harder as essentially the audience had to understand that the witches had sent the “Your children shall be kings” information directly to Banquo and Macbeth’s brain. I noticed how great the writer (that old git from Stratford) is in that he reinforces and reminds us constantly if it’s important. I expect the audience assumed they’d missed something but caught up.

Trivial Pursuit became a big part of Banquo’s anguish tonight post murder. His ghost can loosely interact with the world, and even if he has no words he can catalyse words. We must have totally messed up our host’s set, with me lying on my belly throwing cards at Maddy. Starved of words I tried to teach Macbeth my pain through questions and answers. Maddy responded beautifully. This project is growing and growing and the squad is growing I’m trust and headspace. I think we should spend a bit of time now being pedantic about words though. Myself included, everyone was lax. We have such a huge freedom in our action that we have no excuse to be anything other than word perfect and completely on it with the verse. We are not doing this show to have fun. That’s a by-product. We are trying to make a Macbeth that fits our taste. And we do.

After the show I ended up with a jetlagged friend trying out Steve Irvin’s glorious bar just down the road from Earl Haig. Steve employs Bobbie, a fellow Scotsman, because Bob is an actor. He lives employing actors I like him for that.

But I’m done. I should’ve been in bed hours ago. It’s all I can do to write this and I’m on an early train tomorrow doing difficult shit.

Here I am writing about the people I spent time with tonight..That’s all that really matters. My community is so darn solid. And tonight we told Macbeth beautifully in someone’s house. And that being done, I’m turning in, posting this without edit, and attaching the most recent photo my friend who watched it sent me. Because it’s me, audience, and random people in tights…