I just wanted to add to my last post: that at the Shakespeare event at Stony Live I saw my old drama teacher, Roy Nevitt. Chatting, very briefly, to him made me think of how people can stay in your life, if tangentally, for many years. It must be over thirty years since I was in one of Roy's classes. Below is a short section from my Life and Theatre of Antonin Artaud about Roy, it starts a little negatively but do read on!:

Artaud was the exception. Always the exception, one expects, given his painful, combative, drug filled life of poor health, mental breakdowns and early death at 51. His ideas were rather glossed over by our head of drama, Roy Nevitt, who was excellent and inspirational in so many other ways I hesitate to denigrate him on this minor point. In Roy’s defence Artaud is not exactly the most accessible or even coherent of thinkers and in fact courted and encouraged an aura of mystery, madness and chaos with relation to his work. Artaud is certainly not your standard high school student’s idea of an easy read so perhaps the idea was to give him a wide berth generally and let those of us so inclined come to him at a more appropriate age.
One example of Roy Nevitt’s exceptional quality as a teacher was his promulgation of the ideas of Grotowski in a manner rare in schools (even now I should think). He always treated his students as adults, giving them independence and advice in equal measure, he often left the theatre or drama studio once he’d instructed us in what we were to do, which inspired confidence and self-reliance. Today that might be seen as a form of negligence but actually it was deeply empowering for his students who grew in confidence no end. He would crack the flint and scatter the sparks in our adolescent minds and then depart and allow us to imagine and re-imagine and re-engineer the great works we were dealing with. I recall he was passionate about Grotowski’s book Towards a Poor Theatre which I have to confess, I never read completely, though I was intrigued and fascinated by the photographs between its covers of the obviously intense theatrical experimentation. In my edition of the book there were black and white photos from productions called Akropolis and Dr Faustus but by far the most striking were the images of Rysared Cieslak in The Constant Prince (adapted from Calderón). These images have stayed with me for years and show, without doubt, the utter physical and mental commitment Grotowski sought and received from his actors.
Many years later I was surprised and delighted to instantly recognize the spirit of Grotowski - before his name was mentioned - and of how transformative his work could be for an actor, whilst watching My Dinner with André by Louis Malle. This is perhaps the best rendition of an inspired, meandering, intellectual and quirky conversation that I’ve ever seen on film. The movie depicts a single conversation between André Gregory and Wally Shawn (both of whom use their real names) in the Café des Artistes in New York...

So anyway, cheers Roy, for being intellectually challenging and insprirational to me and I'm sure many other students!

I was watching some promenade street theatre in Stony Stratford yesterday. The local Theatre Society where performing, in the open air, various renditions of sonnets and scenes from Shakespeare as part of his 400th anniversary. Caz Tricks who had organised this wandering band of players had done an excellent job, as ever, of bringing the spirit of Shakespeare to the prettier corners of Stony. With Sarah, my wife, and our two young daughters, we happily strolled around the town in the evening sunshine.

Audience and players began on Horsefair Green and went on to seven other sites around the town ending at the courtyard of the Cock Hotel. We began with the redoubtable Eric Thompson and the aptly named Vicky Shakeshaft performing ‘a domestic’ as Caz put it between Oberon and Titania. Followed by my old mucker Anthony Chapman with perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous sonnet 18 (‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day…’). Apart from the pleasure of the theatre this was also a pleasant introduction to locations of interest around Stony. I loved the event and the location and would like to thank everyone involved. I especially enjoyed Patricia Allati’s rendition of the ‘Willow’ song from Othello which really did give one the impression of how these songs would have enlivened and given great strength to the drama. She also sang as beautifully as the summer sun coming through the trees.
Sarah particularly enjoyed the various pieces performed by Danni Kushner from Hamlet to Juliet no less. The musical accompaniment from site to site made it a very jolly affair and I could have happily jigged about the town all evening. Caz even co-opted myself and Sarah to do a sonnet each: I with Isla, my two year old, on my back (munching crisps, I was told afterwards and happily ignoring my performance!) Sarah with Freya on her stomach in the papoose and being heckled by Isla saying ‘Mummy, mummy’ throughout (hope we didn’t disturb anyone too much!). I would have loved Andy Powell to finish with Henry V’s St Crispin’s day speech but his rendition midway through events, outside the place Richard III reputedly stayed one night, on the high street, certainly kept pedestrians and motorists alike on their toes! I could go on but I would recommend getting along yourself if you can, events are on-going for the rest of the week, just check out the ‘Stony Live’ website for details.

I am editing two collections of my essays, reviews and other prose pieces at the moment for publication hopefully later this year. The first volume is called 'Orwell, Two Guinea Pigs, A Cat and a Goat' which is meant to indicate the varied nature of the essays. One friend of mine hates it as  a title but I'm sticking to it so far! Anyway, below is one of the shorter pieces...

We were staying for a few days, in a friend’s flat, on the outskirts of Porth and walked one morning to Trevelgue Head, one of a series of beautiful headlands along the northern coast of Cornwall. The week before we arrived, the shops on the front, at nearby Fistral, had had their wood and steel walkways ripped down in a storm, as if come from angry god.
It was a bright, cold, gusty, blue-skied morning. We’d wrapped up in waterproofs, scarves, hats and gloves. The last, so as we could use our binoculars, with which we were now watching the various types of seagull dive and catch fish when, from nowhere, we saw massive clouds of sea spray fired up into the air.
Like comic book ghosts huge white sheets of water appeared suddenly and then drifted slowly through the air of the coastal inlet below us. The beauty of this, along with the blustering wind and crashing waves, took our breath away. Peering over the cliff edge we could see that the incoming tide was pushing seawater into a cave or large crevice. After a couple of seconds the seawater would shoot out in a great plume of white with a grumbling thunder as if the Cornish rock were awakening, roaring, choking, and spewing angrily.
One realized how easy it would be to make a god of this type of event. It was as if the earth had spoken in a loud, tremendous voice, saying, ‘Listen, I am here. I am power.’
A short time later, having moved to get a better view of exactly how this volume of water was being projected, and spewed aloft so forcefully, as the blankets of spray were caught on the wind, we again stood amazed as the air borne water passed through and highlighted the arc of a rainbow.
It was magical. The sea rushing in, the water filling the cave, a moaning boom, then a massive spume of white which then met with and revealed the ethereal momentary streaks of diaphanous colour.
I could have invented a deity from this natural phenomena right then and there. A god whom you crossed at your peril. An awesome, angry, impetuous heavenly creature who had wandered heaven and earth and decided to grumpily settle in these rocks hoping for peace from both god and man. If you disturbed him you’d better have good reason.
Perhaps, now in the peaceful aftermath of the recent storm, the shop keepers at Fistral should not only repair their walkways and shopfronts but erect a small statue to this god’s honour? Keep him happy and perhaps the Cornish rocks will protect and the water defences will ward off the sea next time.