Monday 30 May 2011

Tea, cake and tweeping around

The welcome we receive at Northern Stage is amazing. I have been in email contact with them and Bartelt and I know there is a welcoming cup of tea for us, they have asked what time will we be arriving. One of our favourite arrival times is 2pm, so we go for that one. We are met at the door and are taken us into the building. I've never been to Northern Stage before: it's enormous and feels to me a bit like backstage at the Barbican or National Theatre. We go into a windowless room, the green room? There's Erica Whyman, who runs the theatre.

Erica. I met Erica back in 2003 just after I had graduated from drama school. The first show I was in after drama school was a criminally appalling version of Hecuba. The director had decided the Greeks were wrong and that all the violence should be seen on stage, to have plastic helmets and swords and that she should cast me as a dead boy. Dead, yes, boy....? I was quite a bit slimmer then, but I don't think there's ever been a point where my assets weren't almost the most noticeable thing about me, if I have not been giving everyone the benefit of one of my vaulting opinions that is. So, lying on the stage at the beginning of the play, under a blue (nylon) sheet, to signify my having drowned in the sea, I must have looked like some very rocky outcrop, teacherous waters... What on earth has been abandoned under that sheet? The audience must have wondered.

During the run of Hecuba I auditioned for Erica and, miraculously to me, she cast me. This time the show was Electra – we are in my Greek phase. Thus I found myself performing an utter abomination, an affront to theatre, of an evening, and sublimely rehearsing as a fury by day for Erica. Yes, a fury. I was un/dead again, but at least a fury can have hips. And long hair – no need for the nylon wig in Electra. Basically Erica spoilt me for other directors, but more than being a great director she is a truly delightful person, and these days she is running Northern Stage.

I'd told her about the show years before, when we bumped into one another in a cafe in London. She has been enthusiastic right the way down the line and her venue have put their money where their mouths are.

The room has lots of other folk in as well, and a big chocolate cake. Erica does a little introductory chat and then has to dash off to dress rehearse Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which is opening tomorrow in their main space. Bartelt and I stay with what must be nearly everyone else from Northern Stage, it certainly feels like it. It's my job to be mum and cut up and hand round cake, so I do this while answering questions from all sides about the show, the tour and my sister's murder. Bartelt also gets a word in edgeways, which is nice.

We have got very used to people focusing on me, because I'm the actor and because the sister who was murdered was my sister. Amongst theatre practitioners though, there are many questions for Bartelt, including why make this, how he has done it, what else he has done. These guys are so interested, it's quite something. Quite a few people from the venue are coming to the show tonight.

I'm shown my large and lovely dressing room and then we go to the space we are in: it is enormous with a great rig. They are going to make it cabaret-style, which makes sense of the place. Louise is the technician and she is on it. She and Bartelt create some interesting light stuff while I mimsy around like an actor. Little do I know that in a few weeks I'll have to travel to a venue and do the show all by myself; how I'll wish I'd been focusing on the focusing, not twerping around on twitter.

Wednesday 25 May 2011

Have we got a map?

Both our breakfast AND the weather are rather disappointing in Newcastle. For me these are minor matters as I am a human dustbin who is willing simply to put on more layers. Actually, I usually describe myself as a mountain goat: if you think of the physical resilience, love of high places and inability to dress correctly for a cocktail party of a mountain goat, basically that's me.

For Bartelt, however, this is a pretty devastating turn of events and, as I leave the hostel with Bartelt staring mournfully down into his terrible coffee, "Why is it so bitter? Why is it so grey?", I am concerned that it might just do for him. But I have to go as I have an interview for BBC Radio Newcastle.

I'm in possession of a map, which I have printed off, and although it's a bit chilly, and I have yet again not packed the right clothes for this unpredictable spring, I relish the brisk walk to get warm and generally enjoy myself. However, things are rather losing their sparkle as I arrive at BBC Newcastle, or rather what my map tells me is BBC Newcatle. It's not. It's some kind of 24-hour bowling alley/slot machine/casino emporium. Aargh. Panic is very rarely of any use at all and so I try to make it unwelcome in my psyche. My mantra is suddenly that the interview is a pre-record, the interview is a pre-record. But still, being late is not okay.

I go in. The guy is pretty darn bemused when I ask where the BBC is. He goes through quite a bit of local history, of the buildings mainly (I'M LATE, I'M LATE' I'M LATE), wondering whether it was the radio or the TV which used to be 'round the corner. I'm guessing the radio, I say, as I'm about to be late for a radio interview. Are there cabs nearby? Would he like me to call one for him? Oh yes, that'd be great. Thank you. As he dials and chats I look at the empty bowling lanes in their black and neons pink and blue. It's only just gone ten in the morning but this seems to be the kind of place where time zones merge and you can forget yourself. My main escape in life is sleep, at which I am a world champion. I win sleep-offs hands down. I could go back to sleep now, just here, on the floor.... Oh, God, a rush of panic, I'm late. I'm late, dammit.

Last night had been the usual wifi-mare, unable to get online at the cinema, and with it not working properly in our very new hostel. Teething problems. Well, teething problems for all the internet UK over, it turns out – so far everywhere we have stayed I have specifically chosen because there is free wifi, and it has, indeed, been free. And patchy, faulty or non-existent: “Ah, yes, the wifi.... we've been having a few troubles.” And the cafes, pubs and libraries we go into seem to have all the same issues, on top of that the Bolton library giving my stick a virus.

The radio people are super-nice about my being late and the interview is fun. I think I'm getting alright at these. In fact, many of these interviewers just want me to talk... I was almost certainly born for this. I wander, in a leisurely fashion, back into town, coming down off the adrenalin of the earlier stress. The clouds are scudding, the wind is blowing and I have some time to myself. Bartelt is a lovely human being, but I only now realise that I am used to a great deal of time on my own and we are very, very rarely out of each other's company. I get to be alone on stage, but that doesn't really count.

I find a cafe with wifi that works and treat myself to..... a weird tea out of the bottom of my handbag. Aargh. SECULENT!!!!!!! I want a tea or a coffee or maybe a GIN, but none of these is allowed, under my self-imposed rules. Every time I have to resist the urge I am supposed to remind myself how lucky I am in so many ways, the metaphor for these ways being the ease with which I can have the hot drink of my choice at virtually any time, day or night. I am disappointed that I am such a graceless, self-centred, greedmonster who treats tea and coffee, and a lot more besides, as if they are a human right.

I sit in the cafe in the sun and text Bartelt. He's nearby. He's coming to join me. It's a good thing that when I see him it's nice: this tour would be hell were I not so incredibly fond of and grateful to him.

Sunday 22 May 2011

The delights and surprises of Newcastle

I have very strong, very fond memories of Newcastle. My brother, Charles, was at Durham University and while visiting Durham was good, going to Newcastle was a different kind of good, a bigger, dirtier, scarier, more disorientating kind of good. I was 15 by the time I went to stay with Charlie, I had been a mere child of 14 when I'd been to Manchester for the first time. By now I was an old hand. And later there was the incredible experience of passing through Newcastle on the way to Edinburgh, a journey I have done many, many times since going to university.

On this occasion, though, I have managed to forget that we will also be passing through Darlington. Kate took very few direct roots to anything in her life and when she decided to train as a radio journalist she applied for many courses, and was only accepted on one: Darlington. She was disappointed to the point of distress that the courses with better reputations than Darlington did not want her, it tapped into her sense of being the outsider, of never being good enough. She lodged with a family in Darlington and enjoyed the course a great deal, though it was tough. As we pass through Darlington on the train, and stop, I feel such a melancholy. So many things led to her being outside the Sahafi Hotel on 9 February 2005, having been accepted at Darlington being one of them. And as I have no reason to visit Darlington in the normal round of my daily life, suddenly finding myself here has that poignance which jumps on me, ruffles my hair, steals my doughnut, and goes, leaving me confused and bereft in another, slightly different shade, to all the other berefts I've done... and I've done a few.

We are staying at a new youth hostel in the centre of Newcastle. I have booked us a twin room, and it turns out to be two sets of bunkbeds, the bottom of one being a double bed. Bartelt's double bed. I try to make the upper bunk of the other set whilst crawling around on the bed itself. I was not designed for anything 1. domestic 2. tidy, and so this causes much hilarity (Bartelt), photo-taking (Bartelt) and swearing (me).

The hostel is only a week old and so, inevitably, there are problems with the wifi. We go out in search of other delights. I have raved about this city to Bartelt is, understandably, excited. We stumble upoon the Tyneside Cinema. What a gorgous place! The guy in the ticket booth is from Poland and he is very, very enthusiastic about a film, so we just buy tickets on the spot. Both Bartelt and I fancy him a bit and so, when the film turns out to be tedious in the extreme, we find we can forgive him.

Before the disappointment of the film, however, there is another disappointment: the guy says there is wifi in the building. Hallelujah! We head up the stairs to find it, only to discover that it's not working today, of course, as they have a gig later. I am getting further and further behind with the admin. I try to drown my stress in a diet coke. It's still SecuLent; I'm still off tea and coffee. I had no idea before I started on this just how obsessed I had become with both tea and coffee, it's a real struggle. Which is absurd, as a REAL struggle is living in a slum or walking five miles to school every day.

My phone rings. It's Roger, the guy who was engaged to my sister. He is engaged to someone else now, wisely he has decided that the dead to not make good wives, and they have a lovely one-year-old boy. There is always some residual panic when Roger calls – we can go months without speaking properly and I am very, very used to him calling with bad news. His voice says “I have my papers”.

“What?”

“I have my papers, for the UK.”

I cannot believe what he is saying. His life has been such a terrible struggle since Kate died, for so many reasons, that the idea that he now has his papers to remain in the UK is..... too much for my tiny mind. I tell him he has to call my aunts, I tell Bartelt, who becomes covered goosebumps. Bartelt documents my amazed face with his camera.

More than six years after Kate's death, Roger has his papers. I have an enormous slice of Victoria sponge to steady my nerves and a desperate little weep. I probably could have contained myself, but for once I don't have to.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

A weekend in Derby

As well as co-writing and performing this show, known to us, Ben and Will (our booker and PR respectively) for administrative purposes as SILLMS, I am also producer and tour manager. It's good that I'm naturally pretty on-it logistics-wise, or the tour manager would be sacked by the producer, and then the creatives would have to be told that the tour manager had blown their fees due to sheer incompetence. I have had my moments, though, some too painful to mention here, but others with which I have become reconciled.

We have spent the weekend in Derby with Cousin Will and his fiancee Milla. On the Saturday Milla had to work, but the rest of us go for a wonderful walk in the Derby Dales. It's so hot for early April, and it's beautiful here. Bartelt loves it, although we have the discussion about his leg before we go. He has had an infection in his right shin this year. He's been on intravenous antibiotics twice and is currently on his third lot of oral antibiotics, so it's kind of getting better-ish again, but he should probably be resting it.

In fact, Bartelt has such stupendously bad health that he should probably rest his entire body virtually all of the time, but he decided long ago that to pay too much heed to what his body says would be to curtail virtually everything he enjoys, almost certainly including breathing. What is more, he could make no kind of a living. He has dreadful arthritis, a host of allergies and a cow valve (not pig – he's allergic to pork) where his mitral valve should be. These are just a few highlights. I don't want to turn this into something about Bartelt, this blog is about me, but there's lots and lots more where this came from. There's the constant pain he is in, the three drugs he has to take every day (and the handful to deal with the side-effects thereof) to stay alive and the fact that he seems to be a lizard, heated and cooled only by his environment.

And so, despite it's redness, the swelling and, I'm sure, pain of his leg infection, he is determined to go for a walk. He has a disproportionate love of the countryside in general and trees in particular. Actually, all the things he feels are disproportionate, but more of that another time. We all have an utterly lovely time.

On the Sunday Bartelt cannot believe how hot it is in their garden and while the three of us go out round town, Bartelt gardens, which delights Will and Milla upon our return. He is a very gifted man is Bartelt and he loves to garden. He seems to know the name of every tree, flower and shrub we pass and is always asking me the English name of them. I have to resist the temptation to say “tree” or “big flower with little blue bits”, not because it would annoy him, though I like to think it would, but because he is so sincere, childlike and enthusiastic about things herbaceous that it would be cruel. I have to overcome my irritation that he knows all the names of all the green things we see in German, Italian, French and often, Latin, while I have to respond time after time “Sorry, I don't know” or “Well, I thought it was a beech/hydranger/dock leaf. If you're sure it's not then I don't know. Sorry.” Or “No, I don't recognise it from the German/Italian/French/Latin. Sorry.”

Monday 9 May 2011

Kate was my OLDER sister, right?

It is such a beautiful day that even the A1 poster for the show, on which my face is E-nor-mous, is bearable, everyone is light of spirit and our lunch at the Yates's is divine. We change tables in the beer garden four or five times - sun obsessives - which is fair enough, given that 50% of us are Martin M Bartelt, Lizard Man, But Mostly Lizard.

We sit in the sun. We have completed our tech, during which I had a go on a machine which changes the lights. It goes up and down and along the floor. It's amazing. I have to wear a hard hat. I can make it go up and down with leavers – it's like the thing fire fighters use. It's brilliant. I go on a search for a postcard of Wolverhampton, to no avail, and we sit in a it of park outside a church, him reading, me working. Then I go for a proper lie down at the Arena Theatre. I sleep across three chairs.

I am a veritable Olympian at sleeping, I pride myself on being able to sleep anywhere, any time. It's a bit of a curse, though, as I fall asleep inappropriately all the time. Only recently I fell asleep halfway through my own sentence. At least I can sympathise with our audiences...

Very soon it's showtime. It's such a great space and a very warm audience - there are some friends and family in, as well as strangers. It's lovely to spend time with the audience before the show. We realise it can be quite shocking for people to see the performer before the show, milling about, having a laugh. We are fanatical about the fact that this show is a piece of theatre. Sometimes people ask whether it is scripted, and we whoop with joy because it's rigorously scripted, directed and – hopefully – acted, yet we hope to give the impression of a friendly, informal, spontaneous chat. If people think that's what it is we have achieved something. But we are playing with theatrical conventions by having me mingle with the audience before and after the show - I enter from the door they use. In spite of all of this we become annoyed and despondent if people suggest this show is not theatre.

My cousins Rachel and Will are here. As usual I feel for my family when watching the show, they knew and loved Kate too and have their own experience of all this. Yet I suspect for Rachel there is the added.... bonus of her father having died when she was seven. They are both very positive, but I certainly am not going to ask them what they think of it all: no point poking the tiger with a stick, as... I'm sure some people would say.

The Arena Theatre have a great space outside the main theatre where we do the Q&A. People ask so many different questions, and so many of the same questions, and we are nearly always asked why we are doing this show and what Kate would think. In case you're wondering, I'm doing it to make money and because it is all I have in my life, apart from my health, my friends, my home.... And what would Kate think? I don't even think what Kate would think: it doesn't matter to me. She is no longer here. I am bereft, most of the time do not want to live without her, but she really has no discernable opinion about this show.

My word, but I miss her opinions, her bad moods, her unreasonable behaviour. I miss her being late for everything, her innate attractiveness to men, the shade of which covered me for the first 33 years of my life, I even miss the fact that everyone always thought I was older than her, despite my being six years younger.

Friday 6 May 2011

Strangers on a train

On Monday I was shivering in my co-op office, today is Friday and I am boiling in the seemingly summer of this early April. Ah, the vagaries of virtually everything.

We are on the train to Wolverhampton and we have met Mel Michael. Turns out he's an actor too, but we are mainly talking about tea, android phones and how I have to grin all the time in order not to look demonically furious. Bartelt and I find it so easy to get talking to people. Everywhere we go we get into conversations and we've been laughing all the way from Euston with Mel. We've become friends on facebook whilst on the train: that's how close we are. We're so close that Bartelt guessed Mel's surname with No Clues.

My mother's excellent cousins Lesley and Denny came to the show last night. During their lives they have both had their fair share of loss, and I love them. When my grandfather was in hospital dying for three nights after a massive stroke I spent quite a lot of each night at his bedside, with a different configuration of family members: one night my South African aunt and her knitting, another with two cousins over a card game and the third, Lesley, Denny and I laugh and drink and laugh some more. They're great. In fact, they are so great that when Martin and I finally admit defeat and marry one another, we will have them as bridesmaids. And my mother's other cousins. And my aunts. My young friends are wonderful, but why would I not want these fantastic women, friends and counsellors to me for all of my life, not to be central at my never-to-occur-notional wedding.

Bartelt and I end up going for supper with them near Charing Cross and we talk about everything, death, obviously, but we also consider the idea of my wedding. To veer from the sublime of death to the ridiculous of anyone every wanting to marry me/me ever wanting to marry is most enjoyable. But we decide that they will be my bridesmaids. I add that the rest of Mum's cousins and her sisters will have to be my bridesmaids too. I tell them I'm going to put them in taupe and peach, to which they object. They are obsessed, like my mother and aunts, with bright colours: and the older they get the brighter their clothes. I know that I am approaching middle-age, a time for women to vanish, but I also know that it is a family tradition to do this in bright, well-made clothes. mostly from charity shops, and with strongly-held opinions.
Ah, you marvellous role-models.

We part company. Denny's daugher Rachel is coming to the show tomorrow night. Rachel's dad died when she was seven and we were very close as friends as children, though separated by miles, and avid letter-writers. It will be interesting to see what she thinks about the show and it will be lovely to see her. On our way home Martin tells me again and again how he loves Lesley and Denny, and of his jealously of my relationship with so many members of my excellent family. He has every reason.