December

It’s three weeks to 12.21.12 or to put it the way we used to say it back in the UK; 21.12.12. If the The Mayan Calendar really does mean some super-transformational event like the planet going pole dancing, or if there’s a humungous magnetic shift, then all our small concerns will fade away.

Meanwhile, I’m unemployed. 

Unemployment has struck in the same month as the school where I trained has been elevated. Henceforth it is to be called:

The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama

The inclusion of the world Royal in the title is significant. Even though our graduates include: Olivier, Dench, Pinter, all the Redgraves, and many other distinguished names, the only British theatre school known in the USA was RADA. Maybe that all changes now.

It’s always been a peculiar irony how well the British aristocracy and royalty plays in America - and I cite here the naughtiness that is Downton Abbey - really, to pass off a soap opera in period as a quality costume drama is a marketing masterpiece, worth watching for that alone. But doesn’t it prove the enduring appeal to The American Republic with its theoretical social mobility, of a simpler world where everyone knew their place and dressed accordingly?

Or is the charm really all based on cream teas, and cricket, and good tailoring?

Years ago Simon Callow wrote a book called Being An Actor which did a certain amount for his career, and in which he announced himself as spokesman for the working conditions of the actors of his generation. The book inspired a hugely successfully parody called I, An Actor! authored by Nicholas Crane (nom de plume of Nigel Planer) and published a few years later, the parody extending as far as a televised master-class in how to be a TV weather anchorperson. 

Again, when Anthony Sher gave us Year of the King, in which he recorded his views, experiences, and insights while preparing for and playing Richard 111, an actor of my acquaintance intended to write a parody called Year of the Spear, about his experiences playing the guy who stands at the back.

Callow’s book defines the usual starting condition for the actor as unemployment. And it’s true. Employment is intermittently continuous in the same way that one who believes in re-incarnation might define life as an out-of-death experience. All actors experience a lull from time to time, even if they’ve been fortunate enough to work a lot - which I have - although this time, the gears really do seem to have stopped.

So, to while away the time, I’ve written a book of my own. 

It’s a slim volume called: An Actor Walks into China, and it should be available in February of 2013. So for that among other reasons, I am hoping that we’ll get beyond 12.21.12. 

October

There was a rush of preparation shopping in the supermarket next door. By the time I got there the eggs were gone and all the bread. Understandable, but who can explain a run on molasses? Only six jars left on the shelves. 

Likewise tomatoes - all gone. Fresh fish - down to a few sad Tilapia. Tins of corn - wiped out. 

But coffee - still plenty. Likewise tea and herbal tea, condiments of all kinds.

Molasses? We buy the strangest things under pressure.

How thin the line between First World convenience and the Stone Age. We filled the tub with water, and pots and pans too, not really believing that we’d have to use it. It was fun to live by candlelight for a night or two, but it was less fun to flush the loo with dwindling bathwater.

Back in the 1970s I lived on a commune for a few months in the North Yorkshire Dales. The property was a hunting lodge, built by Queen Victoria in the style of the Tyrol to make Prince Albert’s cousins feel at home. We lived in a house powered by a fuel stove, and ate soup made from fresh vegetables, grown in the kitchen garden. The house was on a high slope a mile from the nearest village, and in the winter it was cold - bitingly, penetratingly cold. The wind came off the heights whining continually. Wind was the only theme some days.

At that time there was a network of such places up and down Britain. The famous community at Findhorn still flourishes, and a few years later I would visit a community on Iona. Our place was  directly inspired by the work of J. G. Bennet, his compelling life story told in his book ‘Witness’. Bennet foresaw a sequence of urban collapse, privation, and social failure on a massive scale. He encouraged his followers to set up communes and communities to preserve craft knowledge. His vision was inspiring if perhaps a little off in the timing.

Because, what happened? The largest, most enduring commercial and technological expansion since written history began.

Ah ... but that didn’t last long, and as soon as the Internet goes down, and the one-eyed monster in the corner or in plasma on the wall is silent, and when the water in the tub is all used up, and when a tin of molasses is changing hands at dollars on the penny ... what happens then?

Be all that as it may, the biggest news in our lives, bigger for us even than the hurricane, is that Trish has become a grandmother. Baby Jeremy Daniel arrived fully formed and perfectly beautiful.  Emily and Jonathan adopted him as a newborn. No one could wish for better care.

And the story of the hurricane and the story of being new grand-parents converge, because here we are staying with the new baby and his new parents up in Westchester while the power is out in Lower Manhattan. With amazing good luck their house was untouched by falling trees, and they still have electricity.