Images from the Garrick Club. Also Red Ladder performing in the New Studio at 6.0.































Below, Liam and Hannah preparing for debrief of Thursday's memorable Analogue/MAATP showing.
So what was it all about? Suddenly I get pangs of feeling restrained and protective, just as I criticised others for feeling earlier in the week - the difference being maybe I'm feeling protective about the experiences and achievements of a whole group of people - who have been on a journey together. I have that feeling that some of what the group arrived at with Liam and Hannah this week is still in a delicate newborn state, needing to be nurtured a little longer, within a kind of protective bubble of shared experience, without too much exposure all at once. It does seem to me that a little of what I saw could - in its own small way - make its own contribution to the way we see and experience contemporary performance in the future.
Difficult in these circumstances for Red Ladder Theatre to enter this bubble of shared of experience with the show they were kind enough to bring to Central at 6.0. This was full of energy and commitment - of another kind.
Andy Field called in to see the space and begin to plan his Forest Fringe event next Friday. We need to start planning this, and making sure it finds its audience.
And the day ended for me with a formal dinner at the Garrick Club - the Shunt Lounge of its day. Of course the absolutely fascinating thing here is the emphasis which its theatre-loving inhabitants of the past placed on documentation of live theatre - within the constraints of their day - covering every inch of the walls with paintings, as well as filling the place with letters, objects and even sculptures of actors' heads - attempting to penetrate the mystery of what live performance might be. The whole place is a kind of temple of documentation. I found a drawing of Henry Irving in the Gents. And Garrick's Chair sits potently empty on the stairs.