The journey so far...

A shaky start when my alarm didn't go off at the set time of 4.30am friday morning (or perhaps I turned it off in my sleep, but I'm not prepared to confess this conclusively). Fortunately my amazing mother and father were on the ball, and mum knocked on my door to wake me, and shortly afterwards drove me to the Brisbane domestic airport. Delays in Sydney and then Johannesburg meant arrival in Grahamstown was pushed back to 10pm. I slept on the shuttle from Port Elizabeth to G-town, so was well ready for the wine upon arrival at The Yellow House, near Rhodes University, where Janet and Andrew met me with an assortment of theatre and university types. One wine was enough and my eyes were drooping, so we left for my beautiful home for the next 2 months, where I promptly fell asleep for 11 hours.

Saturday was an indulgent day with a G&T-accompanied lunch, and hours spent acquainting myself with my canine housemates. I tried to find Shakespeare relevance to justify the afternoon I spent creating a photographic journal of Pi and Beatrix, the weimeraners: the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet mentions a dog. "A dog of the house of Montague moves me".  It's all research.

Blog Dog.

Saturday night I saw Ubom's production of Door directed by Jori Snell. It was a moving, surreal piece of work inspired by Kafka's The Trial - the 'Before the Law' chapter. The performers were the actors who will be beginning Romeo and Juliet rehearsals on tuesday, and they are an extremely talented group. Incredibly vocally and physically present and skilled. I'm really looking forward to getting to know them and to start working with them. It was inspiring and encouraging to see in the show the physical theatre approach I hope to access within the Shakespeare work. So many stories are told through the body. Physicality enhances language; whether it is reading with or against the spoken text, it reveals characters' stories.

I'm meeting with the director Dion Van Niekerk tomorrow for lunch and long discussions of ideas, can't wait.