There’s a quote I like in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia:

“It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.”

A friend asked me a few days ago as we walked along the beach why it was that I was interested in “Chalk Circle”. I was sadly unable to articulate anything sensible. He has read two thirds of it and clearly isn’t gripped. I think it’s very funny – but maybe this is another example of my unconventional humour leading me into trouble.

Another (well-educated) friend spoke at a lunch a while back about the Brechtian construct of using a narrator to reinforce the distance between audience and play and the artifice of theatre as an artform. It kind of hit me then that Brecht is something of a classic. Everything I’ve directed to date (which makes my track record sound far more impressive than it is) has been contemporary. So the historical / social / political context has been more immediately evident. I need to do some background reading.