Chile's other September 11th.

With no call until three a small group of us take a walk across town following the Calle Montijas into the Plaza des Armes and then onwards past the old church of Santa Ana and over the duel carriage way that marks the end of the compact city centre. We keep on Catedral and through the Burrio Brasil, a party area that stays up late, but sleepy now and abandoned to the the Kiltros who watch us warily, causing us to cross the road a few times. This is there territory and their time. Let sleeping dogs lie.

All the way we notice the carbineros are gathering ready for the strike. They hang round on street corners or sit in armoured trucks. smoking cigarettes and laughing. The show of strength is a little unnerving, but the business men and other commuters rushing to work don't bat an eyelid.

Finally we arrive at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights a huge, but rather beautiful in a National Theatre kind of way, concrete and glass building opened five years ago as a centre from which to research and reclaim the atrocities committed during the dictatorship.

The public part of the Museum takes us through the history from the day of the coup on the 11th Spetember 1973 right the way through to Aylwin's assumption of the presidency as a democratically elected head of state in 1990. On the way hundreds of stories, testimonies, newspaper cuttings and photographs tell the stories of the disappeared and tortured.

The first room is dedicated entirely to September 11th and plays Allende's final speech, broadcast on the last uncut radio lines from deep within the Moneda Palace. Harrier Jump Jets were bombing the palace and all four branches of the military had turned against him. He knew time was up, but there is something incredibly noble and brave in his final words.

'Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will be open again where free men will walk to build a better society.'

These are my last words and I am certain that my sacrifices will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice and treason.'

There's also a television monitor which loops the first hastily organised press conference held by the junta later that evening. Pinochet, supported by the heads of the navy, airforce and the carbineros looks into the camera and address the people of Chile in clipped and authoritative terms, assuring them of his patriotism and good intentions. Each commander then adds their own explanation. It reminds me of the Knights speeches over the body of Beckett at the end of Murder in the Cathedral. At the end of the broadcast the camera pans up from to focus on a full size portrait of O'Higgins. The message is clear - these are the 'true' patriots liberating the country from the tyrannical politics of Marxism.

The rest of the Museum deals with the repercussions. We split up and make our own journey through the exhibition, horror stories of exile and execution. The layout is designed to end in hope, however and the final rooms look at the plebiscite which saw Pinochet's final demise and the victory rally in the national stadium designed to be no less that a demonstration of rebirth for the country.

One image from this rally stood out. A elderly woman making her way into the centre of the pitch. She stands in the centre circle and begins slowly to dance alone. She neither smiles nor cries, but rather imagines her long lost love. She stands for so many.

We catch the metro back which rumbles underneath the demonstrations back to Belle Artes, where Jose and Antonia meet us for lunch. The restaurant has a small TV on the wall and we watch the water cannons turn on the protestors barely half a mile away. If this was going on in London it'd be global news, but again most of the diners barely glance up from their soup. It's a piece of theatre and everybody knows their part.

Julie and I swap groups this afternoon and I head off with Antonia to the Sename at Pudahuel where the older children are based. There's a similar set up here - although the two groups are working at opposite ends of the campus to keep a couple of the girls, who have a long running feud, apart. The most noticeable difference is that every window is barred. It's one less escape route from the classroom.

I begin with Alice, Dom and Alex who already have a good relationship with the group. Each of the participants come in with big smiles and hugs. Young Francesca has brought her eight month old baby Damien. He's passed round the group, who take it in turns to keep him occupied whilst the activities take place.

The real problem is that the focus in the room is split and several times the well intentioned exercise is disturbed by a new arrival or sudden exodus. The girls are struggling to hold the group and although the atmosphere is friendly and supportive it's clear that progress is slow.

Antonia looks worried. Some of the exercises have been repeated daily and the participants want more. They haven't really seen the purpose of the work and aren't driving towards the weekend's show.

Things fare slightly better when the sculptures move onto emotions - love, fear, hate, sorrow - but these results aren't capitalised on and again the class becomes distracted.

I head off to the other group where a dance routine is in full rehearsal. Ross and Amy are leading with support from Dannia and Hannah. It's a battle here as well. A couple of lads who'd been absent yesterday are back and their presence is proving an inhibitor to some of the girls. The St Mary's students persevere and manage to get the group into line by the end of the session. It's been hard work, but nobody gave up. Ross is slightly down, feeling that much of the work achieved earlier in the week has been lost.

I'm impressed, however. If what I've seen is the worst class of the week then things are going very well.

Back across the courtyard things have improved for the other group, who have also been choreographing a street dance, which everybody is enjoying and working hard to perfect. We do a quick debrief on the way back to the minibus. Most things are going right, but I'm still a little worried that our students don't have enough ammunition to keep the work alive. All in all they've got ten hours with their groups and they need to have better plans to keep developing and engaging the groups. We talk through a few more strategies and ways in which the participants contributions can be harnessed and turned into exciting Drama.

Back at La Cascona there's real excitement amongst the Galvarino group who feel they've made real progress. Chloe has been in role as a Grandmother and encouraged the children to make up stories about the adventures she's had in her life, which has worked brilliantly.

Tomorrow is the last chance we've got to put everything together for the sharings on Saturday morning.








 

Romeo! Romeo! Por que eres tu Romeo?

Back to the relative security of La Pintana this morning, but some of the company look a little worse for wear having drowned their sorrows after last night's straight talk. There's little sympathy from the rest of us, however, especially when the blame is placed on the water in the ice cubes, rather than the drink itself. By the time we reach the School, however, everybody is back on form, ready to go and deliver two cracking sessions, building on the initial work done two days ago.

Despite the occasional problem it's amazing to see how much the St Mary's students have grown over the last three days and they joyfully attack the session with a confident sense of authority. Each section of the workshop is deftly handled and the handovers from one student to another achieved with clarity and confidence.

 

Their sense of the dynamic in the room is also improving and their antennas are becoming more attuned to the children who are struggling to have full involvement. I'm impressed by the number of one to one discussions that are going on in the fringes of the room. No child is left out and all are feeling valued.

There's also a sense of progression today. The exercises build on each other, each one in turn demanding a more creative response from the children and, of course, the results are terrific. Photo race is the clear favourite. At the drop of a hat the room is filled with astronauts, then roller coasters, then dragons, then ghosts, each image preceded by a signed bi-lingual collaboration and much laughter. I'm aware that the St Mary's students are road testing ideas for the challenges of the afternoon.

Finally the lesson comes to an end and the class sing us a song in English, which they've learnt to say thank you to us. It's a much needed boost.

Julie and I had planned to swap supervisions this afternoon, but the feeling is that another day of continuity is needed to make sure that we follow through on the ideas voiced in our evening evaluations and so, after lunch, once again I head off to Galvarino with the team.

It's day three and we're now beginning to get a sense of which of the children are going to be able to take part on Saturday. Faith, Chloe and Rachel have developed a strong relationship with two young lads, Kevin and Gilverto, and are rightly leaning on their enthusiasm to pull in other kids who would otherwise perhaps prefer to watch from the side lines. A slightly older girl Barbara is always in attendance, waiting for the opportunity to talk to us about the shops in London and the latest trainer fashions. We haven't enticed her to perform yet, but she's happy to take some directorial decisions.

Others come in and out, but you can feel the momentum has changed and trusts are forming. We put together the Chile v England story. Alexis Sanchez scoring the winner with an overhead kick for which Kevin impressively hold a ten second pose.

Next door young Bruno has directed a music video with Aliyah, Hannah, Sophie & Lizzie and together with Jonathan, Bilan and Tamas, a whole range of choreography and storytelling is being put together. It's a much happier minibus that returns to base.

We don't really have time to reflect on the day's progress as the Ministry of Culture have generously  invited us to the opulent Teatro Municipal to see the City ballet perform John Cranko's version of Romeo Y Juilieta. It's a production filled with exuberance and high camp, oranges fly across the stage during the fight scenes and long shimmering capes flutter off to exile, but it's irresistible all the same and there are beautiful performances from the lead dancers.

 

 

It's been a much better day and we dine late in a Tapas bar round the corner from the hostel, serving perfect Pisco Sours. The strike has been confirmed for the morning, meaning Julie's planned voice workshop has been cancelled. The Chilean students apparently took a vote on whether to approach the strike committee to seek special dispensation, given how far we've travelled to work with them, but, by a narrow majority, they decided to honour the strike. I think, having worked with them yesterday, this is clearly the right decision, and so for the first time since we arrived tomorrow will be a morning of rest.

 

University Students, Markets and Footballs.

Early morning start at the University of Chile where I was due to run an Applied Theatre workshop for their Drama students, focused on some of the Theatre of the Oppressed methodology that forms such a vital part of our curriculum back home. It's a slight surprise that despite originating with Augusto Boal in Brazil very little of this work seems to have permeated through to the West coast of South America. We only had an hour and a half so I'd prepared and rehearsed a short play with Faith, Amy, Alice and Chloe back in the UK to try and demonstrate some of the key components of the work and introduce the role of the spect-ACTOR. The idea that we're all both artist and witness in the creation of our realities.

The department itself is in a beautiful old building and like the best arts colleges, the students seemed to be running everything. Pianos were wheeled from one room to another, newly learnt steps were being rehearsed in one corner of the central lobby, whilst costume fittings and physical warm ups took place opposite. Occasionally a lecturer wandered through, but their presence certainly wasn't the main motivator for the students who all understood and worked through their own productive routines.

Chile is going on an anti austerity strike on Thursday and so for some of the students this is the last activity for this week. It's not unusual for classes or even productions to be cancelled. In 2011 the University staff and students went out in protest at education cuts in May and only returned that December. Classes still occurred, with pairs of students volunteering weekly to deliver part of the curriculum to their peers. Interesting to imagine why that might not happen in similar circumstances back in the UK.

We're keen to find out more about the strike and so with the St Mary's students' consent I abandon our prearranged workshop and ask the Chilean students to sculpt some images to show us why the strike is important. After a brief discussion of these images. The students spend five minutes animating them into short non verbal scenes which give an active sense of the effect the current austerity measures have on their learning and well being.

The results are thoughtful, imaginative and elegiac. We add some text, although it's not really needed, and then invite interventions.

To my delight Alice puts up her hand to intervene and precisely because she doesn't understand Spanish and the students have limited English the scene goes in a completely different direction and becomes something else, something unreal, poetic and strangely beautiful. Without asking, the other  members of the group join the scene, breaking the carefully explained rules of the exercise, until all the are on their feet. Plaster is pulled from a crumbling wall and small amounts are handed round for all to scrawl messages and images on the wall. Nobody knows exactly what the message should be, put together they're actively defining it.

We talk briefly about the links between theatre and political activism. I get the impression that although all the students believe that story telling is morale boosting and the camaraderie of creating work together can of course galvanise a group, none really felt that theatre could offer a methodology where you could rehearse strategies of persuasion or  indeed that it could be used as a tool to engage directly with authority. The fool is only a fool because he speaks the truth to the King.

But this is a country still dealing with repercussions in the aftermath of the Pinochet regime and resistance is embedded deeply into the psychology. Positions of right and left are linked to real ideological differences and much energy is spent defending these positions. There is much more to explore and consider but time is up and the students have an acrobatics assessment to attend. They shake hands politely and file out. It's been a fascinating morning.

We meet up with the rest of the group and head to the one of the many fish restaurants in La Vega, the noisy market overlooking the fast flowing Mapocho river where we're once again bowled over by the plates and plates of delicious food that make their way onto our table for just a few pesos. The market itself is wonderful, vendors shouting about the sweetness of their strawberries, the bite of their chilli peppers and the size of their plums. Everybody fills up with bags of fruit to take back to the hostel.

We don't have a huge amount of time before we head back out to the Senames but it's enough for Sophie, Hannah, Lizzie and I take a short detour to the older Mercado Central on the opposite bank where, under a beautiful cast-iron roof and vaulted ceiling, designed in the 1870s by Charles Henry Driver, the British architect who also designed the Westminster Embankment, every kind of seafood is on offer in bountiful quantities.

I spend most of the afternoon session with Faith, Chloe and Rachel to see if we can turn round some of the problems encountered yesterday. A couple of plastic footballs have been bought in the market and these quickly become the focus for a series of exercises once we start work. To begin with they help as several games involve passing them to each other in a name game around a circle, but things quickly deteriorate and before we've really realised it they're being used as weapons.

Eventually we move on and try and persuade the group to invent a short story which we can tell in five freeze frames. The footballs have at least kept the children in the room and so sensibly the three leaders begin to lead them into a story of the football match. Chile v England. What happens? What are the five most important moments? What would photographs of those moments be? The session ends with a difference of opinion. Chile will win of course, but will they return from going two goals down to win 3-2 or is it more satisfying just to stuff England 5-0? Which narrative works best and why?

It's slow, but again the feeling is that we're getting there.

Jose, though, is quiet and just before we arrive back as La Cascona asks if the four of us - Julie and Antonia included - can have a meeting.

He's worried that we're not enjoying the sessions and that the indiscipline of the children has surprised us. He's unhappy about the balls - the kids aren't usually allowed them in class - and isn't sure that the work is going anywhere. Similar problems are coming up in the other Sename which Julie and Antonia talk about.

This is tough teaching and the temptation is to pack in and just play games. The groups are caught between trying to follow through the prepared work and keeping the sessions light and flexible. The truth is they need to be fluid and instinctive enough to do both.

We talk about the role of the translators who are key to the process. Occasionally our students are making the mistake of talking to them directly rather than talking to the children and trusting the translator to convert the language. This is putting unfair pressure on Carolina and Consuela and sending out the wrong message to the children over who is actually running the sessions.

I don't think we're miles away from getting things right, but I agree a more confident presence in the space is required and a sense that we're moving purposefully to a performance on Saturday. Do the students have the stamina? Do they have the technique?

Antonia and Jose head home and we call the students together again to underline some of the key points.

The students are tired and some harsh words are exchanged. Each session has little victories, but our continued critical evaluation of the work serves to underline that there is still much for all of us to learn.

First Day of Work.

Breakfast: toast, cornflakes and empanadas smuggled out of the barbecue, is a bit of a scramble in the communal dining room, but by 8am we're ready to ship out. Most of the group take the minibuses towards the primary School in La Pintana, south of the centre. Jose and I head back to the airport to pick up Sophie, the last of the students, who had a family wedding and so delayed her flight by 24 hours.

She hasn't slept a great deal and looks a bit shell shocked, but to her credit declines the offer to head back to the hostel for a rest and insists on going straight to the School for the first workshop.

As we drive Jose explains that La Pintana is one of the poorer districts of the city with 80% of its population living below the poverty line. The School itself, brightly painted on the inside, is surrounded by high barbed wire to discourage drug dealers from trying to peddle to the children. We have to go through two security gates to enter. The others arrive and after checking in on Sophie begin a quick physical and vocal warm up to prepare for the session.

The sessions in the School are all focused on speaking and listening skills and each hour long workshop has been divided down into five or six activities each led by an individual student. Team teaching with this many can be difficult and so to avoid chaos we've also designated a lead facilitator each time, which we'll rotate as the week progresses.

In the main we have a really good time and the two workshop go really well. We've stressed the need for full focus from everybody throughout and the students work really hard to support whoever is leading an exercise. The children, having to negotiate English and Spanish, as well as the sudden arrival of sixteen strangers into their midsts, quickly join in and a hundred ways of communicating make themselves apparent.

The children leave with big smiles and hugs. It's certainly been a different learning experience for them. In the minibus heading home we begin our evaluation. Clearly the energy was right and the team had worked well together to encourage full participation and remove any insecurities that the children might have had about working with us, but there's a feeling that some of the exercises are unconnected and that we didn't develop the session in as coherent a way as we could have done. It was great fun, but there's more to find and develop for our next visit on Wednesday.

Back in the centre Antonia takes us round the corner for lunch in our Bellas Artes neighbourhood. Lentil soup, fish, rice and sweet jellied flan all for 3000 pesos (about three quid.) There's little time to dwell further on the morning's work as we've the afternoon to focus on. Antonia is worried that the group will need more than energy and teamwork to make an impact in the Senames. She also advises everybody to change from shorts to leggings.

We split into two groups. Julie and Antonia head with half of the students to work with 12-17 year olds at the Cread Sename Pudahuel  I go with Jose, our second translator, Consuelo, and the other half to work with the younger 5-12 year olds at Cread Sename Galvarino.

En route Consuelo explains the way the system here works. The children stay resident in the Senames for as long as it's the safest place for them to be and there is direct transference at 12 from Galvarino to Pudahuel. Regardless of their status they leave the relative security of these homes at 18. She tells me that if you're still in the Sename by that stage things are fairly bleak for you. Over 90% of the young people who are not reintegrated back into a family by then end up in prison. We're allowed to take photographs, but because of the vulnerable status of many of the children we're asked not to upload them on line.

We're met by Freddie, the avuncular principal, who welcomes us with a big smile and wishes us luck. He tells us competition to earn a place in our workshops has been fierce and that we should be clear if any of the children are disruptive that they're free to leave. Then a surprise as we're split into two rooms to work. This causes a moment of panic, but  it's quickly solved Aliyah, Hannah & Lizzie take the first group and Faith, Chloe and Rachel work next door. I move between both groups.

It's hard at first to understand the rules of the house. Children wander in and out, use the window as frequently as the door and half an hour in their form tutor, Osvaldo arrives with tea and biscuits for all. Both groups initially struggle to get any focus from the excited participants, but slowly and surely with perseverance a couple of exercises gain traction.

Aliyah's group find the groove first. In essence she runs the session, talking directly to the kids but staying close to Carolina and insisting everything is translated back and forth. She establishes presence, refuses to be ruffled and takes her time. Hannah and Lizzie provide able support, listening and gently encouraging those on the fringes to take part, sometimes they do and sometimes not. By inches games are bought into and exercises explored.

 

Next door the struggle is harder. All three of the students are really able workshop leaders, but funnily enough it's their competence in this that seems to be causing a problem. In the UK they'd switch fluidly from one to another in this kind of setting, but here it's causing problems and by the time each exercise has been explained and made ready the room has been lost and the kids are indicating their disinterest. They battle through, but we all know a regrouping is needed. It's a thoughtful minibus ride home.

The other group have also found it tough and a few tears have been shed - a mixture of shock at the conditions in which the young people find themselves and our own failure to make an instant impact.

Back at La Cascona Julie and I convene an evaluation session in the common room. Everybody is keen to talk and so it lasts a good two hours. There's a slight tension in the room between those who want to simply find the games and exercises that will make the workshop run smoothly and those who feel that, despite the problems of the day, we should be working towards some kind of sharing of work for Saturday. This latter goal seems impossible to those who've not managed to make much connection today. The conversation is direct, honest  but by the end of it all of us are determined to galvanise our efforts and try and push ahead with some of the play making and story telling exercises that we'd prepared back in the UK.

We knew it wasn't going to be completely plain sailing.

Hola Santiago!

By the time dawn comes we're gliding through the high peaks of the snow capped Andes. It's a breath taking sight as the plane weaves its way towards the great plain of Santiago.

We're all exhausted but filled with anticipation. A forest fire a hundred miles West in Valparaiso makes the air thick, foggy and gives us a slightly unexpected Autumnal welcome but we're quickly through customs and met by our smiling NGO hosts Antonia and Jose, who bustle us into mini buses for the hour drive to our hostel right in the centre of town.

The journey takes us past several shanty towns, lined up alongside the motorway, which provides a vivid juxtaposition with the chic glass facades of the corporate towers as we pull off and come towards the city centre via the wealthy 'San- Hatten' northern suburbs to La Cascona - our home for the next eight days.

The rooms weren't quite ready and so we dump our bags and take our first steps out into our new neighbourhood. Just round the corner is the Cerro Santa Lucia, a little oasis of landscaped garden, built on the pre-colonial village of Huelen. For many this is where Santiago starts. Its conquest by Pedro de Valdivia in 1541 marks the begin of Spanish rule.

Valdivia was - relative to some of his more bloodthirsty compatriots - a fairly gentle conquistador who went out of his way to establish a harmonious relationship with the tribes who lived in the valley, but peace never lasted long and he spent the next twelve years, often supported by his warrior like mistress, the terrifying Ines de Suarez, trying to subdue the indigenous population. He was finally captured at the Battle of Tucapel, south of Santiago and killed in a gruesome way, although the details are disputed by the chroniclers. Some say he was forced to drink molten gold, others that his forearms were cut off, roasted and eaten in front of him, another story tells of his quivering heart being ripped from his breast and handed around for the elders of the Mapuche tribe to suck. We're hoping for a warmer welcome.

It's hard to picture all this amongst the trimmed herbaceous borders and the hissing of late summer lawns on the new hill. We work our way through the gardens to the highest vantage point and look out across the city. Charles Darwin spent a week in newly liberated Santiago in 1834, venturing inland from The Beagle, and enjoyed a daily climb up Santa Lucia to look out over the acacia woods which at that time surrounded the town. Now, with a population pushing eight million, the high rise urban sprawl pushes hard up against the surrounding mountains. The sun is out. The fog has lifted. The weather is beautiful. We're here.

Whilst some return to the hostel to rest, a handful of us carry on our exploration heading down the Avenida Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins - or the Alameda if you're pressed for time - towards the Presidential Palace of La Moneda. It's the Santiago Marathon and we inadvertently find ourselves walking parallel to the runners for the final kilometre. Young  and old they're without exception impressively fresh despite having  slogged their way twenty six miles around the city. Each runner is given a medal and a small punnet of grapes. There are bands, shouts of encouragement and a steady stream of stray dogs, locally known as 'kiltros' who accompany the runners over the final few yards. We decide it's probably time to make our way back to La Cascona for a shower and change of clothes.

At two, with all of us scrubbed up, the minibuses arrive and whisk us off north to Antonia's family home in Los Dominicos, where the most amazing welcome barbecue has been laid on. Tables groan with piquant empanadas, huge steaks that melt in the mouth, tender chicken breasts, smoky chorizos, tomatoes, onions, ripe avocados and salty black olives, all guarded sentinel by bottles of the crispest white and most full bodied red wine imaginable. The hospitality is amazing and nobody is allowed to refuse.

We're introduced to Antonia's family and Carolina, one of three translators, who will accompany us to the Senames. She quickly convenes a Salsa lesson for the students. Living is easy and the smiles are broad. The final remnants of the fourteen hour flight shaken from us.

As the light start to fail, we fall, tired but happy, into the minibuses and head back to La Cascona. Work proper begins in the morning.

Stranger in Richmond.

Tucked in tight on the Surrey side of Richmond Bridge, is a small park which slopes steeply down to the river. In summer a long queue waits patiently for ice cream and coffee from the popular cafe, built into the arches and cyclists, arriving along the Thames from Kingston and Ham, struggle up the impossible gradient from the river bank, up to the road.

Overlooking it all is the moon faced, hollow eyed and pursed lipped bust of an impressively decorated solider sporting glorious side burns, quizzical eyebrows and the stiffest of collars, whose incongruous presence in this Arcadian setting is mostly ignored by those messing about by the river.

This is Bernardo O'Higgins, the liberator of Chile, who arrived in the borough in 1795, as a seventeen year old scholar finishing his formal education in history and the arts.

London was a radical hot bed of ideas and idealists and inspired by his study of the War of Independence Bernardo began to develop a nationalist belief that South America could be released from Spanish colonialism as surely as the North American patriots had done twenty years earlier.

Thoughts of Chile formulated on the banks of the Thames.

Skip forward 220 years and this afternoon a group of intrepid Applied Theatre students together with Julie and I gathered at Heathrow in a state of high excitement ready to take part in own Chilean adventure, working for a week in Santiago as guests of the NGO Ventana de Color. It's a long journey, involving a two hour stop in Madrid before boarding a red-eye flight across the Atlantic.

It's hard to know what to expect at the other end. We're working at the University of Chile as well as in a School South of the city centre and a couple of SENAMES - children's homes run by the Chilean government where young people who have gone through particularly traumatic experiences during their childhoods are supported in order to help them reintegrate  back into main stream education and society. The schedule looks rigorous to say the least and we spent last week in University putting together some loose schemes of work, but we all know that these will have to be reassessed once we've got our feet on the ground on the other side of The Andes.

For tonight all we can do is settle into our seats, pull the window shutters down and try and get a few hours of cramped sleep before the voyage really begins.

Muse of Fire at The Globe.

Off to The Globe this evening, with our Applied Theatre Programme Director, Julie Spencer, to see the dress rehearsal of Muse of Fire, a specially commissioned immersive theatre experience for children, which takes them round the exhibition space and ends up with a sensational fire breathing finale in the main auditorium.

The show won a heap of awards the first time it played earning rave reviews in The Guardian and What's On Stage.

It's been brought back for this half term and Julie had managed to get audition calls for several Drama St Mary's students which has, in turn, resulted in no fewer than eight of them taking key performance roles as tour guides, puppet masters and a pair of terrified builders who disappear mysteriously. Our job, as audience is to find out where they've gone before confronting and driving back whatever it was that took them in the first place.

We're quickly split into four teams, each of which guided by a leader heads off in different directions to look for clues and possibly an escape. My team, led by the very able Emma, are taken into a tent like tiring house where we're introduced to an Elizabethan stage hand. The very man responsible for setting off the cannon that four hundred years ago set fire to the thatched roof of the original Globe during a performance of Henry VIII. Terrified that we'll blame him for this new disaster he presents us with risk assessment documents - Tudor style, a series of weather reports and news of an unusual siting, in the theatre's roof.

We move on a meet an archivist sitting in room filled with dancing books and self opening draws. Pulling clues from these he begins to piece together a synopsis for Julius Caesar, told by a storytelling puppet, who describes the supernatural events that seemed to occur after the murder of the emperor.

On we go to a dark, dank cave, to find the very foundations of the theatre. Here a voice from a glowing furnace deep beneath the city speaks to us. She is Muse, the last spirit of fire, and is reawakening after four hundred years of rest.

Our mission is clear now as we head of to meet two more tour guides, who, having heard that all the staff of The Globe have now disappeared, are busily trying to rehearse a two man Romeo and Juliet for this evening's performance. We agree to help out and are quickly cast as Montages and Capulets, biting thumbs and taunting each other.

But time is pressing and we're rushed into a magical forest for our final stop to meet a very modern magician dressing in a boiler suit who introduces himself as an 'ethereal exterminator.'

'Ever seen a flying pig, madam?' he asks one of the audience members.

'No,' she says 'I can't say I have.'

'That's right.' he replies 'And that's been the case since 1993.'

Finally all four groups, each of whom has ordered their journey differently, are led back into the auditorium, beautiful and eerie on this cold February night, ready for the final battle...

Half an hour later Julie and I are in the bar with the students who are really buzzing. The dress has gone well and there's a real anticipation about the week ahead. The Globe are happy as well, full of praise for the talent and professionalism of the Drama St Mary's students, who have picked up the roles so quickly and are doing themselves and St Mary's proud. They aren't just spear carrying or playing extras in a crowd scene, but vital components in a very engaging and exciting theatrical event.

It's going to be a big week for them.