The Artist.

A rare night out at the cinema. We'd wanted to catch The Iron Lady, but it was sold out so settled instead for The Artist, more from convenience than choice, a stroke of luck as it was absolutely astonishing and a bit of a companion piece for Travelling Light which we saw last week at the National.

Set in 1927 the film, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, charts the careers of George Valentin, a silent screen romantic who fails to adapt to new world of the talkies and Peppy Miller, a one time fan, whose plucky, girl about town performances turn her into a box office phenomenon. As Peppy rises, George falls, until on the brink of oblivion, she rescues him for a true Hollywood ending. There's a sense that the talkies were as much about a reinforced sense of American nationalism as a natural progress. George, like many of those swashbuckling pioneers, has European, not native, roots.

The novelty of The Artist is that, with the exception of the final line, Hazanavicius chooses to revert back shooting the whole epic story as a black and white silent movie, reminding us with beautifully lit sequences, and superb camera work the craft of that early age. In this respect, and the almost constant referencing of great cinematic moments, the film is a simple love letter to movie making, like the wonderful Cinema Paradiso, a passionate affirmation of the glamour, nostalgia and romance of the form. A reminder that all of us can, and, on rainy days, probably should, imagine our lives in epic terms.

I hope it'll win the Oscar - if not for Best Movie then surely Best Actor for Jean Dujardain's incredibly witty and stylistic portrayal of Valentin. It's a ravishing piece of work.
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The Charity that Began at Home.

To The Orange Tree to see a fun filled revival of St John Hankin's Edwardian social satire The Charity that Began at Home directed with mischievous snap by Auriol Smith.

Lady Denison, swayed by the messianic idealism of Mr Hylton, the founder of the Church of Humanity, and supported by her pure of heart daughter Margery has organised a country house party not for people you'd like to ask, but rather for those who'd like to be asked setting the scene for a curious menagerie of pompous bores, vulgar cads, self-obsessed narcissists and terrifying zealots.


If not completely relaxed the weekend seems reasonably under control until Margery, following the doctrine that love can reform anybody, accepts the offer of engagement from army deserter and wastrel Hugh Verreker, throwing her mother's plans for a match with Mr Hylton into disarray.


The rest of the play examines the limits of charity, not quite with Shavian sharpness, but with a fair amount of intelligence and no little humanity and although some of the playing is pedestrian, there are stand out performances from Olivia Morgan as Margery and Oliver Gomm as Hugh.

I've never seen a Hankin play before, but very much enjoyed the well marshaled collection of characters and the clear moral twist at the end, where Verreker realising he can not 'reform' Margery of her faith in him calls off the engagement, so as not to let her down. It is as he rightly suggests, the most honest thing he could do in the circumstances. An optimistic and kindly way to defeat the insufferable idealism of the do-gooders.
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Finding The Frame.

We've come to the end of the first week of rehearsals for the Alice Project and things seem to be going well. The company have done a huge amount of research into mid-Victorian England as well as looking at the story of the relationship between Charles Dodgson and the real Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christchurch. Unlike last year, where we are early work was focused on choosing which of The Canterbury Tales to dramatise, this year we're spending the first meetings trying to find a structure within which to explore the work.

We could of course offer a simple telling of one of the two stories or - as Disney and Tim Burton have both tried - a kind of amalgamation into one dreamland. However, the more the company have read, the more they've been interested in Alice's own story and seem keen to bring in some biographical material, either to shed light on the fictional stories or because it in itself seems to be a fascinating and complicated tale of forbidden love and discretion. There is of course huge speculation both in our research and discussions as to the nature of Carroll and Alice's friendship, but I think trying to explore morality is a red herring for us, better to let the audience decide.

Talking with Tina towards this afternoon we began to see that photography could play a vital part in the play. Lewis Carroll (Dodgson used this name when engaged in his artistic, non-University activities) was a pioneer of the form and his initial friendship with the Liddell came about through his desire to photograph them.

Carroll was a young man in his mid twenties when he acquired his first camera and over the next thirty years he took thousands of portraits mostly of renowned acquaintances and, of course, young girls. Taking photos, in these early days, required a methodological patience and concentration. Materials were expensive and attention was needed to mix the chemicals, ensure the light and time the process. No doubt to the child subjects of his work Carroll appeared like a magician.

There's a sense of claustrophobia to this, of rigorous order and control - quite in keeping with his role as an applied mathematician. Carroll costumed his subjects, arranged poses, often recreating scenes from popular poetry or exotic myth. Arguably the most famous of these is the seven year old Alice dressed as the Beggar Maid from Tennyson's poem of the same name. Inevitably the children were cast in stories of his own choosing.

Perhaps though it was through these tableau that Dodgson, as Carroll, found escape from the cloying monastic, masculine, rituals of Oxford life. They offered a window into a parallel world of purity, chivalry and romance and just as the Alice stories can be read as a child's vision of the coded patterns of academic life, so these photographs can be seen as an attempt to reach beyond pure equations and rational language to discover a different, visual sense of perfect representation. Perhaps the best way for us to see the story is as a staged set of moments frozen in time?

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We Would See a Sign.

Since I began working on the Alice stories I've become acutely aware of the number of signed instructions on the walls of St Mary's, each one designed to ensure no litigious student or visitor can make a claim of 'not having been told so'. Reassuring as they may be, they also offer the promise of a tempting gateway into a parallel logical universe. It's a health and safety Wonderland.

Yesterday in the refectory a sign advertising egg fried rice was accompanied by a warning that the dish may contain eggs.

'Ah' said the catering manager 'just because a dish has eggs in the title, doesn't mean you can automatically assume it has eggs in the ingredients!'

'But why don't you warn us about other dishes?' I asked. 'Surely you should warn that the mushroom soup contains mushrooms or the breaded haddock, haddock?'

'Well we would but mushrooms and haddock are the main ingredients of those dishes. They're not trace. Now if we had rice fried egg, we'd have to warn customers that the dish may contain rice. Do you see?'

Outside in the hall way a single tile from the floor has been removed. A sizable area around the tile has been cordoned off and a large obstructive board, which we all have to walk around, has been put up, warning us to be careful of the uneven floor.

Other recent missives include a whole staff email warning not to put any boxes or other obstacles in corridors rightly pointing out these are off particular danger to the visually impaired and a reminder not to put information on the noticeboards in case students stop to read them; creating unnecessary and potentially dangerous bottlenecks. There is also some talk of getting Drama students to sign a waiver if they wish to appear on stage, underneath the hanging lights, without the statutory hard hats. Slowly every aspect of our conscious thought is being regulated into an appropriate procedure.

As Lewis Carroll understood, and points out time and again in the Alice books, those who use the language of advice often confuse it with the language of authority and can be quick to reinforce a closed logic -sometimes in ludicrous ways. Between the lines of Wonderland and Looking Glass is a gently anarchic message suggesting that rather than unswerving compliance to instruction, we should perhaps stand back, listen careful and take a moment to decide whether or not we agree. The word isn't always God.
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Travelling Light.

After work I headed off into town to meet Eleanor and catch Nicholas Wright's new play Travelling Light, a clever imagined history of the very early days of cinema.

Set in an Eastern European shtetl at the turn of the twentieth century, young Montl Mendel inherits his father's camera equipment, including a brand new cinematograph. After some gentle bullying and a significant bank roll from timber merchant Jacob, he's persuaded to document the world around him and create, what is in effect, the first documentary archive. He's aided in his task by the photogenic Anna, a feistily intelligent performance from Lauren O'Neil, and together the two of them, through trial and error, pioneer the early techniques of editing, montage and dramatic action. Excited by their discoveries they inevitably fall in love.

The play is, if anything, slightly too clever for it's own good. The set up of highly strung young director, played with wide eyed innocence by Damien Molony, fighting for time and resources from a passionate but uncultured producer is an ongoing battle; but Tony Sher is rather magnificent as Jacob, one moment supportively protective of his protege, the next threatening to destroy everything unless he has his way. Money, power, charisma, sex. All the ingredients for the first century of Hollywood intrigue are seeded here.

The first half is filled with comic set pieces as the mechanical villagers try and learn the art of movie acting, whilst vying for camera time and attention; but the pace slows down after the interval when the action jumps forward to see Moti forty years later, renamed Maurice and working in a Hollywood studio, retelling the story of his early life to a young Jewish actor, who, it turns out is his grandson. Together they synegetically piece the past together as two screenwriters developing an ever twisting plot.

For all the cinematique analogy, this tricksy nod to the diaspora and remembrance of a world that between the Cossacks and the Nazis had all but been annihilated, felt clumsy and forced and I rather wished Wright had managed to contain the whole of the play in the wild glory of the village, rather than bringing in a parallel focus. Maurice's questioning doubt as to whether he'd made the right choices in his youth and whether things could have been different were, in the final edit, just one layer too thick for me.

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Pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

A rare trip into the West End and a nose bleed climb to the Gods of the Apollo Theatre to catch Mark Rylance for one last time as Rooter Byron in the wonderful Jerusalem, which finally closes at the end of the week, following triumphant runs at the Court and on Broadway. I was lucky enough to see it during the original run and was fascinated to see if anything had changed over the last three years.

The most noticeable thing was Rylance's performance. The bravado was still there, the bursts of lightening, the audacious fabulism - but another layer was now in place, a sense of foreboding, an understanding from early on that despite the aura of invincibility, the forces of time and propriety were going to bring him down. This was a less naive Rooster, but all the more brave for refusing to let any of his young companions see the dwindling twinkle in his eye. In private though an occasional flash of fear whenever he applied his razor sharp mind to working out the odds of keeping his world alive. The forced effort of an exhausted showman determined to go down all guns blazing. He is the Archie Rice, the Mr Micawber, the Falstaff of our age and it's simply the greatest stage performance I have ever seen.

The show as well has reached mythical status and I bumped into four Drama St Mary's third years in the foyer, who'd slept out over night to ensure returns. Although bleary eyed, they were understandably high on expectation brandishing their tickets as if they'd won permission to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Their adventure had been made complete by a midnight visit from Mark Rylance himself, who'd brought them whisky and encouragement on his way home after a post-show meal. The cold wait, they felt, had definitely been worth it. Stalls seats, right at the front.

Garrick, Kean, Irving, Olivier we may have missed; but in years to come, when we're old and grey, we'll all be able to say with great pride, and possibly a little shiver of remembrance that we saw Mark Rylance play Rooster Byron. It's the stuff dreams are made on

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The University Women's Club.

We had a departmental away day up at the University Women's club in Mayfair to talk through some of the challenges and opportunities coming up as the institution as a whole responds to the huge shifts going on in the HE sector. It was terribly refined and a wonderful place to hang out for an afternoon. An oasis of heavy sofas, towering bookshelves and views towards Hyde Park.

St Mary's itself has decided to reform the modular system and students from 2013 will be expected to take 6 x 20 credit modules each year rather than the current 8 x 15. Opinions within the University are mixed, but Drama lecturers seem broadly supportive. It certainly makes project work easier and enables students to focus on their performance work, without quite as many distractions. It gives each module slightly more weight, clout and, most importantly, contact hours. We're pioneering the scheme and have agreed to re validate for 2012 - a year ahead of most of other subject areas. We see it as a real opportunity to reshape our offer to meet the new demands that students paying £8,000 a year will undoubtedly make.

There are some other interesting developments afoot. We hope to move towards electronic marking, which a couple of English colleagues have trialed with great success. The downside is that you need a computer to mark with and until the software is tablet compatible it means no more taking a pile of essays to a coffee shop. But the joy at being able to return work at the click of a mouse rather than have it sit unclaimed in our offices is persuasive enough.

We also have a new administrator Jessica, who joined today, replacing Sue who left in the Summer. Her background is in Stage Management - mostly impressively with the Berliner Ensemble. She's going to be a real asset to Drama St Mary's.

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