As I sit here about to write my meditation, I gaze at the candle on my table. The flame is flickering, wavering, unsteady. I would be a steady flame but tonight I find I am wavering too as I am very tired. Perhaps Marcus had the same thought as, stylus in hand, he looked at the candle before his eyes. He must have done a lot of candle-gazing in the dimness of his tent at the close of the day. And fire-gazing too, when the shadows lengthened and the business of the day was over.

When I was a boy, I would gaze into the fire in my grandmother’s kitchen at the back of her house. I would be fascinated by the paper and wood disintegrating into flaky embers before my eyes: all black and silver grey and bright orange. I would try to find shapes in the flames. And when I was a little older, I would let the flames shape my thoughts. I would stare and stare at the fire until my face was too hot to look at it any longer. Perhaps his candle-gazing and fire-gazing shaped Marcus’ thoughts too and led him to write.

While gazing at the candle just now, I have been thinking about the play I am currently directing at my school. A production is a special way of bringing people together. I always try to create a community among my student actors in rehearsals. Now that I am no longer teaching at the school and therefore not in school all the time, it is proving more difficult to bring the actors together. It was easier for Marcus: his military cohorts all swore an oath of allegiance to the Emperor and there were fierce penalties for those who defected. For a teacher or director, loyalty and respect have to be gained and not demanded.

The play is my own adaptation of Dickens’ novel ‘A Christmas Carol’. It was the first production I ever presented at the school – in 1984. Perhaps it may be my last. ‘In my end is my beginning’ as the poet T.S.Eliot wrote.

For that first production, I devised an updated version with Scrooge as an ‘Arthur Daley wheeler-dealer’ type who had made his money dabbling in the black market in the Second World War. We used the theme from the movie ‘Ghostbusters’, which was a huge hit at the time. The Ghost of Christmas Future, all clad in black, appeared on a motor cycle which he drove to the edge of the stage! Even then I was one for theatrical effects! There will certainly be a few in our present production, which is in its original Victorian setting. It will be performed on November 28-30 in the Studio Theatre at Richard Challoner School, New Malden. I have also always been one for publicity!

Yes, theatre is about community. Every production -professional, amateur or student – creates a community for the duration of rehearsals and performances. Therefore that community is intense but transient: ‘swift as a shadow, short as any dream’ (as Shakespeare says about love in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’). For my students that

experience of community is intensified by going on tour to Budapest, as is their achievement on stage. That is why they not infrequently experience a low once it is all over. The community has dissolved. Hopefully they will work again with some of their fellow actors and crew in a new production in the future but inevitably it will be a new cast and so a new community. And it will be a new cast and a new community for me too. Community – it is about community.

I was reminded of this last week when I attended the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. I was there for four times in the week as I was experiencing Wagner’s ‘Ring of the Nibelungs’, his cycle of four epic operas based on German and Norse mythology. It is a remarkable piece of music drama and puts enormous demands on the singers and orchestra musicians and conductor and well as presenting considerable imaginative challenges to the director and designers. For example, the first opera, ‘The Rheingold’ begins underneath the River Rhein where the Rheinmaidens live and the final opera, ‘The Twilight of the Gods’ ends with Brunhilde, Wotan’s daughter, riding through the flames as Valhalla, the home of the Gods is destroyed by fire. So there I was fire-gazing again – but this time I was witnessing a spectacular theatrical illusion, a truly epic visual climax to the four operas.

At the end of that fourth opera as singers, musicians and audience completed the epic journey they had experienced together over the four nights, there was a real sense of community among the singers on stage taking their bows. This was enhanced when Antonio Pappano, the conductor, brought the orchestra onto the stage to take bows with the singers. And not only the musicians but also the technicians and stage hands who had made the amazing staging and special effects possible.

There was also a sense of community among the audience, who in the main, would have attended the complete cycle and who sat in the same seats for each opera. My friend and I therefore had the same neighbours to the left and right of us in our row and got chatting about the performances over the four evenings. The opera house is a huge theatre and in a horseshoe shape and yet there was a real oneness among the audience who had experienced the four operas together and who warmly and wildly showed their appreciation particularly at the end of the last one. Also there was a oneness with the performers especially at that final curtain call. The huge physical space between the singers onstage and the audience in a semi-circle of four tiers around them dissolved. As in Ancient Greek Drama, the circle of performers and audience was complete. We had created our own Ring and as in Wagner’s music drama, it happened by magic.

And so as I gaze at the candle on my table again, with Wagner’s music still swirling in my mind, I realise that I do not need to try to create a community among my actors. It will

happen imperceptibly as if by magic. And hopefully the circle between my performers and their audience will be complete too. Come and join the circle.

Ave atque vale – until the next blog.