MEDITATION 86

As I sit here gazing at the flame of the candle on the table beside me, I am reflecting on what I might have been.

A few weeks ago, I was travelling into town one morning by train to London Waterloo. The train was a fairly new one. There were two kinds of seating. Some seats at each end of the compartment were in twos facing each other, with each group of four on either side of the aisle.The other seats on either side of the carriage doors were long padded benches facing each other, which meant there was more space in the aisle between them as well as in front of the doors. I was sitting on one of these bench-type seats.

Sitting opposite me was a man slightly younger than myself I suppose, with what looked like a script in his lap. He had highlighted the pages with different colours. I couldn’t help noticing him because he was practicing his lines. He would mouth them silently with facial expressions. So he was obviously an actor and not a director.

He had presumably sat on one of the bench-type seats because by positioning himself there he had some freedom of movement. If he had sat in one of the groups of four, his mute rehearsal with gestures would have been somewhat obtrusive to the person or persons sitting opposite him as there would be little legroom between them. Perhaps he just sat himself down where he was and thought, ‘I’ve got a bit of space here so I’ll go over my lines.’

I wondered if he was going for an audition at first. But he wasn’t practicing a speech or a single scene as he kept skipping from one part of the script to another. So perhaps he was going to a rehearsal. Or maybe he was filming later. I wanted to ask him but he was too engrossed in his own little private rehearsal. I was itching to know what the script was and where he was going.

He didn’t look famous. I did keep looking up from my book to see if I recognised his face. Despite my encyclopaedic knowledge of the acting profession I couldn’t place him.

I was fascinated by his silent performance. So much so that I wanted to join in. I felt like offering to help him – ‘Hello I am a retired Drama teacher, need any help rehearsing your script?’ I could have read the lines of the other characters for him. It would have been fun. Although it would have been rather odd for the other travellers in the carriage to observe a slightly muted performance at 11 a.m. on the way to London Waterloo. But then they might have enjoyed it if it was a comedy, or possibly they would have been enthralled if it was a thriller or a ‘Police Procedural’ TV drama, which are all the rage at present. Just imagine it: ‘Happy Valley’ arrives at Clapham Junction!

Then the thought came to me that this could have been me. I could have been a professional actor. I could have been sitting on a train on a January morning with a highlighted script in my hand, going over my lines, on my way to the studio or rehearsal room. And before the question forms in your mind, dear reader, no – I did not feel even the slightest twinge of regret as I sat in that train.

Then another thought came to me. I have sat on a train or a bus going over my lines sometimes just like him, though I must admit without the strong facial expressions he was using. When you are working on a play, learning lines is a good way to use travelling time. Travel can be useful as a director too: I once worked out an entire production of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ while on a 9 hour flight from London to Vancouver.

Memories of learning lines on a train reminded me that I am an actor too. I just didn’t make a career out of it. Or rather I did but in an educational context. For all I knew, he could have been an amateur himself, using his spare time on the way to the office to go over his role.

If I had become an actor, and part of me wanted to when I was a callow stage struck young man, I would have probably gravitated towards directing and writing, which is what I have been fortunate to do in my school career. One of my Primary school teachers. Mrs Lavelle, predicted that I would become a BBC Drama producer or script writer. That was because sometimes I would write little plays for some of my class to perform. I always had the main role of course! But she saw a burgeoning talent of some sort and imagined where it might lead. And I have done the same, hopefully, in my own teaching career.

Acting is a craft not just a profession. I have practised my craft (or tried to) in the classroom as well as attempting to give the rudiments of that craft to others. Some of them, I am pleased to say, have gone on into the profession in one way or another.

I don’t think I would have coped with the precarious nature of the profession anyway. At least I have a pension! But then if I found myself a role in some lucrative Netflix series (as one or two of my past students have) I wouldn’t need one, I suppose. Or some bloated Hollywood blockbuster, for that matter. But then I do not need to be in a Marvel universe because I am in a universe of my own, as friends sometimes remind me.

Reflecting on what we might have been hopefully reminds us of who we are. For those of us with a little longevity, such thoughts may remind us of who we were as opposed to who we are now. Hopefully too, rather than ushering in regrets, reflecting in this way will help us to discover the multi-faceted jewel that each of us is and hold that jewel to the light.

For, after all, we are more than what we do.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 74

As I sit here beside my candle I am meditating on the Movies. I suppose I should be watching one instead! I have always had an interest in films and have loved going to the cinema since being a child. I am sure most of us are the same. Although, perhaps we go to the cinema less often now and watch films on TV or stream them. Entertainment has become rather complicated, hasn’t it? Or rather choosing how to watch a film has. Personally, I still think the best way to concentrate on a film and to hopefully become immersed in it, is to see it in a cinema.

I also have a keen interest in cinema history, which also developed in my childhood. At that time, the BBC seemed to be showing the back catalogue of movies made by the Paramount and RKO studios. Many were from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s. I relished them all and would eagerly wait for the cast list at the end of each film to see who was playing who. I would remember their names and watch out for them in other movies.

In those days, closing credits were much shorter than the seemingly endless ones of today. The end credits were limited to a cast list. Only the stars and ‘featured players’ received a credit. Those in minor roles or ‘bit parts’ often did not appear in the list at all. Some studios (like 20th Century Fox) often placed the cast list at the opening of the film along with the technical credits. Not all the technicians who contributed to the film’s production were included either in the film’s opening credits. Only the major ones did: the director, screenwriters, music composer, director of photography, set designer, costume, hairstyle and makeup for example. The others, though equally important, were invisible studio employees.

I used to collect film actors the way other boys of my age collected football players. (Dear me, that sounds rather indelicate!) Eventually I came to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of film actors from that era and not just the stars but also the character actors too. I am sure I began to learn my acting craft by watching those movies. I never wanted to be a star but would have loved to be a character actor in Hollywood’s golden era. I still would.

When I was a child, my ambition was to be in a Disney movie at their Hollywood studios. At that time Disney produced a string of ‘live-action’ films as well as their animation ones. I remember entering a competition run by the Disney magazine and first prize was a trip to the studios in Hollywood. I was sure I would win and that when I was on the studio tour I would be talent spotted, which would lead to my Disney film career. Such are the dreams of childhood! I did win something: a signed photo of Hayley Mills their top teenage star at the time. But it was no consolation to me!

It must be wonderful to win an Oscar, BAFTA or other major award. I can’t help myself watching those ceremonies on TV and finding out the nominees in advance and hoping that my choices will win, especially if it is a film or performance I have very much appreciated. It must be so exciting and rewarding to have your craft acknowledged in this way or even just to be nominated, which is an acknowledgement in itself. Either way, I understand it makes you more ‘bankable’ for the future. Needless to say, I have my basic acceptance speech ready so that I can adapt it when the times comes. At this time in my life, it won’t be the award for Most Promising Newcomer but for Most Promising Senior!

Coming back to my celluloid youth, ITV showed quite a lot of British films then including those made by Alexander Korda at London Films in the 30’s and early 40’s. He established London Films at Denham in Buckinghamshire. His aim was to rival Hollywood in high standards, quality and opulence and he often succeeded. I very much enjoyed his films especially those starring Charles Laughton, one of my favourite actors. I find it strange that Korda was a Hungarian and that eventually Hungary would figure so prominently in my life. There is now a major film studio named after him (as it should be) outside Budapest where a lot of Netflix movies are made. Two of my ex-students, Archie Renaux and Tommy Rodger, have been filming a Netflix series there: Shadow and Bone.’ It is wonderful to think that their first appearance as actors in Hungary was in one of our school productions on tour there, and now they are back in Hungary filming a Netflix series. Life comes full circle: very quickly for them.

When I was a teenager, on one of our annual holidays to London, I bought a book called ‘Immortals of the Screen.’ It was a large book with potted biographies of film stars, going back to the silent days. All of the stars had passed way (hence ‘immortal’ in the title) before 1966, when the book was printed. Each little biography was accompanied by a portrait and stills from some of the films they appeared in. I imagine it must have been published in the U.S.A. and reprinted in Europe. It was one of those big books that Paul Hamlyn used to publish, usually printed in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps you remember them. Of course the book fired up my enthusiasm even further and I would watch out for the films mentioned if they came on TV or on a chance re-run at the cinema. Those were the days before VHS, DVD, Blue Ray and streaming!

Most of the silent stars would not be featured on TV of course. Thanks to Kevin Brownlow’s wonderful TV series, ‘Hollywood’ and his restoration of some of the classic silent films with superb scores by composer Carl Davis, which appeared on Channel 4, I was finally able to see some of those stars who featured in the book I bought years earlier. Eventually I became and still am a member of the British Film Institute on London’s South Bank where I can see these silent classics as they should be seen – on the big screen. I have also been fortunate to see some with a live orchestra next door at the Festival Hall. But perhaps my passion for silent movies should be the subject of another blog.

Being a fan of the Oscars ceremony, inevitably I watched the morning news on TV a few weeks ago to find out the winners. There on the news I saw the regrettable incident of the actor Will Smith stepping up to the stage and slapping the Master of Ceremonies Chris Rock. This was provoked by a joke made by Mr Rock about Mr Smith’s wife who was sitting beside him. The joke was interpreted by the Smiths as a nasty comment on her hair loss as she is an alopecia sufferer. Initially Mr Smith laughed – did he hear properly? – but it seems that his wife’s discomfort with the remark led him to walk up to the stage and hit Mr. Rock. Mr Smith seemed very emotional at his Best Actor acceptance speech with tears in his eyes. Perhaps this was part of the problem. His emotions must have been running high while he was waiting in the audience for the Best Actor category to be announced onstage. A few weeks earlier, he had won ‘Best Actor’ at the BAFTA awards in London so would he make it a double at the Oscars?

I am sure that the emotions of all nominees run high while waiting for the big moment. Moreover they probably do not really have any interest in the stand-up repartee of the MC. They are nervous and not a little uptight, which may have contributed towards Mr Smith quietly blowing a fuse, walking onto the stage and slapping Mr Rock, then returning to his seat and shouting at Mr Rock before he sat down.

In other circumstances, he would have been removed by security guards no doubt. Had he not been sitting on an aisle and fairly close to the stage, perhaps the incident may never have happened. Although he may still have stood up and shouted at Mr Rock from wherever he was seated.

It was ‘unacceptable and harmful behaviour’ on Mr Smith’s part in the words of the Academy’s official review published today and the Academy have banned him from the Oscar gala and other Academy events for 10 years. Mr Smith had earlier already apologised for his behaviour and voluntarily resigned from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who awarded him his Oscar) and hopefully will regain his personal dignity in time.

In a way Oscars Night has ceased to be a ceremony but over the years has become a circus (certainly a media circus) with its fashion parade on the red carpet, the big production numbers on stage, endless interviews and wild after show parties. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place in 1929 and was at a private dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel: very different from the world wide television event it has become.

Much attention has understandably been given to Will Smith as the aggressor. But surely we must also take into account his provoker, the compère for the evening, Chris Rock, when considering this regrettable incident. The comedian and actor Ricky Gervais has very recently referred to Mr Rock’s joke as ‘feeble’. It probably was compared to his own roasting of nominees when he has been Master of Ceremonies at awards evenings. Rather than physically attack Mr Gervais, presumably the objects of his comments suffered in silence.

He has also objected to Mr Rock’s joke at Jada Pinckett Smith’s expense being labelled as a joke against a disability. Whether alopecia can be defined as a disability I do not know, so he may have a point here. Nevertheless it is an ongoing medical condition which sufferers may feel understandably sensitive about as it involves their looks, especially if you are an actor and consort of a major movie star attending the Oscars, where your personal appearance is so high profile. She was diagnosed in 2018, it appears, and has only gone public about her condition on Instagram last December. It seems that Mr Rock was unaware of this. Perhaps it may have taken her some courage to attend the ceremony, we do not know.

It also appears that Mr Rock’s joke was unscripted, off the cuff, a sudden brainwave. He had said the wrong thing at the wrong time without thinking and hurt someone’s feelings as a result. We have all been guilty of that at times. I certainly have. But not in a high profile ceremony with a world-wide audience. It is easier to come out with a witty comment than to stop and think about who you are speaking to, especially when you are performing your act to a large audience on the stage of the Oscars. However, it is indicative of a wider trend in stand-up comedy of using humour to deliberately denigrate and demean others at their expense, to the extent that humour becomes vitriolic and tasteless. But then, Social media is riddled with unkind humour and comments and sometimes with tragic results, especially among young people. It is a sad sign of our times.

Perhaps, along with banning Mr Smith, the Academy ought to also review the role of the MC at the ceremony.

The singer and actress, Lady Gaga’s behaviour at the ceremony contrasts with Mr Smith’s and not in his favour. Later on the evening she was announcing the award for Best Picture with another famous actress and singer, Liza Minnelli, who was making a rare appearance. Miss Minnelli, an Oscar winner herself (for ‘Cabaret in 1973) appeared on stage in a wheelchair and had been in hospital only a few weeks earlier. She was understandably rather nervous and tongue-tied. Perhaps being back at the Oscars was rather overwhelming for her too and this was the last award of the evening to be announced so she had been waiting in the wings, so to speak, for a long while. Putting aside her own feelings at losing the Best Actress award (the previous one to be announced) Lady Gaga gently and graciously assisted Miss Minnelli with the announcement. It was a loving gesture and showed respect for the star that Liza Minnelli is.

Sadly this beautiful moment, though widely publicised, has been overshadowed by the earlier dramatic incident.

Incidentally there is a film called ‘He who Gets Slapped’! It is a silent film released in 1924 and was M-G-M’s first ever production, starring Lon Chaney. The film is ironically set in a circus! Perhaps we are ready for a remake, only set at the Oscars.

Ave atque Vale – until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 68

As I sit here gazing at the candle before me, one of my favourite actors has come to mind: Alec Guinness. There is a connection with Marcus Aurelius as he played the philosopher emperor in the epic movie, ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ in 1965.

I remember seeing the film on of my annual visits to London as a child in the large Astoria Cinema in Tottenham Court Road. In those days, of course, there were no multiplex cinemas with screens of various sizes so the large single screen of this grand cinema fitted the epic sweep of the movie itself. Perhaps the cinema seemed larger and more palatial than it really was as I was only 11 or 12 years old then. There were many Greek and Roman epics in cinemas when I was a child and biblical ones too. My mental image of Classical times came from the movies rather than school history books or the children’s magazine ‘Look and Learn’. When I was studying Latin at grammar school, these images from the movies would flood back into my imagination. In my mind’s eye I would be swanning around in a toga as I learnt to conjugate Latin verbs by rote. But I digress.

I have been thinking about Alec Guinness for two reasons. One is that I paid a visit to him with my friend Simon in the summer. More accurately we paid a visit to his grave in the cemetery at Petersfield on our way to Chichester. We had been talking about him and thanks to Wikipedia (which has replaced the great library of Alexandria of classical times), we discovered that he was buried only an hour’s drive or so from my home. So on our way to the theatre at Chichester (where he appeared several times) we paid our respects on a glorious summer morning.

I imagined that the cemetery at Petersfield would be a small village graveyard. In reality it is an expansive undulating field. But we found his resting place quite easily (thanks to the eerie website ‘Find a Grave’) and it was not far from the entrance. His wife, Merula, is buried next to him. She only survived him for a few months or so after his death in August 2000. I had forgotten that he died over twenty years ago. This is probably because he is still very much present through his many films, which are regularly shown on the TV, not least in his role as Obi -Wan Kenobi in the first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, the character which most people would associate him with.

His film career was more extensive of course, in which he he played a gallery of detailed portrayals, too many to mention here. My favourites are his Fagin in David Lean’s ‘Oliver Twist’; the Ealing comedies ‘Kind Hearts and Coronets’ (where he plays six different characters) and the black comedy ‘The Ladykillers’ in which he plays a sinister crook; as King Charles I in ‘Cromwell’ and as Dorrit in the little known 1987 adaptation of Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit.’

These and many other portrayals revolved in my thoughts as I gazed at his gravestone. I also had the good fortune to see him several times on stage. As with his film performances, he had great presence on stage but he was not a ‘showy’ actor being reserved, dignified and capable of infinite stillness, even in comedy (which he excelled at). He could make the raising of an eyebrow dramatic or comic even to plebs like me up in the theatre’s balcony seats. Somehow he drew you into the story and the character which is what great acting is all about. His strong vocal presence helped in this, as he had impeccable diction of course. I remember moments from his theatre performances vividly even though I saw them over forty years ago as a young man. These flooded in as I looked at his simple gravestone with its quote from Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ at the bottom: ‘The ripeness is all.’

I said to Simon as he stood beside me that it seemed so odd that this big star who is still so famous and in a way still alive to us, through his films, should be here at rest in this grave in this quiet countryside cemetery. A tinge of resurrection perhaps.

My second reason for mentioning Alec Guinness is that I have been watching two BBC Drama series which he appeared in. My visit to the cemetery led me to look them up. He played the role of George Smiley in excellent adaptations of novels by John Le Carre: ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ and ‘Smiley’s People’. They were filmed in the late 70’s and early 80’s and were immersed in the murky world of Cold War espionage before the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The first one ‘Tinker, Tailor’ had a labyrinthine plot which I found hard to follow at times but the sequel, ‘Smiley’s People’ was more straightforward. I hadn’t seen them in a long time, in fact I am not sure if I had seen all the episodes of ‘Smiley’.

Spy thrillers are not my thing really but Guinness’s performance as Smiley, the semi-retired world-weary member of the British Intelligence Service was magnetic. His reactions to persons and events were subtle, indeed, immaculate, as was his ability to register nothing with his face or his eyes if appropriate, as I suppose a spy must do in certain circumstances. It is very difficult to play inscrutable or ambiguous as an actor but he achieved it, while maintaining his strong presence in the scene. He had this amazing ability to make everything interesting, engrossing: even searching someone’s room or climbing a staircase or getting into a cab.

My own performances can be rather overblown at times, which comes from having to demonstrate in drama lessons. Perhaps now that I am away from school, I could return to the amateur stage and emulate my idol, Alec Guinness in restraint and stillness. Who knows?

Smiley inhabits a different world to us: a world of letters and notes; microfiche and rolls of film, elaborate hidden cameras and microphones and tapped phone calls on landlines.It is far away from emails, mobile phones (with cameras), CCTV and zoom meetings and hacking into computer systems. We are in a world of digital surveillance now and the Internet is rapidly diminishing the possibility of secrecy. But still individuals have to be tracked down physically and ‘safe houses’ set up, I imagine.

I don’t think I would be very good at playing a spy let alone being one: I am no good at trying to lie or being duplicitous. I was once rather close to espionage however. No: I wasn’t recruited while a student at Oxford for MI5 or the other side. Although someone who was at my college at the same time as me did end up spying for the Russians and was caught.

I was in a train either going to or from Leeds. The carriage wasn’t very busy. A man behind me was making numerous business calls on his mobile in a far from discreet voice. One involved the details of an upcoming business deal. I heard every word clearly. Had I been from a rival firm I could have written every detail down and passed it on. It would have been an act of industrial espionage but my rather indiscreet fellow passenger deserved it. I wonder if it has happened sometime or somewhere.

That was quite a few years ago now and today everyone is constantly doing business on their phones in public places or on public transport. I hear it all the time and it may have increased now that everyone is wearing earpieces with their phones. I often see individuals talking way into their phone as they walk in the street. I find it amusing sometimes as it looks as if they are talking to themselves. It is even more amusing when you see two or three people walking along and talking to themselves in the same street. They are oblivious to their surroundings just as the businessman was in my carriage ages ago.

It can be very annoying too. A few Fridays ago, I was visiting friends in South London and on a fairly packed commuter train from Waterloo East. Most of the passengers were going home from work and were probably tired. A young woman was on her phone presumably to a friend and loudly arranging her weekend social life, The call went on for over 15 minutes so she must have had a busy weekend ahead of her. But it was quiet annoying for the rest of us sitting or standing near her.

Similarly I heard a girl on a bus once splitting up with her boy friend and egged on by another friend and another one giving the results of her pregnancy test to her mother. They were different buses I hasten to add!

It is not the device that is the problem, but the way that it is used. People have little sense of privacy anymore or awareness of others for that matter. The device encases them in their own world, their own bubble. So they become oblivious to the fact that strangers might be listening in. We might as well be spies with headsets listening in to their private conversation as if we were leaning against the wall of the next room.

Some words of the Greek philosopher Epictetus (c 50 – 135 CE), who greatly influenced Marcus Aurelius’ own thinking, might be appropriate to the use of mobile devices, indeed to our lives in general:

‘We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak’

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

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Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 67

It has been some time since I have sat here beside my candle to write my meditation. Winter is now definitely on its way. The trees are losing their leaves, while swaying in the chill winds.

There has been a break in the blog because my friend Henry Riley, who helped me set it up and who posts each meditation for me, has taken a well-earned holiday. He works for LBC radio and has recently been promoted to producer of Nick Ferrari’s early morning show. This means he arrives at the studio in the middle of the night. He also still hosts a weekend programme on our local radio station – Radio Jackie – as well. So, he is a busy boy.

Henry was one of my Drama students and a good character actor. He studied Politics at Warwick University and now, in his early twenties, he is making his way in a career in broadcasting. I hope that eventually he will have his own chat show and that I will be one of his first guests, engaging in cut and thrust discussion with politicians or chewing the cud with the stars!

Meeting with Henry several weeks ago and discussing his work at LBC, had led me to think about where other ex-students are working now – at least those that I know about.

To my knowledge, two other ex- Drama students work behind the scenes in broadcasting: one for the BBC and subsidiary companies and the other for Sky TV. I also know of one, quite a while ago now, who worked behind the camera on trailers for the James Bond films.

I have often been asked whether any of my students have been successful as an actor or performer. I suppose behind that question is another one: have I taught anyone who went on to be a star?

Well quite a few went on to study Drama or Performance at university and several are currently making their first steps in the theatre profession. Several others are making their way as musicians. It is a struggle and even more so now with so many actors and performers out of work during the pandemic. The entertainment industry is struggling to get back on its feet at the moment.

One, Tommy Rodger, who was a professional child actor while at school and appeared several plays in the West End and The Alienist’ for Netflix, is filming a BBC drama series as I write. Another, Archie Renaux, had a prominent role in the BBC series “Gold Digger’ in 2019 and now has a major role in the Netflix series “Shadow and Bone’. In fact he was filming the series in Budapest in the week of my final Drama tour with the school in February 2020 and came to see our students’ performances.

I know of several who went on to work in lighting or sound or set construction in the Theatre and one, Bryony Relf, is a successful stage manager in the UK and Europe. Another, Chris Kendall, is a voice actor, working for audio books (very profitable during the pandemic) and another Chris – Chris Cunningham – is a successful drag artist. My friend Steven went from acting to a career in HR and management and quite recently went back to work at his old drama school advising graduating students on making a start in the profession.

I am sure there have been others over the years who I do not know about, not to mention those who became professional singers, musicians or dancers rather than actors, like Ben Lake who was in ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘Jerry Springer the Opera’ in the West End quite a while ago and my friend Simon who teaches dance.

Equally gratifying to me are those who went on to become members of the teaching profession at whatever level, and especially those who went on to teach Drama or English or both, including Leigh Norton who has taken over from me as Director of Drama at my school. Quite a few of my ex-students found their way back to the school as teachers or teaching assistants. I used to quip that I could take a register of them all in the staff room and that one or two still owe me homework!

However, I know nothing of the futures of the vast majority of students whom I taught. There were so many over my three decades and more at Richard Challoner School that it would be impossible to keep track of them all. This is true of any teacher with a long career I suppose. It is very pleasing that some have kept in touch.

I hope they have all been successful in their own way. I also hope that, at the very least, studying Drama gave them personal confidence to pursue their chosen career and to make their way in life. Several I know have gone into the legal profession or management and one or two in Whitehall in the Civil Service working for politicians or in administration for political parties. Several have gone into the Police or retail management not to mention some who became doctors and nurses.

I also feel gratified when I discover that ex-students, having participated in the Drama tours to Hungary have returned to Budapest on holiday after they left school. Or those who have developed a theatre-going habit as a result of school theatre visits.

In a way the question I was frequently asked, understandable and well-meaning though it was, is redundant. Studying Drama means more than preparing students for a possible career in theatre, films or TV, though some may progress into the entertainment industry. Arts Education in schools is currently under threat because of this utilitarian attitude. The concept of a broad and balanced curriculum in schools, which incidentally enabled the students mentioned above to flourish, is also under threat.

The word ‘education’ derives from the Latin word educare’ – to lead out. Education, therefore is intended to lead out or bring out the talents, skills and above all potential in the student. This ‘leading out’ necessarily involves nurturing and developing these talents and skills too along with personal qualities such as confidence to successfully use them.

Therefore, it means more than filling students with knowledge. Education at present seems to be veering in the direction of Mr Gradgrind. Gradgrind runs the school in Dickens’ ‘Hard Times’: ‘Now what I want is Facts,’ he says in the opening paragraph of the novel. ‘Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’

Now I am not crowing about my former students’ successes and certainly not living through them because I didn’t become a professional actor or director myself. I have little if anything to do with it, though naturally I am proud of them. A school, after all, is a springboard and where students land afterwards is their own business.

However I do hope I have to some small extent, nurtured and developed, and have led out my students’ potential.

I once read somewhere that all we can ask to be in life is a link in a chain. Not the whole chain. Only a link. Therefore not the whole show either!

I hope I have been a link in the chain of their lives.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 52

Happy New Year, dear reader!

As I sit here writing my first meditation of this year, I am gazing at two candles. One has a steady flame and the other a weak and flickering one. They arouse in me the conflicting emotions we are going through in this third lockdown. The weak and wavering flame brings to my mind the horrific trail of tragedy and suffering caused by the lethal and contagious second virus and all the fears and uncertainties that accompany it. The steady flame reminds me that vaccines have now arrived to combat it accompanied by a solid hope for the future. In these bleak times, mirrored by the gloomy weather, we must remember St Francis’ words: ‘All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the flame of a single candle’ – the candle of hope.

Since the year began, I have been getting through lockdown by reading books given me by friends at Christmas. A rare instance has occurred in my reading: chapters in a book I am reading have been mirrored by current events. The book is ‘Shakespeare in a Divided America’ by James Shapiro. Shapiro is an English professor at Columbia university and has written several popular books about Shakespeare and his plays as well as fronting his own BBC series. In his book he explores the enduring influence of Shakespeare on his country, and not only on its actors, directors and writers but also on its politicians and different classes of society. It is a fascinating read and shows how productions and approaches to the plays have also been influenced by the events of the day from the early 1800’s to the present.

In his opening chapter, he describes a particular production of ‘Julius Caesar’ at length. The production took place in the summer of 2017 during Donald’ Trump’s first year of office. It was staged in the 1,800 seat open air ‘Delacorte Theater’ in New York’s Central Park. The play was presented in modern costumes and with a modern setting, actually not so much modern as contemporary and totally up to date. Caesar was presented as a thinly veiled Donald Trump and was apparently a meticulously detailed portrayal by Greg Henry, who like Trump is tall and who sported a mane of blond hair. Some of Caesar’s plebeian supporters (like Trump’s) wore red baseball caps. The caps had ‘Make Rome Great Again’ written on them.

In the play Caesar is assassinated in the Senate with only the members of the senate present. The people of Rome are going about their business elsewhere. In this production, apparently the director seated some of them in the audience so when Caesar was murdered, they stood up and shouted out in shock, anger and outrage and mimicking Trump supporters. As you probably know, after the murder, Mark Antony gives an oration over the body of Caesar in the Forum, inciting the people to violence against the conspirators and murderers. The mob runs amok in the streets and in a short but brutal scene they beat an innocent man to death. He is Cinna the poet, whom they mistake for Cinna the conspirator. When he pleads his identity to them, they don’t care anyway and bludgeon him in their bloodlust.

I little imagined that a few days after reading this chapter, similar scenes would be played out in the U.S.A’s own Capitol in Washington. Yet again a mob armed with makeshift (and real) weapons was running amok and storming the Capitol. They were not incited by another Mark Antony but by another Caesar himself, who had not been assassinated himself but his hopes of re-election had (and his ego too, if that is possible). They were making their voices heard in the most destructive and violent way.

The director of the production I have briefly described above was Oskar Eustis. He gave a speech at the curtain call of the first performance. In it he remarked that ‘like Drama, Democracy depends on the conflict of different points of view. Nobody owns the truth. We all own the culture.’

His words greatly affected me. The conflict of different points of view, indeed freedom of speech, is not about who shouts loudest or who clogs the media most effectively with lies and unsubstantiated false information. Our media, as ‘Macbeth’ says ‘is smothered in surmise.’ Fake news, real fake news (not Trump’s version) is another contagion as lethal as the current virus.

Consensus and compromise are now seen to be the weak option and unworthy of a nation’s so called ‘sovereignty’, as has been sadly evident in this country in the last four years of Brexit. Similarly anything other than an entrenched position is seen as weakness. And yet our government has been forced to change their minds and their policies by the onslaught of the virus. Entrenchment and an pandemic do not mix.

In November, I attended an online seminar about the U.S. election results, given by my Oxford college and led by a panel of American alumni who had pursued political careers eventually after graduating. The consensus of the panel was that American politics has become strongly polarised as a result of the Trump years of administration. There was now no room for a middle ground. They felt that hopefully this may change and Politics in the US may become less relentlessly combative if Biden ushers in a quieter and less aggressive (and impulsive) administration.

Trump’s four year tenure of the White House could be summed up by a quote from another Shakespeare play, ‘Measure for Measure’:

‘But man, proud man

Dressed in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,

His glassy essence, like an angry ape

Plays such fantastical tricks before high heaven

As make the angels weep.’

These lines not only apply to Donald Trump, of course. They could apply to other political leaders past and present. They could also apply to any of us who are in a position of authority over others.

How do these ‘fantastical tricks’ by those in authority originate? Perhaps the answer lies back in ‘Julius Caesar.’ In the play, Brutus says of Caesar:

‘The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

Remorse from power.’

In Brutus’ comment, ‘remorse’ means mercy: if mercy is separated from power then greatness is abused or diminished. In other words, when the gaining and exercise of power is more important than the needs of the people. People should come first. Power should be used to care for and protect the people not to subjugate or exploit them. Or use them to bolster up a monstrous ego trip.

In these last ten months, we have been potently reminded of how fragile human life is. In the last two months since the U.S. Election, we have also been reminded how fragile democracy can be.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

MEDITATION 50

As I sit here, gazing at the candle next to me, it is hard to believe that I have reached my 50th Meditation. I began them just over two years ago, so I guess I have posted one every three weeks or so. It has been a pleasure to share my ambling thoughts with you, dear readers: my final moments as a drama teacher; my travels; my visits to theatres and galleries; my thoughts on the tumultuous times we have been through and above all, my reflections on life, acting and being human.

I wish to thank you for subscribing to them, especially those who have followed these meditations from the very first one. I also wish to thank my dear friend, Henry Riley, who despite his gruelling schedule at LBC Radio, has posted these reflections for me. Incase you think that these words sound as if I am saying ‘Vale’ (as Marcus would put it) or ‘Farewell’ because I have reached number 50, I am intending to continue with them, though there will be a break for a little while.

When I started these meditations, blogging was entirely new to me. I had begun to write a novel (a collection of short stories really) and had attended a writers’ summer school at Swanwick in Derbyshire. One of the myriad of things I learnt there was that it was important for a prospective author to have their own blog, if only to promote their own work.

A few years prior to that course, I had read Marcus Aurelius’ ‘Meditations’ and had been very impressed with them. I wondered if I could eventually write something similar, as a way of thinning out the thicket of thoughts in my head if nothing else. So eventually the idea for the blog came to me. And with the help of a few ex-students for photos, layout and posting, here we are!

It is a strange co-incidence that my name – Neil – in Polish (where my father came from) is Neilus. My father’s sister, Barbara, who resides on Vancouver Island, calls me Neilus. So I came upon the name of ‘Neilus Aurelius’. There: I have spoilt the illusion now! Perhaps some of you have been thinking that I write these meditations, seated in a tent and wearing a toga like Marcus did. He may have used a tablet to write on just as I am now.

However, I must stress that I am no guru. Like Marcus, I am writing these meditations as much for myself as anyone else. Because of that, I hope that they have become wider in scope than the self- promotional blog of an author. Several friends have suggested I create a podcast, a visual version. However to stay true to the spirit of Marcus, I feel that my blog has to be a series of written reflections. After all, Marcus was never on camera, nor would he have wanted to be, I think, in his private moments. Having read his ‘Meditations’, I have a sense that he was quite a private and introvert person.

In recent months, we have all been getting used to being on camera. Platforms like Face Time, WhatsApp and Messenger with their video call facility have become a wonderful way of keeping in touch in lockdown. The ability to both hear and see family, relatives or friends who live far away as if they are in your own room with you is a great comfort, especially to those of us who live alone. I had never really used any kind of video call (except Skype very occasionally) before lockdown.

Then there is also the phenomena that is Zoom, a platform which seems to have made itself very quickly indispensable in a matter of months. It has transformed teaching at every level and along with YouTube and I player and other streaming services has kept our spirits buoyed up in the recent dark months. Indeed, but for the Internet and online facilities our lives would have been very bleak indeed. They have fed our impoverished spirits at this time.

Imagine if we only had letters and the telephone to keep in touch with everyone in lockdown. We would have coped I am sure but life would have been bleaker and more fearful, I think.

Imagine being without streaming for entertainment (another recent technological development) and only having four or five TV channels to watch – or even 2 or 3 (as was the case in my childhood)! I am sure we would have been less restless. I have come to think that my unease and restlessness in the earlier stages of lockdown was magnified by having so many different viewing options in the evening. Sometimes I would flick from one channel to the other then on to I player, Netflix or Amazon Prime and in the end I would get fed up and watch nothing. I would end the day feeling more unfocused than when I began it! My way through this was to watch a TV series on BBC, for instance, on the day and time it was broadcast (like in the old days). This gave structure to the evening and something to look forward to as well.

I was also grateful to the National Theatre, who put a new production on YouTube every Thursday evening for something like 16 weeks. These were productions that had been filmed previously and shown in cinemas. They dated from over the last ten years, which is when cinema relays began. Fortunately for me, I had missed most of them when they were originally performed and watching a play filled the evening without having to think about what to watch.

Through Zoom, I have attended several talks by the Dickens Fellowship and heard actors Ian McKellen and Roger Allam in discussion for the Royal Shakespeare Company; I’ve watched a webinar on the US Election from my old college; and I’ve taken part in a regular meditation class and even in a one-day retreat. This is not to mention the numerous times I have chatted to friends on Zoom. I have a regular glass of wine and chat with two of my friends. One session went on for two hours: we just left the camera rolling, so to speak, when we needed to replenish our glasses and go to the loo!

Of course, meeting family or friends on Zoom will never replace being able to be with them properly, nor will it replace the physical presence of a teacher or lecturer in a classroom and neither will streaming theatre replace being able to watch a show live in a theatre. But all these things have been necessary for the present and a great comfort.

I must admit that initially I found being on camera on Zoom made me feel tense and I still do feel tense in meetings to some extent. It is partly being able to see myself on camera I think. After all, the camera doesn’t lie and sometimes I have looked at myself and realised that yes I am growing old! I have heard it said on numerous occasions that the camera makes people look fatter in the face than they are in real life. Having seen my face on Zoom, of course I fully agree! I am quite used to communicating in a classroom and performing on stage and being filmed, for that matter. But I think it is seeing myself on screen while talking that I find uncomfortable. Only yesterday, someone showed me (in a Zoom meeting) how to hide my face while talking so that everyone can see me but I can’t see myself. So maybe I’ll feel more relaxed from now on!

Even when sitting on the sofa in my lounge and talking to friends, I have felt quite tense. My posture isn’t relaxed and it is definitely unrelaxed when I sit on a chair in my kitchen. I wax reminded of this when I was watching an episode of the new series of ‘The Crown’ on Netflix. There was Olivia Colman as the Queen sitting on the edge of a chair with upright posture in one scene. It was exactly what I was doing a few days earlier in a Zoom meeting in my kitchen. When she was a child princess, the Queen was trained in that posture. I seem to have acquired it naturally through Zoom meetings. Perhaps many other people, up and down the country are sitting like the Queen infront of their laptops in their kitchens too!

Contributors on news programmes at the moment are often interviewed via Zoom. There are even discussions on programmes like ‘Question Time’ or ‘Newsnight’ where some guests are in the studio and others on Zoom. Of course the audio and video quality on Zoom varies considerably and cannot match the audio and video quality of the TV studio. More disconcerting, I often find myself looking at the room the speaker is zooming from rather than paying too much attention to what they are saying. Sometimes they film themselves in their lounge or study and I am wondering what books are on their shelves or admiring a picture or poster on the wall. In the heat of the events of the U.S. election recently, a lady Politics lecturer was interviewed on ‘Newsnight.’ She was obviously filming from her desk in her bedroom which was plain but neat except for the bed behind her, which was unmade! Either she was too busy all day to make the bed or she had got out of bed to give the interview. I hasten to add that she wasn’t dressed in her nightclothes! But the sight of that unmade bed behind her made me pay less attention to what she was saying and in a subtle way, have less respect for her.

I understand that you are now able to choose your own background if you want to. You can use a favourite location from one of your photos, if you wish. Dear me, we are becoming amateur film directors: ‘Is the background ok?’; ‘Is the lighting ok for my face?; ‘Can you hear me alright?’ We’ll be getting into make-up next! Or saying to the other person on the zoom call, ‘Hang on a minute, I’m just going into the lounge on the sofa. I photograph better there!’ followed by, ‘Wait a moment! I just need to put on the right light for my face.’ As Norma Desmond says in Billy Wilder’s film masterpiece about a faded film star, ‘I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille!’

To be serious again, it has been wonderful that, through advances in technology, we have been able to stay in touch with eachother in different ways and to support eachother. We have become a digital community.

Before writing this 50th mediation, I looked back to my very first one. In that reflection, I concentrated on the candle beside me for a moment. Some words of St Francis came to me: ‘All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.’ I did not know then, in September 2018, that we would be living through a pandemic in 2020 and that the world would suddenly become a different, dark place.

As these meditations progressed and Brexit loomed, I imagined that, post-Brexit, the U.K., might become a different, dark place and Europe itself too, being splintered but not shattered. I expressed my concerns in these meditations from time to time. But fears about the effects of Brexit pale into insignificance compared with what we have been facing in these last months.

Sometimes it has been difficult to find hope in the bleak months we have been through. But now in the News today, it appears that a vaccine is on its way. Perhaps by next Spring we may begin to emerge out of the dark tunnel we have all been in and meet our family and friends in the flesh instead of digitally.

In the meantime, in this very different, dark winter, if our hope falters, perhaps we should find a moment to gaze at the flame of a candle, unextinguished by the darkness around it.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neilus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Mediation 47

As I begin this meditation, the magnets on my fridge have attracted my attention again rather than the candle flickering beside me. There is a new addition to my collection and a new acquisition for my miniature art gallery on the fridge doors: a Rembrandt.

It is a sketch, a self portrait, executed when the artist was only 24 years old. He looks startled and surprised as if someone has suddenly taken a photograph of him without his permission. Apparently, Rembrandt made the sketch while looking at his reflection in a mirror.

The actual picture, an etching, is not much bigger than the magnet itself. It is a small square printed in the middle of a foolscap sized parchment, which makes it look even smaller and almost enveloped by the sea of paper which surrounds it. It is one of a series of self portraits he made of himself in his twenties, most were sketches but there are several oil paintings too.

As might be expected, I have been to a gallery and of course a gift shop too! This time I visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, for the ‘Young Rembrandt’ exhibition, which covers the first ten years of his career from roughly 1625-1635. Rembrandt made portraits of himself throughout his life and in many ways the ones in old age are the most moving, perhaps because he also drew many pictures of old people throughout his career. Evidently, from looking at the exhibition, this fascination with old age began right at the start of his career. He captures the elderly sitters’ resignation beautifully in their eyes, sensing old age as a time of reflection and contemplation. Their passive eyes contrast with their faces, worn and redolent of a life lived. This contrast is acutely drawn in his own self portraits in old age much later.

The younger self portraits in the exhibition are more animated as you would expect from an artist in his twenties. He wears a variety of hats and facial expressions and sometimes he has a beard, sometimes a moustache or is sometimes clean shaven. He is evidently toying with his self image as young people will. On a deeper level, he is trying to find himself by drawing himself as he discovers and explores his talents and tries to establish a career.

He is going through what I have termed ‘the terrible twenties’. So many of my ex-students have shared this with me: not knowing who they are or what they want to do or having the confidence to embrace what they want to do anyway. I was the same at their age so I have a little understanding of their situation. At least Rembrandt knew what he wanted to do and from his work he appears to be bold and confident in his skills – or was he? We will never know I suppose.

Perhaps this series of self portraits over the years are saying ‘Where am I now?’ or even ‘Who am I now?’ These are questions not confined to our twenties. We can find ourselves asking these questions or they can find us at other times of our lives. They have been hounding me since I retired six months ago. Writing this blog has helped me to work out or at least explore some answers, like Rembrandt exploring himself through his pictures. Perhaps there is no need to find any answers but just to accept, to be resigned with patience as Rembrandt’s elderly models appear to be. In other words, to move from my terrible twenties to a reflective retirement. Then I might achieve a little of the dignity, serenity even, expressed in their eyes.

I have always been fascinated by the faces in Rembrandt’s works and the expression in their eyes. It must be the actor in me. He has the ability to convey a whole life in the faces of his models, through their stillness. Any film or TV actor should study his works. He conveys so much with the models’ faces, giving them an inner life. Their eyes lead us into their interior lives. It cannot be any accident that the popular historian, Simon Schama, has written a biography of the artist entitled ‘Rembrandt’s Eyes.’

What is also remarkable in the exhibition is that, as a young man , Rembrandt was fascinated by the beggars and homeless that he saw in the streets of his hometown Leyden and in Amsterdam, where he lived later. There are a selection of his drawings of street dwellers in the exhibition and he incorporates some of them into his large scale pictures of Biblical scenes, which were also a strand in his output.

In his drawings of street dwellers, he finds a dignified humility in their bowed heads and bodies. He also finds great patience: the patience of the beggar waiting for a coin (or hopefully a job) to come their way. Like them, we are waiting too: for an end to lockdown, an end to the era of the pandemic. Perhaps, as we wait, we can learn from their dignified patience or from that of the beggars and homeless we see in our own streets and perhaps even rethink our interaction with them.

The first lesson I ever taught was about Rembrandt. I was in the sixth form and we had a few single lessons every week called Elective General Studies, which were an appendage to our A Level General Studies course. Several teachers were able to give short courses on some of their special interests. These linked up somehow with the main A level. One gave a course on Renaissance Art which I attended. Of course in that bygone age there were no laptops or projectors or Internet to illustrate the lessons. Although I seem to remember he did use a slide projector so we could see some pictures or statues projected onto the wall of the medical room where the lesson took place! Strangely, as far as I can remember, there was never a sick pupil out of lessons in that medical room whenever we had our weekly lesson. Of course the teacher also used large art books for us to look at as examples.

Through those lessons I began to develop an interest in Fine Art ,which has stayed with me ever since. I watched documentaries on the TV and especially the BBC series ‘Civilisation’ which was on at that time. I also plundered my local library and wandered onto one lesson with a book on Rembrandt under my arm to and showed it to Fr Ledwick the teacher. He asked me if I’d like to give a talk on the artist so, ever eager to perform, I agreed and a few weeks later, I took the lesson. I prepared a selection of pictures to talk about and to explain why I liked them and what I found in them (as I have done in this blog).

At that time the country was going through a period of industrial action, known as the ‘three day week.’ This meant that there were regular electricity blackouts (among other disruptions). These would last for three hours at a time. As we had electric heating in our house, this was a problem. I remember that some evenings, I would do my homework by candlelight in the kitchen so that I could stay warm by the gas oven, which was lit to heat the room. My mum, who had two very small daughters, would sit near the oven to keep them warm. It is difficult to comprehend this these days and it was one reason why I would sometimes get annoyed with my own sixth form students when they didn’t do their homework!

I do remember looking at those pictures in the Rembrandt book by candlelight sometimes, and thinking that he must have looked at the real pictures himself by candlelight too. I felt quite privileged then. In the candlelight, the faces were luminous and the eyes were so clear. There was one, a head of Christ, which greatly nurtured my faith. Similarly I was reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte at the time for A Level English. How marvellous to read a 19th century novel by candlelight as it would have been originally! Emily’s Gothic romance seemed so much more atmospheric, if it ever could be!

And now, here I am once again, sitting by candlelight and writing to you about Rembrandt! Sharing my knowledge – as ever!

I also remember that just as I was about to start my little lesson on Rembrandt in that medical room in my school all those years ago, one of the PE staff wandered in. I can’t remember his name but he was rather obnoxious and I had been quite scared of him when I was younger! He decided to sit down and stay for my little lesson. It was my first lesson observation I suppose – though I knew nothing of them then. It certainly made me rather nervous. When the lesson finished, he came up to me and told me that he’d enjoyed the talk very much. ‘You ought to become a teacher’, he said. And eventually I did.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up!

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested.

A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube.

I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 45

I do not want to be seated here writing this meditation with my lighted candle beside me on the table as usual. I would rather be writing it in the Drama studio at my school. I revisited it yesterday and would rather have written my thoughts there, when I was in situ, than trying to remember my reflections now a day later. It will be a case of ’emotions recollected in tranquillity’ as the poet Wordsworth writes about his own verses. Most of these mediations thus far have been ’emotions recollected in tranquility’, the tranquillity of my own home. Wordsworth’s phrase would be a good definition of a meditation. A meditation requires a little distance from the situation; a calm detachment.

My emotions were tranquil yesterday when I called into school and wandered into the Drama studio where I used to work until February this year. There was non-one else there as the school doesn’t open for lessons until next week. The space was empty and silent.

But it wasn’t cold and dark as the sun was shining through the windows at the top of the walls and, for those of you who have never been there, it is not a ‘black box’ as other studios often are. The walls are a sky blue and the blackout curtains are a deeper royal blue. I chose the colours myself when we were designing it in 2007. Heavy curtains of whatever colour would provide a blackout for performances and practical exams anyway and I wanted a bright and cheerful colour for the walls as the space (the old school gym converted) would be operating as both a large classroom and a studio theatre. I remember that at the top of my list at that time was the phrase ‘a flexible and intimate space’.

In a previous blog, I described being on an empty stage before a performance. The house lights are up and you are standing or sitting there looking at the empty auditorium. It was the Kolibri stage in Budapest I think. I used to love that moment alone on the stage while the cast and crew were getting their lunch before the matinee. It wasn’t just the chance to get my thoughts together before the show. There’s an atmosphere of anticipation in an empty theatre before a performance, an air of expectancy, and even though it is empty there is also a special warmth. It’s not because of the house lights out there in the auditorium or the stage lights beaming down. It is a feeling of being at home. No more than that: for me one of those rare moments when you realise that this is where you should be, just for this moment. I shall miss that warmth, that realisation, now I am retired.

The empty drama studio yesterday was entirely different. The space wasn’t set up for a performance as there wasn’t one. It was set up as a classroom with the retractable theatre seating back against the wall. I borrowed my colleague Leigh’s directors chair (mine got broken somehow ages ago) and sat in the middle of the performing area at the other end between the scenic flats that make a stage. I looked around the studio from there, facing where an audience would be.
Needless to say, memories flooded in of rehearsals, productions, gala evenings, exam performances, lessons, which I won’t bore you with. I can’t remember them now anyway. They flew in and out of my consciousness swiftly.

I have experienced that moment of warm anticipation before a performance in the studio too. It would generally be on the second or third night after the first night was over. There would always be some crisis or other to sort out before opening night!

But as I sat there yesterday, I realised that since the studio opened in 2007, I had never sat down and taken a good look at it. I’ve been too busy teaching, acting, directing and creating to notice the space I was working in properly. That is as it should be. Nevertheless I obviously have a great affection for the space. It has been a joy to work there in the final years of my school career. Not quite an Indian Summer as I do not think an Indian Summer can last for 13 years! I greatly miss working on a scene in the studio.

So here I was, now retired, finally looking around my old workplace, my creative space, my studio. ‘My empire’ as I would jokingly call it. Marcus’ empire was considerably larger than mine! Mine is more intimate and as a result more meaningful. I do not think he would have felt as I did yesterday as he stood outside his tent looking out over the plains of Pannonia.

How did I feel? Well I wasn’t upset or sad. Nor did I feel a sense of ennui. I found myself smiling. I realised that so much of me was in those walls. As I have just mentioned, I came up with a concept for the space. I could see myself everywhere, as I looked at the lighting box, the lighting and sound equipment, the seating, the scenery flats, curtains and walls. I had a creative input in all of these, working along with the previous headteacher, Tom Cahill and an ex-student Colin Mander.

What I felt was another kind of warmth: the warmth of pride.
I am reminded of a short play by Noel Coward called ‘Family Album’ about a Victorian family gathered for a celebration. In the play a family member makes a toast:
‘Here’s a toast to each of us and all of us together.
Here’s a toast to happiness and reasonable pride.’

That is what I felt: reasonable pride. And a glowing sense of achievement.
So why, do I ask myself, now that I have retired, am I so anxious to keep on achieving having achieved so much already? Perhaps I should take to heart the next line of the toast:
‘May our touch on life be lighter than a sea bird’s feather.’

Perhaps Noel Coward was thinking of himself when he wrote that line. He had a long and successful career as a playwright, composer, actor and entertainer. He must have constantly felt the drive to achieve.

So I slowly walked out of that Drama studio smiling and with a glow of pride which is an achievement in itself I guess.

As the Proms isn’t functioning as normal this year (like everything else), the BBC are putting archive performances on the radio each evening. So I have been listening to a wonderful performance of Mahler’s 5th symphony from 1987 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the legendary Leonard Bernstein. In the middle of this amazing life-enhancing performance I have realised that life is not about achieving but about creating. I want to continue creating.
But I have left out the last line of the toast by Noel Coward. I think it is rather appropriate as we continue with trying to cope with coronavirus into the Autumn.

‘And may all sorrows in our path politely step aside.’

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’ as it pops up! And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested. A selection of previous meditations is also available in audio form as ‘Meditations of Neiulus Aurelius’ ASMR on YouTube. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

Meditation 44

As I sit here beside my candle, watching the steady flame, I am thinking of Marcus Aurelius, the inspiration for this blog. It is wonderful that we are able to read his own ‘Meditations’, which he wrote over 1,800 years ago and in a paperback edition too which is readily available in bookstores or even as a kindle book!

Though they were written in Latin and I have therefore been dependent upon a translator, yet he seems to be very present to me as I read them, as if he is really speaking to me despite the centuries between us. How far the real Marcus is reflected in these pages or how far it is the Marcus he would like the reader to see, I, of course, will never know. But there is an honesty and a genuine humility in his writing that makes me think he is truly present in his words. For one thing, he never mentions his military successes, whereas, for instance, his imperial ancestor, Julius Caesar, wrote extensively and interminably about his in his ‘Gallic Wars’!

I dare to hope that something of my own self is reflected in my own meditations in this blog, that I am present to you the reader through my writing.

During the months of lockdown since March, we have been present to each other in many different ways, thanks to digital technology, and in ways that Marcus could not have dreamt of. I say ‘being present’ because in these dark days, it hasn’t just been a case of contacting friends and family and acquaintances, but it has also involved being present to them as a support and encouragement and to share anxieties which may have meant spending a little more time than usual with them on a call.

There have been so many ways through which we have been present to others, not just the phone or e mail but through texts and group chats, and visually through FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype and of course the new medium of Zoom.

Video calls on whatever platform have enabled us to see who we are speaking to, which has been so important and a great comfort, as for several long months we weren’t allowed to meet friends or possibly even family because of movement restrictions. Looking at my emails, I think that texts and video calls are replacing the personal e mail to friends and acquaintances. I might be wrong about this – it may be that people just don’t want to write to me anymore!
FaceTime, WhatsApp and Zoom were new to me at the start of lockdown, but as someone who lives alone, they have been another lifeline for me (as well as calls, mails and texts) once I got used to them. In the early months, it was wonderful to be able to have a video call with my family, to see them as well as talk to them and of course my close friends too across the country and across the world.

However I must admit that I found triple conversations and a three way split screen difficult to handle on the small screen of an I phone! The smaller screen made me feel constricted. I am much more comfortable and relaxed with a Zoom call on the wider screen of a laptop. Maybe my big personality is more suited to a wider format! I would certainly have been at home in one of those wide screen epics of years gone by. Perhaps I could have played Marcus Aurelius (as Alec Guinness did in ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’ and, less successfully, Richard Harris, in ‘Gladiator’).

I have had such a variety of Zoom calls in these recent months, a committee meeting or two, two lectures with the Dickens’ Fellowship (of which I am a member), a series of group meditations and one memorable evening when I spend two hours chatting with my dear friends David and Peter, while we drank our bottles of wine on our respective sofas in our homes across London from eachother. It was digital decadence! However, it does seem rather silly at times: talking to a laptop screen which then talks back to you! It’s like being in an old sci-fi movie without the dramatic and earnest conversations from screen to screen!

In a video call our friends or family are there but not there. They are present to us but not physically present. I must confess to being saddened sometimes when the video call was over, and in a way that I wouldn’t have been if it was an ordinary audio phone call. It is the fact that you can see family or friends (which is wonderful) but they are not really present with you in the room. So when the call is over and you wave and end the call, there can be a sense of loss, an emptiness. A video call can never replace being with that person or persons. Nevertheless, it has been a comfort, indeed a marvel, in these dark months we have been going through.

Another comfort to me has been the streaming of theatre productions online. These have been from the archive of the National Theatre, the Royal Opera and Royal Shakespeare Company. Over the last decade, these companies (and others under the National Theatre umbrella) have streamed live performances to cinemas and a selection of these performances have been streamed in lockdown on BBC I player and YouTube and are therefore quite recent. They have filled quite a few evenings for me and I have been able to catch up on productions I have missed. One advantage of these filmed performances is that the cameras enable you to see the actors close up, which may not be possible from where you are sitting in the theatre.

One of these productions was Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in a performance from 2019 at the new Bridge Theatre, by Tower Bridge on the Thames. I must admit that having directed the play five times and seen as many if not more productions of this play, I felt a little jaded about it as it started. It turned out to be an exciting, very funny and spectacular immersive theatre experience. The Bridge Theatre is able to change its seating for whatever production and had taken out the stalls seats so audience could stand while the play took place on a series of platforms and also above their heads as there were actors on trapezes above them at times. (‘Oh to do something like this in my school drama studio,’ I thought to myself!) The rest of the audience were seated in the circle on three sides. As is customary at present, there was some gender swapping of roles: Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of the Fairies, swapped lines for instance which created some hilarious situations. But the production was highly detailed and the text was very clear so Shakespeare was well served by this energetic company. Most important of all, it had warmth and was life-affirming and was magical (as all successful productions of this play should be).

I have mentioned in a previous blog (when I discussed seeing Wagner’s Ring Cycle of 4 operas at the Opera House) that a successful theatre performance creates an invisible ring binding the performers and the audience. This production of Shakespeare’s ‘Dream’ created that invisible ring from its first moment until the riotous final curtain call. There were many moments when I too, sitting in my armchair at home, felt part of that ring too. The experience was all embracing. What an achievement for the director Nicholas Hytner and his actors.
But they were only moments. Because I was not physically present in the audience. I certainly wish I had been last summer. As the play was nearing its final act, I began to feel saddened in the midst of the joyous atmosphere of the show. For our theatres are closed and I am missing them. We do not know when they will re-opened or when an immersive production like ‘The Dream’ with actors moving, running and dancing through the audience will happen again.

Much has been touted about Zoom and other platforms being the way forward while coronavirus and the threat of it remains with us and beyond, when we are back to a kind of normal. There has been talk of digital lessons in schools, webinars and digital lectures in university and other educational institutions, digital conferencing etc. In certain situations this may be a way forward. But we must remember that nothing can replace the physical presence of a person. And we cannot let digital communication distance us from eachother and break the bond of our common humanity (which the production I have discussed so potently celebrated). We are social beings which means being physically present to eachother.

There are times on summer days when dark clouds appear and stay there in the sky. It seems as if the sun will never come out again. But it will and does. I am sure we have had those moments in these recent months, when we thought the dark clouds wouldn’t go. Well lockdown is beginning to ease and the sun is peeping through the clouds. We are able to move around more and see more of eachother. I have been able to visit my family in Leeds and friends in the London area too. I have been able to visit an ‘old friend’ the National Gallery (as another friend of mine puts it). But more about these in my next blog.

Ave atque Vale – Hail and Farewell – until the next blog!

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Many thanks
Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here writing beside my candle, winter is upon us at last. Blizzards and snow have slowed down the country or so it appears from the news on the television. Here, where I write, in the South West London area, what snow there was has turned to miserable freezing rain. In these wintery times, candlelight is cheering and comforting as is, of course, a blazing fire in the hearth. Something we miss with central heating!

It must have been a comfort to Marcus as the wind howled over the Danube plain outside his tent. A comfort and an inspiration: as fire-gazing can lead to internal reflection and even deeper, to meditation. The fire must have been a fixed point to help him focus on the centre of his consciousness in the whirlwind of his thoughts. I am probably wrong: I am imagining that Marcus’ mind was similar to my own! From his writings, I have a sense that there was a great stillness in Marcus. I doubt he got as frazzled as I do! But then as he was a Roman emperor with absolute power it was easy for him to radiate stillness. Or is that the image he presents to us in his ‘Meditations’? Is it what he wants us to imagine he is like? And his ‘Meditations’ are, after all, the compositions of a mind in repose.

When I was a child in the North East, I used to love gazing at the fire in my nan’s back kitchen. There was a huge black cast iron fire guard in front of it, usually festooned with her stockings, hung out to dry. An Alan Bennett scene! I paid no attention to her hosiery hanging there, but concentrated on the heart of the fire, watching the wood burning to grey ashes in the bed of white and orange flames and listening to the crackling and sputtering in the grate. Looking at the flames would lead me to my first stirrings of inner reflection. I would think of ideas for little plays I might write or poems.

I did a lot of writing then. I would coerce my school mates and friends in the street to be in my little plays. We’d act them out in the road. There were very few cars then, you see. One of my friends in the street – Michael – took a play of mine and passed it off as his own at his own school.

I remember I would arduously write out the parts by hand, like a little monk. And now, what seems like thousands of years later, in my retirement I am writing again and I am still a little monk. But in between, I have been writing plays for my school too, and coercing my students to take part instead. Except they haven’t needed much coercing because they enjoy it and because it might involve a week on tour in Budapest.

I’ve been thinking about my childhood in the last few weeks a lot. I have just seen the new film ‘Stan and Ollie’ about Laurel and Hardy, the great movie comics. They were part of my childhood. Their short comedy films were on BBC TV every Saturday teatime after the football results and before ‘Doctor Who’. I was ten or eleven years old when the first one was shown. It was ‘The Music Box’: Stan and Ollie trying to get that upright piano in a wooden crate up all those flights of steps. I vividly remember watching it in my nan’s back kitchen, which was where she had the television. I was leaning over the kitchen table with an iced bun in my hand entranced by their comic antics while the fire cackled in the background.The films were in black and white but what did that matter? Television was in black and white then too!

Of course those little comic gems have been repeated on TV so many times since – but not so much now, which is a great shame. And now they are on blue ray and DVD and I am

sure you can stream them. Through these little films (which were originally fillers on a cinema programme) and a handful of feature films, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy very quickly became international movie stars and held in great affection by a worldwide audience to the extent that they are now cinema icons. It is amazing to think that their films are 80 years old in the main (and the silent ones 90 years old) yet there is still such a strong interest in them and affection for them that recently a movie about their lives has been made.

In the film, Steve Coogan (Stan) and John C. Reilly (Ollie) are very adept at adapting the duo’s movie mannerisms to situations off camera and off stage in real life. The story deals with their final UK tour in the 50’s which was initially not as big a success as their tour a decade earlier. Their working relationship is under strain not least because Ollie’s health is in decline and because the offers are no longer coming. But the working relationship survives – because they are great friends. The friendship endures. And that is what shines through the slapstick mayhem in their films – there is an affectionate bond between them.

Their humour is gentle and warm. Yes humour has changed a great deal since they were in front on the cameras – it is more cynical, sarcastic, sexual and foul mouthed – even in family movies – and slapstick is not so funny to general audiences now. I’ve played some of their movies to my pupils -the younger ones love it, but the older ones don’t find it so funny. But when Stan and Ollie were working in the 20’s and 30’s,there were caustic, cynical and sexy sophisticated comedies too.

I think part of their enduring appeal is their screen personas, which was so very different from their off-camera personalities. Though Ollie was the dominant personality of the two

in the movies, in real life it was Stan who wrote the gags, directed and produced (in this he was like his contemporary Charlie Chaplin). He had already appeared in silent movies as a solo star. Ollie was a jobbing actor who generally went along with whatever Stan had devised.

Stan had that rare quality of being able to portray pure innocence on screen and not make it sentimental or something to be jeered at. It was a childlike innocence – Chaplin was more artful (in some ways like the Artful Dodger from his favourite book ‘Oliver Twist’). Stan may be slow-witted (and gets them both into high water as a result) but it is part of his charm. We don’t deride him for it, but laugh with him.

Ollie is all politeness, Southern gentility and charm. He is always eager to help others in the films. Despite his large frame, there is a grace about his movement at times, as there in Stan’s movement too, evident in their famous dance in ‘Way Out West’. He is a Southern gentleman (making use of his roots in Georgia) or tries to be in the most ridiculous of situations.

At the root of the duo’s appeal is there inherent goodness. They are good people to be with – as a German comedian commented in a TV documentary I recently saw.

Of course it was television in the main that prolonged their longevity with the public. Though their popularity was on the wain in the mid-1950’s, when their movies appeared on TV (first in the U.S.A and later in our own and other countries) they were given a new lease of life. And years later, after endless repeats the movies were issued on video and DVD and colourised and digitally restored. Modern technology has resurrected them. Yes it’s a kind of resurrection.

Of course, without the modern technology of the time, the development of the moving picture, Stan and Ollie would never have got together at all. I ask myself what would have happened to them instead. Before becoming besotted with the movies and working in cinemas around 1913, Hardy was a singer and had a cabaret and vaudeville act. Without the movies, he may have graduated to being a actor in plays and musicals around the U.S. I guess and maybe he would have got to Broadway. Laurel was a music hall comedian, in Fred Karno’s comic troupe (along with Charlie Chaplin). That may have been how he would have carried on, along with Charlie, playing the music hall and later variety circuits. If he survived World War One.

But for technology, they would never have got together and we would never have known them decades later.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

If you are enjoying my blog, and have not already done so, please sign up below to receive notification of each new blog by e mail. Just add your e mail to ‘Follow’.

And please do pass on the blog address to others who may be interested. I would also value any feedback on nzolad53@gmail.com or my Facebook page or Twitter.

Many thanks

Neilus Aurelius

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