Breakfasting with Barty

There is a very exciting part of my life concerning Martin M Bartelt. Is it hearing about his years working alongside Pina Bausch, I hear you cry? Or when he talks about touring his dance shows all over the world? ....Maybe. Yeah, well, no, no it's not. It's not that. By far the most exciting part of my time with Bartelt is finding myself on the cusp of breakfasting with him and wondering how on earth it will go.
There is no doubt we have both worked hard with this show, but I feel my still being on the planet, as well as the show itself, of course, to be a collaboration. From my family's acceptance that I was going to make it in the first place, to the endless hospitality we have been offered over the years, via free rehearsal spaces and that house in France where we did the major edit of the show back in 2009. Oh, that house in France. It was in the Frenchest of towns, small, but with two cafes and various independent stores. And French people largely ignoring us. And the town hall where there was a jumble sale....
Two cafes though, two. Possibly the world's most distressing dilemma: where should Barty breakfast? And I'm not even going to go into the fact that it's possible that neither of them will be in the sun at the requisite breakfasting hour.
Bartelt himself is a work of all-knowing, brilliantly idiotic, behaviours, travelling around in the body of a broken lizard with the mentality of a five-year-old or a zen master, depending on... well, mostly depending on the quality of any given day's breakfast. Get it wrong and he will suffer. And when I say he will suffer, I of course, mean I will suffer.
In this little French town we hit the cafe-elect, sometimes together, sometimes apart, both sleeping until we needed to, both working late to suit Bartelt's working hours. He is, after all, the one in constant pain who mostly cannot taste or smell anything, though he maintains he can tell the quality of coffee from its texture. I choose to believe this, it would be to my detriment not to. And he's the one who had had his heart valve replaced just two months previously. In fact, let's add some collaborators to that list of those who have got us here: Jacques and Jean who have nursed this creature, my collaborator, back to... existence, after his operation to replace his heart valve, and the bonus death-on-the-operating table that he got for free as part of the experience. He has a sophisticated heart monitor with him which has to be taken out, together with his heart and astonished body, for a walk of exactly the right kind every day. We talk work as we walk, and life, and about his poor, poor heart, so overwrought that the doctors wondered how he was alive at all. He is, my friends, an enigma wrapped up in a corpus unsound, engulfed every day by a tidal wave of irrational emotion concerning breakfast.
And so it is one day that we find ourselves breakfasting, sharing thoughts about how he is a connoisseur of the coffee with several sugars and the pain au chocolate and I am, essentially, a food disposal unit. I am desperately unrefined. He feeds my his croissant crumbs when he has finished doing his thang - I'm a sucker for Crispy Bits. Obviously I have already had my own croissant, or similar: not my usual breakfast choice, but when with Barty I find I often do as Barty does.
If this were a business consultation we would be bottoming out the problem of why breakfast affects him so much, and it seems to be that he feels that if it goes well, everything will go well, and if not, then not only will it be a bad day, but everything will be a disaster. And it is here, at this moment, outside this French cafe that we discover The Truth: a good chocolate croissant doth not make a good day and a bad cup of coffee doth not a day ruin. We laugh like drains. And we quote ourselves endlessly. I'm sure we exclude many people over the subsequent years and breakfasts with our clever cleverness, but, we have both to admit, we are tremendously funny.
Back in South Africa it is morning, early morning for Bartelt - anything before 9am being the early hours. Outside our room there are horses in the morning mist. It is cold and, what is more, it is time to leave for breakfast. Following breakfast we will have 350 schools students around us for two whole days: I don't know about Bartelt, but I am feeling for our poor chosen-cafe owners - they have no idea of the pressure on them, but they really are going to have to deliver.

Bartelt and me: the most unwanted

Thursday 11 April 2013

I find my way from my place to Martin's couch-surfing haven to to the house of the fellow we are driving to the Grahamstown Foundation KwaZulu-Natal Schools Festival all by myself without getting lost once. I'm hoping I've been rewired in the night, but I realise it's just a stroke of luck, like all those other strokes of luck, some good some bad. I have not had a knock on the head and unearthed the ability to find my way, so I should stop hoping that's the case as it will inevitably lead to my heading off, confidently, in the not too distant future towards a potentially far too distant point in the wrong direction.
What is even more remarkable is that I have already been for breakfast with a friend and colleague of Kate's - South Africans begin their day at leat an hour earlier than the average Brit. And likewise Brits who are in South Africa. This woman came to the show, I'm a big fan of her work, and it turns out she and Kate knew each other a long time. She's lovely to me.

We eat in a cafe near where Kate used to live, full of memories of those terrible two weeks after her murder, when we would come here, if we went anywhere. We talk about all sorts of things, I unburden myself of the same stories of frustration, fear and despair which thinking back on the extra pain the BBC put us through always brings me, and she listens, seemingly not surprised. When we come to say goodbye I want to tell her what it means to me that we have met and talked... but that would be ridiculous. It means a disproportionate amount to me: I am absurd. Why does it matter so much to me? If I told her she'd probably run a mile. We embrace, say goodbye and promise we will stay in touch. As I go to my car I am losing Kate again, I want to find her through this woman, through any woman, frankly, through any person, through an object or an experience, I don't care what and I don't care what I have to do to get it. I would give everything up to get her back. I am going down that rabbit hole again and I have to grip hard to the wheel of the hire car as I go in search of Bartelt in the hope of finding some space in my racing brain.
Bartelt and I, reunited, and our passenger are looking at at least five hours on the road. We do engage our passenger in some chat, but pretty soon he's asleep while we talk on. Bartelt listens patiently to my bizarre, wonderful, exciting, draining, precious start to the day. (Oh, but being with me requires endless patience.) Bartelt and I will probably talk forever about everything and never come to the end. I suppose that's one of the reasons we are so close - I have an endless curiosity about him, his life, how he functions, his fears, hopes, mistakes, doubts, ridiculous certainties (these are legion) and abject terrors (these are legion plus one). And, miraculously, he is endlessly interested in me, my badly formed opinions, built on my lamentable memory, my lamentable memory itself, my anger, my copious stories of loss and loneliness and self-pity, my friends, family, foes and extraordinary former bosses. And my lamentable memory. He laughs at my jokes, defends my behaviour and tells me I am, essentially, worth it. As I often say to him, thanks be to lady luck that we are not attracted to one another.... we would have been married and divorced a few times by now.
Given how well we get on we are rather mystified that the other is single..... well, it's that bit harder for Martin to meet a man than it is for me due to sheer numbers, but one of our regular conversations is how are we so unwantable? (I refer you to the accompanying photos for what is at least part of the answer, surely.)
It is autumn in South Africa, yes, but nothing can justify the stark closing in of the weather as we head south. By the time we reach our destination we have been through wind, rain, fog and, it looks like,.... Wales. Of course it looks like Wales. As I have mentioned before, in the end everything looks like Wales. I could have said it looked like Ecuador, but, in fact, lots of Ecuador simply looks like Wales and there's an end to it.
The school has a very friendlyly staffed gate at which we stop and then we are welcomed onto the hallowed turf.  It's quite a place - like a particular kind of public/private school in the UK with which I am familiar yet, like a dream, this one has been styled by a 17th century Dutch architect. It's a dream - it's so green and schooly and European, even down to the glass fronted wooden cabinets that house the sports teams, play castings, church reading rota. The sight of these cabinets brings me to a lurching halt. So much of my childhood was taken up by looking into them, scouring them for a particular set of dread information that I feel nauseous just looking at them: exam results, violin lesson rotas, excursion information. Excursions. Urgh.
We head off to find our contact and do our tech. Our travelling companion finds his team and quickly we are in a huge, fabulous theatre, doing our little tech. There seem to be a few stressed performers? directors? around, but we have a laugh with the lovely technician and then spend some time getting to know Ingrid who runs the Schools Festivals, all nine of them, for the Grahamstown Foundation. Then there's Sheryl, the person who runs the venue for the school, and Jocelyn, the English/drama teacher. Three mighty, excellent women, plus the volunteers - what joy - and we haven't even met the school students who are attending the Festival yet - we will do that tomorrow when Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister completes is 2013 South African Tour by being the opening show at the Grahamstown Foundation KZN Schools Festival. On my non-existent life ambitions list I quickly write down opening a massive schools festival and cross it off, like you do when you complete the hoovering and find you'd never put it on your to-do list in the first place.
Bartelt and I are staying off campus, so we get some advice about where to eat in the very small town and go to find our B&B and it looks as good as it does on the website: a free-standing building, beautifully fitted out, with a wall of books to boot. We spend some time in bed because we are COLD. It is freezing. Bartelt, my pet lizard, is not coping well with this sudden change in his fortunes. The heat relieves the constant pain he is in and this damp cold does not bode well. Our hosts have given us some wine, so we have a bit, take pictures of ourselves with the festival programme and then head for a restaurant which is strangely Czech or Polish or similar. The food is great, the welcome is warm and they slap up a meal the like of which we believe a doctor would want for us. I am full of nervous anticipation as we slip into our electric-blanketed beds: tomorrow's audience will be 350-or-so 15-year-olds. What on earth will they make of it? And how can I possibly be nervous again, after 102 shows? I reflect on the fact that I am, maybe, more nervous about the place we think we have found for breakfast in the morning: what if Bartelt doesn't like it? What with the terrible weather, tomorrow's breakfast could make or break these last few days. I turn my light out and dream fitfully of vengeful fried bread humanoids.

Several lashings of transport roulette

Monday 8 April

A great deal of travelling hither and yon is about to occur: my mother and my littlest aunt leave for the UK tonight, Jacques for Switzerland tomorrow and the next day Martin and I will be driving to KwaZulu-Natal, well aware that our journey will be a whole lot more risky than any flight to anywhere from anywhere in the world. 13,802 people died on the Republic's roads in 2011, which is 31.9 per 1,000 of population. In the UK the rate is 2.75 per 1,000, in India it is 18.9. (Source: Wikipedia).

But before the exodusing begins, there is a performance to give. We have been invited by Warren to do the show for his University of Witwartersrand Drama for Life students. Shifting focus to the next show, my mind has filled once more of the wonderful Caroline and her Theatre Arts Admin Collective, for it was she who put us in contact with Warren. Imagining Caroline in her office in Cape Town, I see her face, her clothes, her passion, and I marvel at the sheer number of wonderful people I've met on this journey and how I'm going to miss them. I think again about Martin's friends who have come to the show in Joburg, including a couple who drove from Mozambique to see it, see Martin, then drove back. People are amazing.

Despite my profound efforts to mess it up, we finally find the right area of the enormous university... and after some serious fact-finding and stone-walling are given a parking space. The theatre is amazing - huge, beautiful, a joy to behold and Martin and I run around a bit, marking our territory (proverbially, I hasten to add) while Jacques, for the last time, sets up his camera. As it is with people with whom you have been spending a great deal of time, it is hard to believe that we will deposit him at the airport tomorrow and that will be that.

I have come to believe that this show can be done anywhere, or at least that Martin has given me permission and the ability to do it anywhere, yet when I'm on a large stage in a large auditorium, in fabulous full light, there is no denying that it feels different... easier to me. I feel supported by the context, it feels a more-relaxing-less-distracting watch and listen for the audience, and a large space feels like a great place to be, especially a stage where I can rumble around with my show full of characters, some of them appearing before me, some holed-up inside me.

A Q&A hosted by Warren follows, and there are more questions about the making of the show than usual. We talk about taboo, about technique, and this time, rather than my seeming like the magician, Martin is revered for his skills. This audience is constituted of practitioners and, hopefully, has no illusions about the wings this extraordinary director has given me. We sell a few of the final copies of the script - we will have sold the 40 we managed to get out here. We could have sold more.... but then I'd've had to dump some pants to get them into my rucksack and I'm fond of my pants.

All too soon it's over and we are packing away. We have one more gig left in RSA: just one. And before I know it I am taking Mama and my littlest aunt to the airport. That road that sweeps round the centre of Joburg, the buildings glinting, the terrible Jozi rushhour threatening to wind Mother up beyond her ability to remain cogent for fear of Missing The Flight. When the traffic moves I feel swept along by things, by events, by time itself. I am out of my real world for just a couple of weeks longer and I am starting, finally, to revel in the fact. Maybe a few months late, but at last I am hiding from who I am and what I feel, and all the broken washing machines, missed appointments, suddenly-collapsing-and-dying-of-a-brain-haemmorrhage-in-the-street family friends of my future fade into obscurity; I am here and now, personalityless, futureless, pointless, and it's wonderful.

Saying goodbye is oddly hard - we will all be back in the same hemisphere very soon. But it's this darn airport again - for all it has been done up and expanded over the years, I remember it well and feel as if I have a full cast of my past right behind me, dogging my steps. It is not that Christmas, 2002, when both my aunt and my sister were alive and I took Mum to the airport with my brother and sister and had to wave our tiny Mummy off on her own, which we did not enjoy at all, Tiny Mummy even less so. Things Have Changed and that is all there is to it. I can rail against it or I can just get on the Gautrain. We have abandoned the hire car. This bit of this is over. It is the beginning, or maybe even the middle, of the end. It will be the usual rush to the finish, as I remember all the people I've not seen, things I've not done, places I wanted to visit.

We did manage a trip to the Cradle Of Humankind with my uncle. It was fascinating. I am delighted to be reminded that we all come from here, this very part of this very continent. Maybe that's why I love this country so much. Or maybe I'm just the terrible sentimental, neurotic batbox I always fear I am. It was just Mother, Uncle and me and Uncle treated us to coffees. Coffees in the heat.

This Gautrain is, rightly, a matter of great pride to Joburgers. It travels from the airport to............... It is clean, efficient, safe and reassuringly expensive. I can get it to very close indeed to my friends' place and she picks me up. We talk about our days. It's even a bit normal, arriving at this shiny station in one of the most spangly parts of town, being met by a chum, going to her house. Does it feel like my life or am I pretending it feels like my life? Or am I becoming the itinerant person who only reconginses being on the move?

24 hours later we are back at the airport, having dropped off another hire car and another person. It's goodbye to Jacques. I insist on taking three-way selfies until I get a semi-decent one and then he vanishes through to departures. And here we are, Martin and me, the two of us, on tour again. We pick up a new hire car. We get unforgivably lost for quite a long time, all my fault for imagining I could make it back from the airport just because it's a route I've driven tens of times and I have written it down carefully. I drop him at his home and drive to mine: tomorrow we move on for the second to last time. Tomorrow we are heading to the Midlands.

I hope it's working, I hope you're impressed

Very early April

When I started working as a light entertainment agent's assistant I discovered I had an embarrassing problem. And it continued on into the time when I became an agent, and basically, yea, verily, into my present life: I have a shocking memory. Obviously I cannot remember whether I've written about this before.... so I'll do so now just in case and then probably again in a few blogs' time. Repeat until fade.

The discovery went like this: I would go out to reception and recognise someone waiting there. I would then get up on my tip toes and lean over the reception desk in order to have as private as possible a conversation with Norma, the receptionist, and I would ask her whether the person was a friend/colleague/drinking buddy/sexual conquest* of mine or if they were famous. Norma, thank the universe, was an expert in my drinking buddies and family members, so would be able to say 'Corrie', 'News At Ten' or 'it's your mother'.

There were so many things about being an agent which brought home to me how little I ever wanted to have any kind profile or celebrity, far too many to name here, but one of them was that terrible feeling of someone looking at me as if they know me and my having to respond as if they do, just in case they do, because I have too poor a memory to be able to work out whether they are Peter, my plumber of fifteen years, or Beyonce (she's a singer-songwriter-megastar). I have too few fingers and toes to be able to enumerate the number of times I have grinned broadly at someone, as I gambol towards them confidently, been on the verge of saying hello while they look back, 87% friendly, 13% unsure, and just as I'm about to say something I realise they're off the Fast Show or similar, and I have to convert the word I was about to utter into one of the noises that goes with the end of a cold whilst trying not to look as if I was about to break my stride. This manoeuvre should really be on my CV: I am genius at it.

And so there I am at the beginning of the last POPArt show milling amongst the audience before they are seated, which is actually the beginning of the show (see what we did there?) and I spot someone I know. Or do I? She is very familiar, a slim, attractive, dark-haired woman with lovely eyes. Have I slept with her?** Is she a friend of Kate's? Why isn't Norma here for me to ask? If she were here she'd whisper, 'no, she's a famous broadcast journalist'. Our eyes meet. She smiles at me. Does she know me, have we met? And suddenly we are talking to one another and embracing as if we are old friends and I know who she is: she is a correspondent for the BBC whose work I have followed for years.... basically I'm simply a fan: we have never met before. I feel about her and her work maybe how you feel about Nigel Slater or Kate Moss or One Direction. Unless you hate them, then I feel the opposite feeling.

I have met so many of my heroes through Kate, or rather through Kate's absence, and we present ourselves to one another, raw side out, for me the loss so fresh I want to cry. For them? Who knows.

She has come here today with the journalist for whom Paulina now works part-time... and with Paulina herself. Paulina is looking good. It is lovely to have her here, this most important of Kate's mates, who comforted my sister through so many difficult times, kept her company when she was so alone, the person who kept the house running when Kate died as we dribbled around, incapable, one of the strong team of women insistent on washing up during the period of the funeral, the obvious and perfect choice for the end of the show. I forget how short she is - she's shorter than my mother. She tells me this is her first trip to see a play. That's pretty hardcore: the first show she is seeing in her life is a show about the effect of the murder of her good friend had on that friend's sister. I tell her it's not like all theatre, that people have said it's different. I wonder whether she is nervous. She is not nervous. Of course she's not. This woman, who can withstand the hurricane of injustice, who can laugh as she tells the story of her life and break my heart.... of course she's not nervous.

Swiftly we are into the after-show questions, hosted by one of the amazing women who run POPArt. The BBC correspondent asks me a great question - I am being very forthright about the BBC and I get to explain how I do not want the utter sanitization of journalism, that people will always have to risk and sometimes their numbers will come up, but how those decisions are made is important. I feel as if this BBC correspondent I do not know but respect massively has given me the chance to explain myself even better.... she feels like a friend***. I know the danger of letting that feeling in - she is not my friend, she is Kate's, but just for a few delicious minutes I enjoy the fantasy. And I point out to Bartelt that, unlike a few other journalists, she is not behaving as if we do not have the right to speak because we are not journalists ourselves.

Post-show I get a picture taken with Paulina. I can't believe we have less than two weeks left in the country. I do not want to think about leaving..... so I don't.

*Just trying to add some showbiz snazz to the image you have of me. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.
** Obviously not, but I'm just trying to add some credibility to my sex-life. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.
*** She is not my friend, but I'm just trying to make it look like someone like that would like me. Hope it's working, hope you're impressed.

You may as well ask whether Thomas Aquinas would have enjoyed the dodgems

There is a moment, during the 100th show, early on, where I hear the laughter of my seven-year-old cousin ring out when the rest of the audience remains silent. There is a moment, later on, where I can see and hear him shuffling around. Is he lying down? Could be. Both of these things is individually delightful to me.
You will find some actors blaming the audience for not getting a show, being too raucous, only laughing internally. I understand the emotional response, after all, we feel what we feel, but I do often wonder why people cannot check themselves, stop before they say anything destructive after a show. One of the frustrations, and certainly a major joy, of being an actor, is that it's pretty hard to tell how well you're doing. Yes, there are reviews, or if it's a funny show laughter feels good, or you can be delighted because you managed not to cause any kind of technical or business (business being, say, a complicated custard pie scene in a panto) disaster. But the reviewer's companion may have hated your performance or people might have felt tricked into laughing by all-jokes-and-no-substance theatre, or you got through the very complicated fight scene but nobody believes it was really a fight.
As for me, I do not pretend to understand much about what an audience feels. I've said it before, and, being me, I'll say it again, a lot: how on earth can an actor 'know' in the way that they seem to, that a show has gone a particular way? Let alone how their own part in it went? If you're playing Hamlet or Winne in Happy Days or Rebecca in Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister I can see the temptation of believing that there is a direct correlation between your performance and what you feel about it, but it is only what you feel. It is allowed, but it does not give you any definitive information.
So, I might think that my littlest cousin's fidgeting can be interpreted, I might even be able to blame myself in some way, for encouraging such a young chap to see the show, for not making it clear he would not like it. But I decided long ago not to do that to myself and not to do it to my audiences. And time and again I am reminded that it is the right thing to do. They can react how they want and at the end of the night I walk away and get on with the (mostly more important) parts of my life. It is only acting: nobody dies... and if they do you really should think about a career change.
There is a carnival feel after this show for me - there are so many key characters in the audience and they seem to have enjoyed it, and, given that I am the only practicing actor in my extended family, I choose to believe them when they tell me they got through it okay, or anything above that, enjoyment-wise. My littlest cousin tells me he has questions and we agree that I'll answer them the next day, for me this is because we are cracking open the Cape bubbly we have carefully brought or, should I say, arduously not drunk during the weeks since we left Cape Town. We take a picture of the family group, my mother exudes relief and, maybe, pride - it's hard to tell with my mum, and Martin seems satisfied enough.
People are wont to ask me what Kate would think of the show. I want always to point out that there is only a show because she's dead, but I have to resist. I rarely think of what Kate would want or feel, she is so dead to me, though I often long so hard for her counsel, her encouragement, her shoulders, either one of them, that it freezes my tears, stops my breath, winds me like a statue at a busy station as the world rushes past. But looking at this night, full of my cousins and uncle and close friends I reflect that for once I have a sense that Kate would be pleased about this, though annoyed to miss out on it. For once, wondering what my sister would think about something, is not, to quote my inestimable brother, like pondering whether Thomas Aquinas would have enjoyed the dodgems.

100 Not Out

4 - 5 April
Look, it's an emotional show, I get that. But there is something about this run of four shows in Johannesburg that is, well, not exactly unprecedented, but quite something. We are having a drink after the opening night, we've done the Q&A, it seemed to go well - a friend of a director with whom I worked in London chaired it for us and it turns out that he's great. I need no reminding that this show is a collaboration of many people. my main collaborator, the co-creator of the show, martin m bartelt, it must be remembered, is the kind of chap who finds a pair of snazzy shoes at a venue and will try to persuade the artistic directors let him have them. maybe it's the stress of touring and all that emotion we encounter arising out of the show, we each let off steam in a different way...  but i've come to believe that it's really just who he is. that is who i'm touring with; a man who wants these extraordinary pointy shoes even though they are beyond painful to put on.
I am with Zadi, Mark, Mac, Martin, Jacques and lots of other folk, some who knew Kate some who didn't, having a drink, after the show in the bar next door, ou rnew home-from-home. Peta and Daniel, my friends and hosts, have come with friends of theirs. There is not nearly enough time to catch up with friends, but there is an urgency, a need. And the time flashes past and too soon we are in the car driving out of the centre of town, talking about the show, about the venue, about Johannesburg. The centre of town looks amazing in the dark. That's South Africa for you: incredible light, everywhere, all the time, except in the veld where it gets just that bit darker than you can imagine.
Martin and Jacques are couch surfing: staying with someone they didn't now until they turned up at his house. It sounds lovely. It is lovely. The place they're staying is great... and near a dentist, which is good news. There is something going on with Bartelt's teeth. A time will come, I think to myself, and it won't be too far away, when Bartelt will need to got to that dentist, he knows it and I know it too, but he is so accustomed to pain and illness, and so not-fond of their companions: medical professionals. Well, it's not that he doesn't like them, really, it's just that he has a very healthy, far more healthy than he himself is, mistrust of them. This mistrust is entirely based on his lamentable health and the reeling and confusion of the doctors who have to deal with him. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I feel worse for them or for him, and then I remember they're doctors and he is a very ill man and I know who is having the bad time.
The second show in Jozi is going to be attended by my uncle, two of my cousins, one of their husbands and three of their kids. The youngest member of my family to be seeing it tonight and I have a frank conversation about how bored he might become. Now, I've been bored in some of the most important theatres in the world, and I've wanted to walk out of the performances of some of the greatest actors, so I can offer him little comfort, but I do tell him he can do whatever he wants, bring something to do, go to sleep, have a drink. He is seven and has decided that he wants to come. I think it's a great age to see this show. Obviously, and in case by some odd chance it's escaped your knowledge, by the time I was seven my father was dead, and so I do not consider it too young for a show like this. It's an abstract piece of theatre, in the end, it's not full of shoot-em-up images and he can ask me whatever he likes the day after.
I'm more worried about my uncle. I'm not convinced that he really wants to come and I certainly don't want him coming out of duty - Kate lived in his house, spent a great deal of time with him for the near-decade she lived in Joburg, he's allowed to feel and do whatever he wants.  But then he goes and buys everyone's tickets and I feel more at ease.
My mother has seen three different incarnations of this show and she always laughs like a drain. She is excellent. She was very, very nervous when we first started doing it but more recently she has been at ease.... but not for tonight. Tonight she is worried, worried that our South African family won't enjoy it..... or worse than not enjoy it, hate it, find it distasteful.... or something even worse for which we cannot find a name between us. Luckily I am waaaaaay past the point of worrying about that much in advance. I only really start worrying about it when I'm on stage, alone, with no way of stopping and checking, at which I become accompanied by a shape-shifting homunculus whose opinion of me as a human being, an actor, a woman in a dress and make-up veers between low and unimaginably disgusted, depending..... depending on how many laugh I get, but not in any consistent way. I can hate myself even if there are gales of laughter and a perfect atmosphere of tragic delight. But of course, I am on stage dealing with that: mother is a passenger, waving goodbye as I head of university again, stuck in the passenger seat teaching me to drive again, seeing me head for my first day at primary school again - she has to suffer the curse of parentdom, which in her case is one of her daughters risking a one-woman show about the other daughter's murder. My mother's private, exquisite, unique hell.
And she is the key passenger, as I step out onto the stage, the lights coming up, the audience disappearing before my ever-surprised eyes, and I tell a room of folk, for the 100th time, that a year or so after my sister died, a friend of hers came to stay with me, and we went out drinking......

Adventurous by accident: clawing efficacy out of the rock face of existence

Early April

Sometimes in life, by sheer hard work and lashings of good luck, things work out. I'm no believer in fate, I take to task friends who say that we "make our own luck" and there is no meaning to be dragged from the chaos of life. Alright? But sometimes the bleeding stumps of our fingers claw out some efficacy or success or usefulness from the hard rockface of existence.

And so it was that we managed to 'navigate' our way to POPArt a couple of days before curtain-up. My previous abortive attempt proved slightly useful, I think, given that when I spotted a street sign or landmark mentioned in the instructions for finding the place, because they had been burned into the very gristle of my brain, I realised where we had to go, or at least that they were relevant. This is not to play down the contribution of the other crue members: my littlest aunt with her navigation skills and the near-silence of my mother (no mean feat, for either of us) who excellently announced, every so often, that she wished she could help.... but we all knew that keeping her counsel, and maybe mopping our sweating brows, was her only way of being teamly. Teamish?

The Maponeng Precinct is a controversial development in the heart of Johannesburg. It is a private venture aiming to bring culture, living space, commerce to what has been for a while now, a no-go area for many affluent South Africans. The controversy arises out of what is seen by some of the cleansing of the area of the local population who have lived and/or worked here through the very hard times. But on this, my first visit, I know little about any of that, and simply find myself exhilarated by the sight of Joburgers, sitting, at cafe tables, their lattes before them, soaking up the autumn sun, on the street. There are all kinds of people here, I realised, as we were given advice and help on parking the car half-on-half-off the pavement. People in chinos with laptops walked past. South Africans like the mall shopping experience, or at least that's what's mostly on offer, and this felt rather like an excellent dream of what might become of here. I let Hayleigh know we had arrived and we found the door to the theatre.

POPArt has been here three years, nearly three years. It's a classic fringe venue with all the energy, hope and challenges that can come with that. I press my nose up against the glass of the door. I explain to Mum and my littlest aunt that it's important for me, this moment of arrival at a venue where I'm going to do the show, nervousness, excitement and loads of disbelief. My mate Em likes to say that if you get the stage with a fella where you are taking your own - or each other's - clothes off, do not worry about how you look: the chap is mostly likely to be thinking: a woman is letting me see her naked! A woman is letting me see her naked! A woman is... etc. And so it is with me and theatres: Hayleigh arrives and shows us round, she is slightly apologetic about the modest lighting rig, but I'm just thinking, this theatre is going to let me perform our show here on my own! This theatre is going to let me perform our show here on my own! This theatre is going to let me... repeat to fade.

Hayleigh is the second member of the POPArt team I have met and she lives nearby, which surely means she gets to do things like opening up the theatre for actors and their random family members to have a look at it. She's as friendly and warm and full of energy as Orly, whom I met a few days ago. I am getting excited. I cannot wait for Martin to get here: he's going to love this little, black-box of a theatre, love it's urban, vibey setting (where we can look like anachronisms or site-specific art works amongst the trendsters, "And here we have late twentieth-century hippy, wilfully clueless about fashion, mostly concerned with comfort..."); he will adore the fact that it lies between two (count them!) restaurants. And he'll love these women. I am warming to them immediately.

Walking the stage - which doesn't take very long at all - puts a zing in my guts and I remember my terror at Artscape in Cape Town, the first time I had ever walked a stage and felt afraid, out of place, alone. This one feels just right and I cannot wait, cannot wait I tell you, to get on with the show.

It's less than 48 hours later that we are back, Martin, Jacques and I. I feel duty-bound to point out to you, dear reader, that we took ages to find the venue. Even though I've now driven the area extensively, and been to the venue, prepared exhaustively to get us here in order to impress Martin and Jacques, I still lead us astray, driving around in the fabulous sunshine, looking at the great buildings, me failing to remember (realise?) that the road we are looking for is very split in two, even with a map in my hand. Essentially we find ourselves, as is often the case, adventurous by accident. But we have masses of time built in and Shoki, the third member of the POPArt team, is also very late. We tech in the afternoon, giggling and chatting with this third lovely woman from the venue team. We find the magnificent toilets (there is a poster for the show in here, we have to get a picture of me with the poster in the toilets, obviously, as it's too, too good: a poster in the outside toilets), looking at the exhibition of shoes, hurling some food down our throats ready for showtime.

Eating in the restaurant next door I spy a group, including a friend, a colleague, of Kate's. She and I have been in contact - I've known she was coming. She's brought lots of people with her. I am transported to eight years ago, when Kate had just died and I first met Melanie. We embrace, I meet the people with her. I am touched.

But it is getting late, I must go and get ready. There is never enough time with people who come to the show. I spy Mark, my sister's best mate, one of my hosts in Cape Town - he's here on business for the night. He is with Zadi. We embrace. Zadi is a Burundian refugee who Kate was helping when she died; she was 39, he was 18. Even though I've sent him a copy of the play and already said it, I apologise for the fact that his story is one of the things that has been entirely expunged from the show. His story is so amazing, so harrowing, so important, that Martin and I felt we could not simply brush over it - so we could do it no justice at all - and so it went. Seeing him tonight, I feel guilty. He asks about Mum, my littlest aunt, my brother, I tell him he can see the two former tomorrow, if he comes here again, but I already know that he cannot be here tomorrow - he's flying to Angola on business, he will not get to see them.

But I must get on. It is time, after a good few weeks, to do this thing that I do, for what is, Martin has worked out, the 99th time.