The Final Scene of Titus

Titus Andronicus is over.

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Sam: “Are they creating an I-Phone application of you, so that I can carry you everywhere and ask you what I have to do next?”

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I am sitting off stage. Aaron, Lucius and Lusty Goth are on stage. Lucius tells the Goth to hang Aaron, and Aaron is viciously led up a ladder, around where nooses hang from the ceiling.

“And hang the child as well,” Lucius orders. Then I notice that the child, a green doll, is not on stage. The actors are looking like everything is proceeding correctly, but I know better. I look around and see it sitting down near me.

I pick it up and the Goth is looking roughly in my direction and so, after one moment’s hesitation, in one mammoth throw, I send it arching up between lights and hanging plastic, over the entire stage, towards the tall Goth who stretches up her hand and just catches him, ready to hang, ready for Lucius to save him.

And the audience delights at the perfect choreography.

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Going to the pub and after parties with the cast, can be very interesting and a lot of fun. I talked to an English linguist who told me that I sound English, but don’t, have an English accent. I thought that that was very interesting.

I have none of the colloquialisms/conjunctions/expressions that can be found in Middlesbrough, or Liverpool, or Coventry, or London, or anywhere else in England. I just sound English.

However there is never enough time to talk to everyone, I wish I had a chance to talk to Lynne, Nell, Julian, Colin, R, A and S. And I think that I didn’t get to talk to N, A, B and R. I’m starting to wonder who I spent all my time talking to…

I guess that is one of the problems with having a large cast. I did have a lovely chat to A, V, V, S, E, and P. And played two games on ‘Guitar Hero’. Note: There are too many people with the same initials, think up different pseudonyms.

“So much of me is made of what I learned from you, You'll be with me like a handprint on my heart. And now whatever way our stories end I know you have re-written mine By being my friend … Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you I have been changed for good”
- Stephen Schwartz “For Good” from “Wicked”

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But I have to go. I leave at about 3:30am. I have a 10km race to run in the morning. I need to be at the MCG by 6:00am. 5:00am if I want any chance of parking the car. So off I go, I dropped Aniko in Brunswick and head to Clayton and to the Land of Nod.

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Act V, Scene III

LUCIUS: Some loving friends convey the Emperor hence,
And give him burial in his father's grave.
My father and Lavinia shall forthwith
Be closed in our household's monument.
As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,
No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,
No mournful bell shall ring her burial;
But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.
Her life was beastly and devoid of pity,
And being dead, let birds on her take pity.

- Titus Andronicus (Act V Scene III)