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History ensemble member Nick Asbury on the long goodbye...
I feel alive
It's half past eleven on Sunday morning - our last day on this job. Richard III this afternoon. I walked into the theatre and there, steaming gently in the box office, were the many people who had queued for hours in the rain to get in to see the show. A friend of mine was there and he'd been there since five o'clock this morning. Gosh.
 I chatted to a few people then pottered upstairs to the auditorium where I was greeted by a scene of devastation. All the stuff that has been in the last seven shows and is not in Richard III this afternoon has been stripped away and packed into one of the many artics lined up outside. So Bushy, the Abbot of Westminster, Pistol, the two Somersets, even a dead soldier or two, are tucked up in their little boxes, laid to rest, and will be back in Stratford by the time Vaughan the besuited and bespectacled would-be murderer has uttered his first 'Tut, tut, my lord...'
All the flying and trapeze equipment is gone. The world retreats. And for the first time and I'm sure not for the last, my heart has broken. Today is that day when officially we few are to separate. We never will, of course. But we have to say goodbye to each other. And it is going to be hard. So much so that I think many just won't. One by one, I'm sure we will just gradually slip off into the ocean. That was the river, this is the sea. And even though there is an entire estuary of tears caught up in me, it somehow feels ok. We've been together too long, worked too hard, been through so much, to render 'goodbye' meaningless.
It feels like we should be given the clothes we were wearing on that first day when we started rehearsals, a bit of spare change, an old receipt... As I type so the chairs in our little green room backstage are being taken away and the notices on the board ripped down. I have to finish.
What, of course, I have to do now is go out and thoroughly enjoy the show. Completely be swept up one last time by the immediacy of it all. In thought, stand alongside those people who have stood in the rain to be here. And who are not here too - I've already started receiving messages from people up in Stratford saying they wish they could be here and they are thinking of us. This family is truly extended. It's like they're seeing us off at the airport or something, with all the possibilities and pain that brings. It's going to be one helluva ride. Somebody's just taken the chair I was sitting on. I feel as though my eyes and ears want to be everywhere, I don't want to miss a thing. But it'll be fun and boy, do I feel alive.
 Respond to Nick's blog
Watch extracts from the Histories
 View scenes from Henry V and behind the scenes in rehearsals.
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Latest blog posts
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About blogger Nick
Likes: Cricket and music. Fields and dark pubs with no music
Dislikes: Lager, crowded streets and light bars with music |
