by Helen Mirren
In fact, George proved to be brilliant in those circumstances. He started acting like my manager and asked for a better room than the dark hole we had been given. We were duly moved to a glamorous suite, which seemed fabulously luxurious after my little garret in Paris. For a couple of days at least I had my own bathroom, all clean and new, with running hot water.
In Cannes much is made of the opening of a film. You have a big red-carpet arrival, and the photographers do their thing. I had never experienced anything like this before. I arrived at what I thought was just a screening to find myself in front of what seemed to be thousands of cameras flashing in my face. I grabbed George’s hand and ran. I didn’t stop until I got to the top of the steps, where I stood shaking from top to toe, my heart beating like a drum. Nothing can prepare you for that. I have run that gauntlet many times since and it no longer makes me shake, but I still have to steel myself beforehand.
After having my inadequacies as a star exposed in Cannes, I returned to Paris and an environment where to be a star was the worst sin imaginable. Peter spoke long, articulately and disdainfully of the star system. It was the very antithesis of what we were trying to achieve with CIRT, which was the ultimate in ensemble work. At that time I was more comfortable with the ensemble scenario.
As part of our training, we studied Tai Chi (which at that time I had never heard of) and Moyshe Feldenkrais – now a legendary teacher in the world of the body, thought and posture – taught us movement. Peter was always exposing us to ideas that were profound and teachers who were brilliant.
Our work in Paris was all preparation for a further experiment: an epic journey across Africa playing through improvisation to small settlements and villages along the way. We would end the year in America, holding workshops with various theatre groups. The tour would culminate in New York, where we would perform at the Brooklyn Academy. We prepared for this journey by performing in the bidonvilles, the shanty-town communities of North African immigrant workers that were appearing around the outskirts of Paris. It was our first lesson in the nervous terror of this kind of performance, completely improvised and without language, although of course the fear was all in the anticipation. The reality was benign and our eccentricity was treated with humour and bemused acceptance. By this time one more performer had joined our group: the extraordinary Ayan Sola, one of the most famous performers on the ‘talking drum’ from the Yoruba region in Nigeria.
The day came to set off across the Sahara. We flew to Algeria, spent a few days there preparing, and then gathered our belongings to pack into the truck and Land Rovers that were to take us.
The first problem was the luggage. We had all been told in no uncertain terms to limit ourselves to one fairly small suitcase. The water situation was going to be very difficult, especially on the long trek across the Sahara. The region had been experiencing one of its many droughts, and water would be hard to come by. We were to be given one small can of water each per day for washing both our clothes and ourselves, and of course we were going to get very dirty and dusty. Most of us arrived with too much luggage, and there was much wailing and tearing of hair. Only Yoshi came prepared. His bag took up only a quarter of his luggage allowance. Later we saw why. In it he had two fine white wraps, two pairs of underwear, two white T-shirts, and two pairs of fine white cotton trousers. Every day he wore one set of clothes and washed the other. He was always immaculately clean and neat. The rest of us, for all our luggage, slowly got more and more scruffy.
We were accompanied by a group who specialised in organising ‘adventure’ holidays, rare at that time. They were ex-army for the most part, and saw travel through those regions as a form of military campaign. The natives were not to be mistreated, but neither should you interact with them. They undoubtedly understood more about the local geography than we did, but never understood our ways, or what we were attempting to do. I am sure the phrase ‘What a load of wankers’ often passed their lips. Over four months this relationship deteriorated, until finally they left us to our own devices. At that point things got better.
We travelled by day, bumping along in the Land Rovers, and made camp at night. This meant finding a spot to put your sleeping bag, digging a hole for the rubbish, making a fire, setting up the kitchen, finding wood, setting up some lighting, etc. You were on your own as far as toilet facilities were concerned; it was a small spade and the bush, the tree or the dune. We all had designated jobs. Inevitably rows erupted, mostly over people not doing their share of the washing up, and the food – it’s always the food!
In between the endless days of travelling we also had to find time to rehearse, or at least to continue our exercises, both physical and mental. This was a very demanding time. Every performance was fraught with fear. Each of us had to make our own decision about going on the carpet and engaging in the performance, which was often to an audience of three women, two kids human and three kids goat. Once, though, we stumbled upon a huge Tuareg gathering. There must have been two thousand of those magnificent men in their billowing robes, as blue as the twilight sky in the desert, mounted on camels. The women were there too, milling about in their beautiful silver jewellery. We performed to this group, yelling in an effort to make something that could communicate to so many people and camels. From their superior positions on the camels’ backs they regarded us with the usual bemusement and curiosity. The camels just looked bored.
The desert was freezing at night, literally, so it was hard to climb out of the warm sleeping bag as the sun rose. By 10 a.m., however, it was scorching hot. After a week or so sleeping out under the stars, I stopped using the little campbed we’d been issued with and got used to sleeping on the ground.
After dinner each night we would sit around chatting for a short while before falling exhausted to sleep. It was during this time that I struck up a friendship with the great Ayan Sola. In Paris he had been a large, lonesome enigma, shut away from us by language and culture. He must have been unbearably homesick, for he had never left his home town before. The boys in the group had befriended him somewhat and taken him out on the town, but it had been difficult for the girls to form a relationship with him. In Algeria he bought a small tape player and a recording of James Brown and every night as we penetrated the Sahara we’d listen to the sound of James Brown singing ‘Git on up’, over and over until we all went mad. Eventually the batteries ran out and Ayan Sola was left in silence again. No one had explained to him about the batteries. It was around this time I struck up a kind of conversation with him, that became a nightly thing. I realised that he had no idea where he was, so I drew a map in the sand and explained, and from then on we became good friends. I think we were equally lonely.
I was terribly lonely on that trip, despite living in such close circumstances with others. I did make good friends, however, with the photographer Mary Ellen Mark, who came along for some of the journey, and whose photographs are shown here. She had a marvellous way with her when she took photographs, never stealing them surreptitiously. She always asked permission, and somehow always got it, even in places where people were very frightened of and suspicious of the camera. She and Ayan Sola were the two who held me together.
So in the desert Ayan Sola and I talked, exchanging opinions and thoughts. Neither of us had any idea what the other was talking about. I would speak of whatever came into my mind and Ayan Sola would speak at length in his beautiful language, sounding exactly like his drum when he played it. The talking drum can actually speak words and phrases, hence the name. Later, when we passed through the talking drum area, I was walking on my own down a street in a small town and behind me walked a drummer, drumming out phrases. The bystanders and shoppers were convulsed with laughter. I’d love to know what he was saying without opening his mouth.
Eventually we reached the other side of the Sahara and the landscape began to turn green, and then greener. Now when we awoke it was often to find a group of curious people standing around us, at close quarters, peering
down. They would look on with interest at our undignified attempts to get out of the bag modestly.
I had two favourite places in Africa, and one of these was Ayan Sola’s home. There are two towns called Ife and Oshogbo, fairly close to each other; both are magical, with a deep history and culture. Ife is a holy city, considered by the Yoruba people to be the centre of the world and the birthplace of mankind, and it may well turn out to be true. The area had experienced cruel massacres, starvation and destruction in the Biafran wars not long before. The architecture here, the sense of art, of music, of painting and of sculpture was so strong. The city is also home to a complex and ancient Pantheist religion.
We travelled more or less every day in Africa, but I never tired of the travel. I liked the constant change of climate and location. Beds and chairs became unnecessary.
It was when I got to Ife and Oshogbo that I felt at home. It was also there that I lost my friend. As we crossed the border into his home territory, Ayan Sola got out of the car and did a dance of joy, speaking to himself on the drum. It was wonderful to watch, but it was clear that now Ayan Sola was home he was not going to continue on the journey.
The night in Oshogbo we said goodbye was one of our few celebrations. Some people held a party for us. In the party was someone who spoke Ayan Sola’s language and mine. Ayan Sola was excited. He got hold of the interpreter and sat him down between us to translate our conversation. What then emerged was the most expressive poetic language I have ever heard, full of descriptive passages worthy of Shakespeare or Keats. It was romantic, it was utterly beautiful, mesmerising, and it completely took me by surprise. I was struck dumb. It was so beautiful I didn’t want it to end. It was the last conversation I ever had with him as the next day we moved on and he stayed.
The other magical place for me was by the banks of the massive Niger River as it flows through Mali. There again I felt strangely at home, comfortable with the people and the landscape. Like all very poor people, they showed generosity and hospitality to me. I had taken by then to wandering off on my own, much happier away from the group of travellers, although of course always there for rehearsal and performance.
Our performances continued, usually sanctioned by the local chief. Once we were paid for our performance with a live goat. This set up a passionate battle between the vegetarians amongst us and the rest. It was a question of morality. Here was a village without much to eat themselves who had paid us the huge compliment of giving us something to eat. It was an insult not to eat it. The vegetarians thought we should let it go. Lou Zeldis thought we should paint it bright blue and let it go, so it could become a magical goat. Although not vegetarian, I was of the ‘don’t eat the goat’ group. We had enough food, albeit canned and nasty, and it seemed an unnecessary taking of a little life. In the end the goat got killed and eaten with much serious ritual and ceremony. The whole thing was absurd.
A lot of our trip was absurd and ridiculous, but much was also magical and inspiring. All the time Peter was observing and learning, and later he was to use the experience in creating two remarkable and ground-breaking productions: The Ik and Conference of the Birds.
This is a typical encampment for the night. I didn’t mind the physical discomfort, but I missed the sense of decoration in our living circumstances. This was compensated by the raw beauty of our surroundings.
Finally the great African experiment was over, we reached the sea again, having travelled through Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Dahomey (Benin), Mali, Niger again and back to Algeria. We had witnessed extraordinary things, and met with nothing but a certain restrained kindness from the people we travelled amongst. The unity of the communities we met was stronger than our own, and their example of communal living always impressive. There was undoubtedly cruelty in those societies, and suffering that we were sometimes aware of, but also a cohesion and order that was to be envied.
When I got back to London for a brief break I could no longer sleep in a bed. Beds seemed claustrophobic with their soft mattresses and pillows. I had to sleep on the floor next to the bed. I also missed the stars, having gone to sleep looking at them for four months.
Soon we were off on the second part of the year’s work, which began with a workshop collaboration with El Teatro Campesino, based in San Juan Bautista, a small and lovely old Californian town with a distinct Latino heritage. It was there that I first met Taylor, now my husband, whom, however, I did not remember meeting. He was one of the observers that would turn up from time to time; Danny Valdez, who with his brother Luis had founded the theatre, was a good friend of Taylor’s.
The Teatro had been formed originally as Agit-prop theatre on the picket lines and fields of the migrant agricultural workers of the San Joaquin Valley. The workers, led by the legendary Cesar Chavez, had gone on strike. Their actions had resonated all over the world, leading to a boycott against Californian grapes. The strike and boycott were still in full force and the United Farm Workers organisation was in its early days when we were working with the Teatro.
As a part of our work we travelled out into the unbearably hot and dusty valley, with mile after unending mile of vast cultivated plains. We performed on the picket lines and met Cesar Chavez, who was immediately and deeply impressive. He was quiet and gentle, sat under a tree, on a box, and spoke softly, with eloquence and simplicity, about the struggles ahead. I played the Teamsters’ Contract, one of my better inventions. At that time, in order to break the strike and the Farm Workers union, a ‘sweetheart contract’ was being offered by the corrupt Teamsters union, an organisation then run by thugs. Happily they did not prevail, and Chavez did.
One of the greatest pleasures of our time with the Teatro was to live and work with the exuberant, unbelievably noisy Latinos that made up the group. I made some lifelong friends amongst them. It was also a terrific way to rediscover America, and its pleasures of the diner and the cocktail bar.
Our next journey was into Native American culture via the work we did with the American Indian Theater Ensemble, made up of people from various different tribes, now sadly disbanded. With them we travelled to Minnesota to work on a reservation. If you saw a photograph of where we were working it would appear very beautiful, but its beauty was overshadowed by the enormous and rampant mosquitoes that feasted on us. Living and working with these Native Americans made me appreciate the beauty inherent in their culture and society. The first night we arrived on the reservation there was no accommodation for us, so we all camped in a half-destroyed community hall. At our end of the hall, all was chaos and untidiness, and down the other end where the American Indian actors were, as soon as they unpacked it had an order and decoration that looked like home.
On the reservation there was a terrible feeling of doom and despair; we were there long before the Native Americans hit upon the brilliant scheme of building casinos that have brought wealth to neighbouring communities. The troupe themselves, although wonderful people, were also infused with a sadness, a sense of end and futility. I fell in love with one of them, a Pueblo Indian from Taos, New Mexico. We as a group were invited to attend a real pow-wow – a great honour, as it is quite rare for white people to go. A pow-wow is a big gathering for people to sing and dance and talk. There were dance competitions, and I was surprised to see my friend, Carpio, suddenly turn up in full regalia. He danced superbly, and I think he won. The pow-wow went on over three days, but as it progressed, the alcohol consumption began to rise and eventually the elders suggested that we, the foreigners, leave, as it might turn ugly for us.
I had one of the girls in the Indian troupe give me a tattoo, after a couple of brandies. She carefully and delicately wrapped cotton thread round the end of a safety pin and emptied ink out of a pen someone had. She then stabbed it into my hand. It was incredibly painful. I almost fainted and would have stopped halfway, but she forced me to go on as she knew half a tattoo would look silly. About four of us got tattooed that night.
In those days only sailors, Hell’s Angels
and prisoners had tattoos. In fact, it was a group of prisoners that had inspired me to get a tattoo. Whilst in France, we had performed in an old prison at Fontevraud Abbey, where Jean Genet himself had once been incarcerated. This extraordinary place, which houses the tombs of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, was once a centre for powerful women who took the veil in order to exert political influence. They advised kings and held sway in the palaces of Europe. Centuries later, I could feel those women exercising their power on me. It is a most evocative place. When we visited it was in the process of being changed from prison to renovated cultural site, and we performed to the few prisoners left. They were all tattooed with eye make-up or tears. A combination of the memory of those prisoners and the powerful atmosphere of Fontevraud made me want to commemorate it, which I did in Minnesota with my tattoo.
After the reservation we went on to New York, the final leg of the journey as far as I was concerned. We performed the most rehearsed of our performances and held workshops at the Brooklyn Academy. We were still improvising, but in a more rehearsed way. Performances never lost their terror, however. We also continued our tradition of street theatre by performing in deepest Brooklyn for various ethnic groups. The most frightening of these by far were the Italian-Americans, who were much more aggressive than the African Americans. There was almost a riot when we performed in a park in an Italian neighbourhood. The bamboo sticks we used as props to create a spiritual experience were used to poke us unmercifully, and in the end we had to run for it, with the mob howling after us.
