Couch potatoes – and a glass of Guinness

Westward Ho!

Buffalo History Museum is housed inside a beautiful building. I am due to perform at 2pm in their intimate 150 seat auditorium.

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The Quakers are hosting the event and after the performance Rodney Pierce, a Korean War CO, and Nadine Hoover of the Conscience Studio and New York Quakers, join us for the Q and A.

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It can’t have been the Amish cashew nuts, surely?

March 14th/15th

1040 is the number of the form on which citizens file their US tax return.

It’s also the name of the organisation Harold Penner belongs to – and it’s ‘1040 for Peace’ that has sponsored us to come to Akron for my first US performance.  They each withhold a symbolic 10 dollars 40 cents from their tax bill, in protest against government defence spending, and redirect it to peaceful causes.  A small gesture, but accompanied with letters to government officials explaining their reasoning.

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Letters from America: Crates and a Washington Post

Mar 11th: Four New Crates (and a Suitcase) 

Bill has gone to his grandson’s birthday party in New Jersey, so I have Sunday to myself – to go for a good stiff walk in Patapsco Park and check out the cascades and waterfalls on another crisp, chilly but sunny day – and then after lunch to get to work accustoming myself to my crates – four new crates knocked up by Bill and his brother the other weekend.

I was so chuffed that they did this for me – because along with the wooden box I brought in my luggage and the small period suitcase that RADA in London loaned me, I can do the play pretty much as I have been doing it in the UK. I’m one crate and two pallets short, but the staging needs to be changed only a little.

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‘This Evil Thing’ – USA tour 2018

On March 9, I set off with some trepidation and a fair amount of excitement to the USA where I have only ever spent 5 days in all my 60 years – (and those five days were in New York) – travelling there now in order to present the compelling and inspiring stories of Britain’s First World War conscientious objectors – ‘THIS EVIL THING’ – to a number of sympathetic religious institutions, colleges and a few Quaker Meeting Houses too.

This all came about thanks to a chance meeting with an American, who saw the piece when I first presented it in Edinburgh in 2016 – and who said to me, ‘You should bring this to the States.’ To which I replied, ‘I’d love to. But how?’ ‘Let me have a think,’ he said.

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