The tour's the thing

Earth tremors, cultural divides, mix-ups over leather goods. Just the usual pitfalls in the life of a touring theatre company. Michael Cashman recently returned to Britain after three months in Japan, Korea, Israel and Palestine performing `The Tempest' with Shared Experience. Here are extracts from his diary...

Tuesday 18 November

En route to Tokyo, one of our actors sinks so much in-flight alcohol that it appears he's about to become the Gazza of British theatre. The air turned blue, cast members fled to other seats, "Gazza" flaked out, and the Japanese air crew pretended nothing had happened.

The culture shock on arrival is staggering. Hardly any signs in Roman script, which makes finding places really difficult.

Nancy Meckler (our director), David Meyer (our Alonso) and I went for a stroll and were enticed by a little man into some intricate paper folding. He watched as we folded our tiny pieces of paper into mirror-images of his. We couldn't believe that we were practising Origami after 11 hours of jet lag! We wrote our names on these small "swans". The little man didn't speak a word of English, but produced an explanatory note: we'd just made "Cranes of Peace" to remember the dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He didn't want any money - just our paper-folding skills, and our commitment to peace.

Friday 22

Performance of The Tempest. The simultaneous translation bubbling in the background is distracting enough but today the show was nearly ruined by a zealous photographer clicking throughout the play.

Post-show reception, and after much low bowing by the men, the women mingled. One man remarked that I was most fortunate to have so many married ladies waiting for me.

Jet lag means that most of us are shattered - managing only four or five hours' sleep.

Sunday 24

Hotel shaken by earth tremor at 7.30am. It lasted only a few seconds but, having been in the San Francisco quake, I wasn't taking any chances. I was up, dressed and ready to go in minutes. The hotel receptionist hadn't even noticed it.

Monday 25

Workshop with Nancy and some Japanese students They were very reserved as we condensed, with the help of an interpreter, some of Shared Experience's basic principles into an hour. They seemed unwilling to explore any extremes of emotion until, at one point, I went completely over the top and physicalised the emotions going on inside me. Then all hell broke loose. They were suddenly liberated, although they still had trouble closing their eyes and trusting themselves to the group or to other members of it.

Tuesday 26

Matinee followed by post-show discussion. Much interest in the Prospero / Miranda relationship. Our production has focused on the idea that, if Prospero could stop his daughter becoming a woman, if he could always protect her, then he would never leave the island.

The Japanese know this play well and seem to respond particularly strongly to Prospero's pain on giving up his child.

Monday 2 December

Osaka. The "theatre" is a conference centre, so our crew have to build the stage and extra dressing-rooms virtually from scratch. The best place to make up, it turns out, is the toilet.

Sunday 8

Yokohama. The city has the tallest Ferris Wheel in the world, the tallest building in Japan, the longest bridge and, presumably, tucked away somewhere, the biggest aspidistra in the world.

Thought I was going down with tinnitus until I realised that the high- pitched whistling I was hearing was "bird call" muzak in the hotel.

Post-show discussion. Audiences have homed in on influences which they see as specifically Eastern - the use of sand, the sounds, the costumes and the set, the "physicalising" of the play - yet the fact that we were going to perform the piece in the Far East never consciously influenced us in our presentation of it.

Some people say they were uncomfortable at having black and white actors cast in the roles of blood-relatives.

At one point, our interpreter carefully edits out a reference to Prospero. It turns out that the man was impressed at the way I brought out the masculine and feminine in Prospero. I wonder what else is being edited out of the discussion.

Monday 9

One thing I will miss on leaving Japan is the feeling of being safe on the streets, of being able to leave valuables lying around, or a bag in a public place, without fear of having them pinched or blown up.

Wednesday 11

Seoul. Failed to find the gay bar at the Dong Ho (!) piazza. Got to the seventh floor to find it was a leather importers. Obviously, local gay tastes have become hard core!

Technical fit-up at the theatre is proving difficult, partly owing to the Korean crew, who apparently don't like taking orders from the women who head our production team.

Thursday 12

Lots of press and TV interest: we are the first company ever to bring Shakespeare-in-English to Korea. Here we're using "surtitles" at the side of the stage. The audience look like they're watching a very slow tennis match, as they all turn their heads to the left, read the Korean text, and then turn back to face the stage. Meanwhile, the comedy goes completely awry, as all the laughs come either too early or too late.

Friday 13

Most of the company are now keen to get home to England.

Did some sight-seeing and then descended into the Seoul equivalent of the tube, only to come face to face with about 200 riot police. Although they were fierce-looking and well-armed, I managed to make a few of them giggle as I flirted and practised low bowing. People are friendly here if you just take the trouble to bow and then smile at them.

Wednesday 18

Our first schools matinee. The noise before the show was deafening; when they caught sight of Miranda's knickers, they went wild.

Sunday 22

The Koreans try to be so different from the Japanese, yet they are so alike. They display all the brusqueness of a young capitalist country, yet deep down share the courtesy and concerns of the East.

The gay scene is what it must have been like in England during the Thirties and Forties - most contact made through furtive looks and discreet passing of phone numbers.

What has been astonishing about playing Japan and Korea is how people there have understood the play more literally than other audiences - getting the gags and puns, the wordplay, the request for applause in the Epilogue... And, as post-show discussions revealed, they are so aware of the energy that exists between the characters.

Friday 3 January

Next stop: Israel. Detailed interrogation at El Al check-in. One of our mob, asked if he knows any Israelis, replies: "Yes, Jesus Christ."

My interrogator asks: "Japan, Korea and now Israel - are you that good or are they just desperate?"

Meanwhile, Peter Kelly (our Gonzalo) has to quote lines from the play to prove his bona fides, and having failed to persuade them, has to submit to a search.

Saturday 4

Israel is the only country I've ever been to that doesn't have a Gideon Bible in every hotel room. Even in Japan and Korea it was sandwiched between the Yellow Pages and the Tales of Buddha.

We opened in Jerusalem but had problems with the lights, which were not bright enough, and with the sound, which kept cutting out.

Nancy gave us some excellent notes afterwards. As did the deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, who said that, if I could just wave my arms around a bit more, I'd make a convincingly Jewish Prospero.

Wednesday 8

Day-trip to the old city of Jerusalem, which I found deeply depressing. No spirituality and rampant commercialism. They were rude in the mosques, I got ripped off at the Wailing Wall by a rabbi, and the churches were filled with tourists and old women in black, slumped in chairs, worn out from their hours of devotion.

The Dead Sea and the surrounding mountains were infinitely more spiritual. As were the children playing in a Bedouin camp beside a clapped-out Morris Minor.

Back in Jerusalem, in a bar at the Jaffa Gate, I met an elderly cashier who loved Shakespeare. As he spouted Shakespeare in broken English, in the cellar below a bogus church service was being conducted in English and Arabic for a very excited American couple!

Thursday 9

Hopes of doing workshops with Palestinian school kids came to nothing. An official said the Palestinians do not want anything that comes out of Israel. They have no trust any more.

Went to the Cameri theatre, where we will be working, to see a production of Comedy of Errors. At the party afterwards we learnt that two bombs had gone off in central Tel Aviv. Suddenly the horror of the conflict became real. You could almost taste the despair that hung in the air. The Mayor of Tel Aviv arrived to welcome us - he'd just come from visiting the casualties in the hospital.

Monday 13

Back to England. It's been a huge responsibility taking Shakespeare to new audiences for the very first time, and trying to please those who so rarely see the work performed in English. But it's been rewarding, too, seeing how enthusiastic and moved our audiences have beenn

Shared Experience's `The Tempest' is at the Richmond Theatre until Saturday (0181-940 0088), then Blackpool Grand Theatre (6-8 Feb, 01253 28372), Darlington Civic Theatre (11-15 Feb, 01325 486555), Barnstaple Queen's Theatre (18-22 Feb, 01271 24242) and Brighton Theatre Royal (25 Feb- 1 March, 01273 328488)