Saturday morning before the last workshop

Finally we did go out. It was a night of two halves and much Montevideana.

Before that had a day which was, to use local parlance, medio complicado. At 1.30 I was interviewed by a journalist who arrived 20 minutes late, and then suffered technology problems with her Dictaphone and asked me what I expected of Uruguayan audiences, to which I replied nothing, not being able to think of anything I expected of Uruguayan audiences. I fled as soon as I could, walking through Barrio Sur to meet Omar, who was lunching with a man, although his wispy beard made him look not much more than 20, who used to work for the ministry and now makes a living ‘selling ideas’. I offered him 20 pesos and asked what I could get for that, but he said with 20 pesos I couldn’t even buy an idea for an idea. Fair enough, as 20 pesos is about 60p. Omar and I went and bought some chairs, which he’s going to customise, before I went for my second interview of the day, this one with Martin Amis’s wife’s aunt, who I met in 2004. This was a radio interview and I tried not to sound too stupid in Spanish.

We rehearsed from 5 until 10, running scenes before doing a run. Everything seemed OK, 4 the best it’s been.

Then we went out for supper. F is both ill and impoverished. He ate chips whilst V, Claudia and I ate meat. Tried to inflict as much meat as I could on him, but he wasn’t having it. When we popped out for a cigarette, a man pulled up in a car, coming to take away from the restaurant, something which is common here, and of course, Claudia knew him. Earlier with Omar, we couldn’t go five minutes without running into someone he knew, as thought the city were a village.



Fernando left early and the meal wrapped up early, around 12.30, with much talk of shoes and clothes. Claudia, V and I walked no more than 2 blocks before we ran into Ramiro with a pair of writers, one of whom I’d read and liked one of his plays. The night restarted. V hadn’t planned to meet Ramiro, it was pure Montevidean laws of probability. We drank more beer, before moving onto grappa con limon. Around 2am the thunderstorm, or tormenta as its called here, arrived, with rain bouncing back off the pavement. We moved indoors, watching the square lashed by the storm. Pablo, one of the writers, talked about Eugenio Barba, who he’s going to Italy to study later in the year. I realised I am remarkably ignorant on the subject of Eugenio Barba. We proceeded to talk about the anthropology of theatre, the semiotics of theatre, the theatre of theatre, before finally, around 3, during a break in squalls, heading off. I only got partially drenched on the 25 minute walk home. The crowds in Ciudad Vieja were once again out in force, undeterred by the tormenta. As I turned the key to enter the lobby of Jorge’s block of flats, I ran into Ernesto. Who had played Prospero, in my version of The Tempest, 15 years ago. His boyfriend lives in the block of flats. By this stage co-incidence had become the norm and we greeted each other with not even a suggestion that it was surprising we should run into each other at 3.30 in the morning, not having met for over a decade. Tan chico, la ciudad, they say, and Montevideo often feels more like a small town than a big city. Perhaps to someone who doesn’t come from a place the size of London, none of this is surprising, but to me it’s a constant source of wonder and/or trepidation.



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The first journalist asked me how the ‘crisis’ would affect the arts in the UK. Everyone here is fascinated by the ‘crisis’. However, the big news from the G20 summit here is that Uruguay has been put on some kind of putative black list as a tax haven (un paraiso fiscal). Something the Uruguayans suspect is due to Argentinean (aided by Brazilian) skulduggery.