“I never really thought about it in those terms. Like it was something in the DSM that I could sit down with a psychyatrist and talk about. And I think what, now looking back on it, I think what happened really had to do with – I had played Hamlet at Stratford, Ontario not that long before we started shooting the show, and the experience of that, because I was inside Hamlet for about a year or longer. We did ninety shows or something over the course of one long season. And I did get quite loopy doing it. I mean some of it was just general feelings of insufficiency and ‘I am absolutely incapable of pulling this off. I should quit.’ In fact I tried to quit after the first preview, I think, or dress rehearsal. I was crying and phoned the director saying ‘I can’t do this. You know I can’t do this. Call up Colm Feore. He still remembers the lines!’ But along the way of playing it, I got to a point where I was really paranoid. Because along the way, you absorb all of the things he has because it just overwhelms you. You can’t, it’s not a part that you can leave anywhere. And I think: ‘Everyone in this company is actually trying to kill me. All the other actors are trying to kill me.’ And then it kind of metastasised from there to the point where I was having these weird, I don’t know if I would call them hallucinations, they weren’t exactly like that, it was full blown and quite real. And I’d be on stage when this was happening. As an example with ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ I had this weird, I could see that I was in like a bar, an old tavern, with big beams and posts, and I could see Shakespeare at a long table with some food in front of him, and out of the middle of this conversation with some other people this speech came. And I’m thinking yeah that’s probably how it happened, it fell out of him, parts of it. Because at the end of it somebody said ‘Well that’s good, Bill’ and he said ‘Hm, yes it is. I must remember that.’ And then I’d be back on stage. And then that got worse because I would black out, and I don’t mean faint or anything, but just disappear and wake up in the middle of a scene and not know where I was. And that was showing. To go through all of these things in front of two thousand people is really kind of uncomfortable. But the person who saved me was Brent Carver who has recently died, but he had played Hamlet a couple of times, once at Stratford, and he was not in the company, but we would run into each other if we were switching over from matinee to evening. He would say: ‘How are you doing?’ And I’d say 'Well, I don’t trust any of these people’ and he’d say 'Yeah, that’s gonna go on for a while.’ and I’d say 'Now I’m blacking out.’ 'How long has that been going on?’ 'About a week and a half.’ 'That’ll probably last another week. You’ll be okay.’ And then I kind of was. So that’s a very long way to say that when it came to Geoffrey’s madness, it was just that. That stuff. It’s all very real, but it’s not in the DSM. Does that make sense? I know typically research goes into all this with psychiatry and then I thought about it, and you know that’s kind of limiting. I know what it means to be inside theatre that makes you go somewhere else.”

Carrie Fisher

YANINA COUTURE Couture Fall/Winter 2024 if you want to support this blog consider donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

PHILIPPA EILHART ▪️ played by Cassie Clare ▪️ 3.04 - Look, I know you haven't been on good terms with the Brotherhood lately.

JENNY USED TO LET ABSOLUTELY ANYBODY CRASH AT HER PLACE. IT WAS LIKE A YEAR-ROUND CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. IF YOU HAD ANY SECRETS, SHE DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW, AND THE ONES SHE HAD SHE KEPT TO HERSELF. THERE WAS A WALL HEATER DOWN AT ONE END OF THE HALLWAY AND A BIG, DARK LIVING ROOM AT THE OTHER. ONE ELECTRIC LAMP BY THE COUCH IF YOU NEEDED IT, ALL EXITS VISIBLE TO THE EYE FROM THERE. SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO HAD NEED OF JENNY'S PLACE WERE ALL RIGHT AND SOME WEREN'T EVER GOING TO GET RIGHT, AND SHE'D ALREADY GOTTEN SEVERAL LETTERS FROM THE CITY ADVISING HER TO KEEP A LOWER PROFILE UNLESS SHE WANTED TROUBLE BUT THEN I ENTERED THE PICTURE. BAD LUCK. LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE WHO CAME THROUGH I WAS TRYING TO FIND A BETTER DIRECTION BUT IT DIDN'T WORK OUT THAT WAY. PRYING EYES SHOULD HAVE TENDED TO THEIR OWN BUSINESS. PEOPLE DON'T THINK TOWNS LIKE OURS CAN TURN INTO BATTLEGROUNDS BUT WE HAD A WAR HERE. THERE. I DON'T LIVE THERE ANY MORE EITHER. I LEFT WHEN JENNY LEFT. IT'S JUST A SPOT ON THE MAP NOW. WE RODE TOGETHER FOR A WHILE BUT THEN WE LOST EACH OTHER. SOMETIMES I THINK I HEAR FROM HER BUT OTHER TIMES I THINK I'M JUST DREAMING. NOBODY KNOWS WHERE ANYBODY LANDED. YOU DON'T KEEP IN TOUCH WHEN THE WAR DOESN'T GO YOUR WAY.