Buxton

St Valentine's Day and we're performing in the gorgeous, Frank Matcham designed Buxton Opera House. Such a joy of a theatre: from the raked stage, the actors get a sense of an intimate auditorium (it seats 1200), hanging on every word. The architecture lends a softness - its the only word that'll do - to the actors, knowing they don't have to push, only talk.

After the show, there's a post-show discussion, with a sizeable part of the audience staying behind (perhaps the bitter North Derbyshire cold induced them to linger on in the warm theatre).

Amongst the questions and comments:

• How d'you multi-role play? I'm interested in that.  'Thought 'twere really good. (A school-boy)
  
• Is Shakespeare really infinitely adaptable? (This from an usher, who'd taught English for 30 years. I find out later she takes umbrage with modern-dress versions. I'm not wholly unsympathetic to her view...)
• Thank you for your interpretation
• This was the definitive Tempest
• Do you think there's hope then? (After I'd talked about the London Bombings...)

Oh, "hope"! I could have melted into the floor. The young woman asked the question for all of us. The story of the Tempest is among those that can keep that flicker of hope alive - forgiveness, so simple so difficult.

When we retire to the hotel bar (there's a Singles Night going on) and some of the cast bemoan having failed to wish their loved ones a happy Valentine's Day, I reflect on my own slip of memory: on this day, at 7pm, 40 years ago I touched down at Heathrow from Nairobi. I was born anew, becoming a Black, a wog, a Paki, an Asian, a theatre director. Perhaps being born again is not an imperative confined solely to the migrant - but it certainly makes it easier! Thrust into a new life with little preperation - except the balaclavas my mother had wisely thought to buy in Nairobi market before setting off with us...