I got back to Argyll around mid-morning, I was driving around the long way, treacherous single track roads and heart stopping climbs and descents. My eyes were blood shot and stinging from the overnight trip from Galway festival where our new show had been a failure. The Ireland-Scotland ferry had been full of drunken Rangers fans and I’d been deprived the little power nap that would have taken the edge off the involuntary muscle spasm now rippling through me at random. A deer darted across the road in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and went into a skid. The back end of the van lurched to the right, I steered into it, the back lurched to the left, I steered into that. A lorry appeared ahead storming towards me. This van had taken two years to get through the bureaucratic nightmare of multiple lottery applications. The Northern Ireland lot had insisted on only being approachable for the portion of the cost equal to the amount of work we did in the province, they didn’t see us as a resident group despite being based in L’derry, we were more a temporary visiting alien in their book and should get each country we visited to share the cost proportionally – I attempted to do this... each application had involved a mammoth application form, regionally sourced partnership funding and three quotes for each separate part of the application – the van itself, the coach-working to adapting it to wheel chair use – I might be needing that soon - the bunk bed, the signwriting to acknowledge the various funders, logos front side and back, the portable office gear that went with it, a mobile phone that resembled a concrete block, a desktop computer that had already been stolen along with the printer and fax while we were away – though there was a possibility Sinn Fein could assist with reuniting us. The whole thing was a symbol of our displacement and vulnerability and here it was about to be mangled by a 30 tonne truck or fly off the side of a mountain into oblivion.
David was born in Perth, Scotland. He graduated from Sheffield University in 1990 and studied acting at The Poor School in London. He subsequently trained with Antonio Fava (Commedia dell’arte), Phillippe Gaulier (Clown and Bouffons) and Dominique Dupuy (contemporary dance). He completed a practice based MA and PhD (How To Be Funny) at the University of Kent in 2006. He has co-created and performed in all Ridiculusmus productions to date.
