These are my friends Rani, Witold and Lola. We’re regulars at Gregor Samsa playreading evenings. As in last night …

Thank God for Harry Glockler, the owner of Gregor Samsa. Usually four evenings a week, this spiritual space hosts concerts, and sometimes playreadings. He’s created a marvel in Ghent centrum.

Yesterday the journey was An Inspector Calls by J.B. Priestley. For Act One Harry asked me to be Arthur Birling, a British factory owner, described as “a heavy-looking, rather portentous man in his middle fifties”.

“I can do that!” I thought.

I just looked at the word “portentous” and thought it meant “fat”. I can do that! But Mr. Google tells me the meaning is “puffed up with vanity”. I can also do that!

I loved playing Arthur. I have no problem puffing myself. Here he’s lecturing his son Eric:

Just let me finish, Eric. You’ve a lot to learn yet. And I’m talking as a hard-headed, practical man of business. And I say there isn’t a chance of war … Why a friend of mine went over this new liner last week – the Titanic – she sails next week – forty-six thousand eight hundred tons – New York in five days – and every luxury – and unsinkable, absolutely unsinkable. That’s what you’ve got to keep your eye on, facts like that, progress like that – and not a few German officers talking nonsense and a few scaremongers here making a fuss about nothing.

Yes! I love being absolutely wrong (or at least my character being wrong).

Twelve of us showed up, and everyone who wanted to got to read. In Act Two, I said goodbye to Mr. Birling and switched to stage directions.

Everybody was so into their parts. For all of us, I think, we’d never seen the play. We created our characters moment-to-moment, putting our unique spin on the person. Vive les différences! Three different Birlings.

The guy had a wife, a son, a daughter, and a potential son-in-law. Each became real before my eyes, and then real again in the next act. There was also the police inspector … who might not have been legit.

The best for me was Act Three. I didn’t have a part to play, so no concentrating on lines and entrances. I just drank it all in – friends and newbies flowing in the story; voices loud and soft, raucous and soothing; feeling the dark green walls; watching the inspector utter his measured words while his face glowed in the light of a lamp.

I was in Wonderland

Twelve human beings together in the mystery

Sweet