I’m writing from an artists’ residency in Berlin that I am crashing. It’s called HomeBase and is all about bringing together artists from around the world together to work on notions of ‘home’ – I am not one of those artists, I’m just visiting. It’s a really interesting project and you can find out more on their Homepage.

For me it’s a nice space to type out emails and write press releases and go out of my mind worrying about the up-coming National Arts Festival. It is right around the corner (at this point some of you will nod, mutter about how true that is, stop reading and switch tabs to get back to working on your own productions), and it’s going to be a tough one.

Mostly because I’m trying to wrangle Krakens and Owls from another continent (OK, so that accounts for two thirds of the titular menagerie… where do bears fit in? Well, the bears are a symbol of Berlin. There. Mystery solved.)

This first half of the year has been a roller-coaster, with highs like Alexander Upstairs and the amazing response at Brighton Fringe for A Girl Called Owl, and lows like my collapsed lung (a month in and out of hospital and the recovery period) and the low turn out for Get Kraken despite amazing reviews. I’ve made a lot of declarations about what I’m going to focus on, and then made a whole lot more declarations stating the opposite. The most important lesson is just to keep working; good things happen if you don’t give up.