Dickie Beau is a “physical performer and intrepid drag fabulist”. Beau is re-staging his 2017 performance piece - Re-member Me - meditating on Hamlet, playing Hamlet, the transmission of acting knowledge, the start of Stonewall and queer rights (and some of its history); and death (and how HIV impacted this community); also running (is life a race?), mortality, regret (to not playing Hamlet, or Lear); and the fleeting nature that is performance arts (or human life).

All this through a meta-structure (see blog on American Born Chinese) where Beau lipsyncs the interviews of those who have played, or watched various Hamlets over the years. His personification of these interviews is astonishing..

The 2017 piece was at the Almeida on the set of the mainstage’s version of Hamlet adding an extra layer of meta-structure that the Hampstead perhaps staging lacks.

I saw Beau perform in New York (Blackouts, 2017). I find his performances extraordinary. The drag and related arts are not directly my art practice, I find the performance arts aspects compelling. Now I find myself playing versions of myself in my performance lectures, I pay more attention to this.

There are elements which will resonate stronger the closer you are to theatre arts (I recognise the conflicted push-pull of gaining a critics review and being immortalized in such a review that Ian Charleson so wished for and gained from John Peters - in fact, I have learned that Peters established an Ian Charleson award partly in response to Charleson’s Hamlet performed as Charleson was dying and in the last few weeks of life).

We are our stories. We are others’ stories too.

At Hampstead theatre until 17 June, London.