5 days in the life of Susannah York

The actress entertains New Yorkers at a gala and takes a wander in historic Brooklyn

MONDAY: About midday on Saturday, we left for New York for the RSC's run of five plays in the US, including Hamlet, Cymbeline, Henry VIII, Everyman and Edward Petherbridge's one-man show. We went out a couple of days early because of tonight's gala, organised by Tina Brown of the New Yorker. This morning we rehearsed in costume and then just wandered and enjoyed New York. The weather's been wonderful. With the gala, held in the Manhattan Center on 9th Avenue, I think the feeling was really that we got away with it. We had less than a week to rehearse it. Jane Lapotaire sang Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien, and I had a sonnet. The gala was massive: the whole floor was covered with tables which were covered with people and diamonds. We had a sort of disco afterwards.

TUESDAY: Day off, so I went and wandered with a friend round Central Park and Columbus Avenue. One really feels one is seeing the real US; not the glamorous, glittery people, but the country with all its ethnic strands,every language and every kind of food. I've been in the US quite a bit. I played Hedda Gabler, and did a one-woman play called The Human Voice here in New York, and various films in Los Angeles. Came back relatively early for an early-morning rehearsal tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY: We all gathered downstairs in the hotel lobby: we had to be at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) by 9.30am, so we travelled on the subway. The trains have these lovely wooden benches, which are very solid. At the BAM, a large theatre which seats more than 2,000 people, we tried to get our voices used to this massive space. I've been playing Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, for nine months now, although at first I broke my heel while rehearsing so I wasn't able to play it for three months. I once played Gertrude by a duck-pond in Connecticut in the open air, and I don't think she's an easy character at the best of times. She's an icon, but Shakespeare doesn't give you a lot of insight into what's going on in her soul. You have to make informed guesses, and I do find her quite challenging. It was difficult not to judge her, because I did Hamlet at A-level and I was bringing to bear all these people's opinions on her. But after three or four days, I had to shake this off and say to myself, "Stop judging Gertrude through the eyes of one of those professors." That made it much better.

THURSDAY: Finished the technical rehearsal, then had a couple of hours free, so we wandered round Brooklyn. You see these wonderful ghost buildings and you suddenly realise that they weren't used because of the stock-market crash. The romance of Brooklyn is marvellous: these great 1930s buildings are just sitting there, desolate. Then there are all these brownstone houses, with big steps and tree-lined avenues. They're very intimate, almost Georgian. Tonight was the first night, with a wonderfully receptive audience, very warm. You felt that everybody wanted to be there and was rooting for you. It's about two dysfunctional families, and very domestic, and you have got to translate that into this large theatre. You have to deal with the fact that people can't see what's going on in the eyes: we're too far away, so it's got to be in the energy of the voice. Fortunately, it's a very active production, with a lot of humour, and they got that quickly.

FRIDAY: I was going to meet a friend in Bedford Hills, but had to change the arrangement. We have a performance tonight, two tomorrow and a matinee on Sunday. They do that quite a bit here. Then, on Sunday and Monday I have two nights off, and on the 8th of June we're off to Washington.