Kingston Arts Centre

Kingston Arts Centre is next to Moorabbin station. It takes me an hour and a half on the train from Montmorency and when I change trains at Flinders street it is so chaotic that I make friends with the other confused Frankston line travelers. Kingstron Arts Centre is on the edge of a busy, three-lane each way road with that feeling of suburbs and industry all around it.

It’s a lovely old building. Two story red-red brick with big, white-framed windows and a wide staircase lined by dark wooden banister rails. We have the use of Kingston Arts Centre every Monday. Marisa is totally welcoming and sweet. She shows us our own desk space in the office and lets us into the theatre we will have for 6 hours.

While Christy goes straight to the office and calls people, Luke and I clamber up into the tech box and start to play. We find the lights, put up a blue and some reds on the curtain, and a wash on the stage, take it in turns to explore the desk, find the mike and the laptop plug in and start to play. The sound of our miked voices through the theatre makes us embarrassed at first and then is fun. We tell stories, make things up while the other brings music in underneath it on the laptop. Suddenly we have being improing for an hour on the sound desk and Christy is back.

We plan schedules and budgets with a computer and a phone in front of each of us lying on our stomachs on the theatre floor.

Luke and I impro on the floor while Christy layers sound under what we do. Playing the digi recordings, bringing up music, telling stories on the mike. 20 minutes is nothing.

Luke’s dad’s house is just around the corner and we go there and drink tea, tired and happy on the couches looking out at his newly planted vegetables. We’ll be back next week, we say after our next session in our very own theatre.