Fourteen Hours of Asking for Trouble

Luke called me at 7am about the Ian Potter submission and then came round with a DVD showreel of previous work while I was making tea in my pyjamas. We pulled the pieces of the submission together and Luke signed the final letter, practicing his signature first on the back of an envelope while I laughed at him. I gave Jono the envelope as he raced out the door to hand-deliver it to Collins St in the city.

We rehearsed again at Kingston today and, like a miracle, the set was already set up and ready to go. As we warmed up, jogging and stretching on the polished floor, I could feel the difference in my body of not having just lifted a heavy bunkbed and freestanding pole. My shoulders felt looser and everything felt easier to warm up.

We have a regular warm up hour now which goes newspapers, stretch, bunkbed play. I started to get the bunkbed play choreography, watching Luke who often throws the toy to where I’m supposed to go. We ran the training montage we made on Saturday and remembered it with only a couple of blank moments. It was still hilarious and Christy’s face was red and laughing and Luke said “What? What?” She said, “It’s you’re eyes. Your face is neutral but I can see the smile in your eyes”

I did a coffee run while they worked a couple of tricks they want in the slapstick and came back to the list of tricks. Watched and talked and watched and talked and wrote the routine order down as they made it up. Came in and spotted a layout throw that they were less certain of. Then we scripted. This scene comes straight from Luke’s brain. He thought of it, thought of the tricks and pretty much had the dialogue scripted in his head before they ran it. I typed as he spoke and Christy added moments of Scout into the mix. Stubbed toes and bandaids and stingy stuff for grazes.

We worked on the moving towards the fence scene – which felt a bit funny, the tricks aren’t really spectacular but they felt hard. The melting, the slowness, Luke and I both flying things and all of us negotiating the costume situation. Luke won’t have bare knees and Christy will be wearing shin pads. The two and a half high felt like it would be difficult under those circumstances but we tried it. It’s a good one for me – every single time I do it there is a moment when Christy steps across onto my shoulders and I think my feet will slide off, but Luke shifts the weight and it is totally solid. I always remember, after a moment of panic, to trust him. “Trust Luke,” runs through my brain.

We raced to Amanda’s studio in St Kilda to pick up the undyed costumes before she left for Blackrock. She hasn’t finished them yet, but are really feeling like we need to try all the tricks in them in case they need some serious adjusting. Tomorrow we’ll work in them and then possibly courier them to her so she can finish them. It feels like all our time is too precious now to do costume driving.

In the truck on the way home we talked invites. Arts Vic, Ozco, circus industry, physical theatre companies we love, presenters, producers, who do we want to see the show?? Northcote Town hall has the dates wrong on the website, gasworks need to let us know how many comps we will have.

Back at Pigeon Hole, Flick was standing in front of her caravan with a paint roller dripping ‘latte’ coloured paint. They had decided that ‘mushroom’ didn’t quite work and she was redoing the whole thing. We unloaded the set into the Pigeon Hole front yard and Luke started angle-grinding the spikey bits off the bunk bed welds. Christy was on the phone about One Trick Pony things looking grim. Apparently they can’t put up their tent on the balcony where they had planned because they don’t have an engineer’s report about the load. This will change their show a whole lot and mean a bunch more organising.

I left Luke and Christy in goggles and overalls, spraypainting the bunkbeds. Told them how much I like them and our show and got on my bike.

Just spent the last couple of hours sending out email invitations and now its ten to nine I realise I've been working on Asking for Trouble things for fourteen hours.

Not tired though...