review number two

Yay! late night round the kitchen table, Christy finds a review online. Thank you Cailin Crowly. It makes us all happy because she clearly understands what it is we're trying to do here.

the end of lycra

We sell out again and jam all the people in somehow. The folk from Melbourne Arts Centre programming are there and Devika is set up in a corner filming. Just as the last punters are leaving, something in the hills hoist snaps and Luke spends half an hour with some gaff fixing it in his super-Terry costume.

Terry fixes the hills hoist

Show two has a wild audience of children full of comments and suggestions. “Just get a chainsaw and tear down the fence!” “What if the bad guys have 10 heads, 20 heads, 80 heads, 100 heads.” “You have to stop fighting and work together like a team.” “No way!” as we go up into the two and a half high.

We play with them and then talk over them to keep the show moving. It's kind of brilliant and hilarious and a little exhausting and in our moment offstage before the bow we look at each other with big amused faces before running back on.

Bump out neatly into the trailer. Deflate all the balls. We won’t do this again for several months now. All our handwashing in separate buckets in the laundry sink and Christy and I both don frocks in celebration of the end of lycra.

review number one

People, I highly recommend it! The music is varied and wonderful and so well suited to the plot & choreography. Boogie woogie piano, oh Yay. Characters are lovely and important/relateable for kids, beautiful interactions between them. I loved the scene about what may or may not lie beyond the fence (very philosophical). The flying scene with Rosie (the teddy bear) at the beginning to the trippy music and sort of slow-mo body tumbles and facial expressions was just magic. The drama was so delightfully physical. It totally pumped me up and made me feel like a kid again (the superhero music and fabulous 'strong' poses helped!) A really uplifting and meaningful show- well done to you all!

Oh yeah, my three year old liked it too ... :) Kids show yeah? Right. Sorry. I'm off to become a superhero now. See you next week. I'll be the one in purple tights with my mum's dressing gown trailing out behind and Jess' welding goggles on, in case you don't recognise me.

HT Thomas, Modernist Imagist Poet.

selling out the Courthouse

Nona is parked out the front of my house (after a little crazy late night shenanigans with the trailer, a pile of autumn leaves and a sign post) and Christy and Luke come in for showers and muesli. We cycle in to the Courthouse and lock up out the front. Sal (who’s operating lights) and Jordan turn up and go through cues. We warm up and try some tricks in the squishy space. I walk into the changerooms and have one of those smell- induced strong memories. Doing the Pirate show with Christy and Cleo here a few years ago.

Woah. Pirate show flashback moment

The sweet, sweaty, makeup, hairspray, dirty costumes, dust and electrical equipment smell of the La Mama changerooms. Such a specific combination.

Absolute sell out show. Christy, as Scout, goes for extra chairs and the theatre is packed. The tricks are solid, Kate’s new notes are really nice to work with, the audience is cute and interactive.

In the break we lie on the grass, drink lots of water, giggle about nothing.

Sal and Jordan: the job of a techie often involves a lot of patient waiting

Christy turns naughty-Scout in the changerooms as we are trying to make decisions and Luke says, “I don’t think Scout should be part of this decision making process.” She gets more outrageous and decision-making is canned for that moment. The thing we have been doing constantly these last weeks is planning on the run. Those moments when we’re warming up, grabbing lunch; what would normally be down-time time, just never are. There’s always another bump in to plan, or driving-distance to google.

Scout in the dressingrooms, being a little bit bad

The second show is a slightly smaller crowd and has a crew of the Westside youth in it. It’s totally delightful to have them there with us. Lots of them have already seen the show and its hilarious watching Maddie, who has seen it, checking Timiki every time something funny happens. Timiki has a massive smile the whole time and it makes me very happy.

We clear the stage at the end of the show for the other two shows that are using the space that evening and catch the tram back to mine. I wash costumes and make noodles. Luke comes back from the video store with Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The world is a very good place.

A new appreciation for water

Bumped in to La Mama courthouse late last night. Arrived and the previous show was still in progress, outside working hours so the loading zone was full. Double parked Nona and the trailer and unloaded onto the dark footpath zippety zip.

A little bit of Kapow! in the dark on the footpath outside the Courthouse

Christy was coughing and I was worried she was getting sick. The space was smaller than we expected due to the wing curtains taking up an extra meter on each side. Also, the fact that the audience enters and exits across the stage and needs a 1.2 meter pathway for safety. But we squished things up, cut a trick and jammed everything in somehow.

Luke and Sarah, the techie doing lights for us, started plotting the show. Kate arrived with an easter chocolate chicken and some notes. The main one being that the show is missing some of the slower paced, down moments. We talked about how to bring those back. Some silence. Some registering.

We were exhausted and Christy sent me home. Luke could plot the lights without me. I wanted to tuck her up in a bed somewhere but she said she’d stay and I headed out alone for the tram. And bed. After about five glasses of water. I have a new appreciation for water right now.

the best

Wake up at home in the grey-blue early morning. Sit with my muesli and watch the sky out the window. Catch the tram and train through the beginning-day city and out into the burbs. I’ve allowed myself heaps of time so I go to Safeway for the vital between-show snacks. Cream cheese and vita-wheats for me, grapes for Christy, pineapple juice and dairy free eggplant dip for Luke. I do get satisfaction from knowing what my friends will appreciate most in that half hour we have to revitalise.

Kingston Arts Centre at 8:05 am

I have two-and-a-half-high dread because of the two failures yesterday. It’s funny. I think if I knew it wasn’t my fault I wouldn’t be so scared of it. I’m not scared of being hurt. I’m scared of being the loser who can’t do the trick.

We warm up slowly. All of us are a little creaky and achy and no-one really wants to run much. We end up doing that, ‘there’s heaps of time, there’s heaps of time, there’s…oops we’re out of time’ thing.

We run the two-and-a-half-high again and again and we keep coming out of it. There’s a point where it feels really wrong and I’m quite possibly shifting my weight to counteract it and throwing Luke off entirely. We talk and try it again and talk and try it again. Open faces, looking at each other, asking questions, trying to describe what it is our bodies are doing in that moment. Doing our best not to blame each other and to be friendly.

Christy talks about cutting it, but we decide its ok as long as we all feel safe in the moment where we fall. We still haven’t landed it after several goes and it's time to let the audience in. Christy suggests we leave it now and just try it again when we’re performing, but Luke wants to give it one more go. We do. It works.

The front of house people give us our call and then open the doors. I have that moment to myself in the dark again, listening to the people arrive. Christy our there, interacting with them and the Bubblewrap music playing as pre-show.

Everything goes real smoothly. The kids talk to us, the adults laugh, we land all the tricks. We smile at each other as we run off the stage. ‘That was good’ before we come back out to bow.

Christy dances and jumps around the changeroom, eating grapes and laughing. Luke looks exhausted and slightly bewildered.

Show two is even better. There are so many moments I can give out to the audience. I love fighting Luke. Christy is hilarious when she tries to fly from the bunkbeds alone. The audience laughs each time we give it to them. I know that I know where I’m going most of the time now, and by half way through, I realise that I trust the show; a whole new level of relaxed. This time we run off stage and Christy says, “that was the best!” before we curtain call.

One father says “the adults enjoyed that more than the kids” and a woman says, “It’s very Australian.” I think she’s saying that it’s very familiar to her, which I like. I hope we are reflecting peoples lives back to them in some way.

Jordan comes out of the lighting box and says, “hands down, that was the best show you’ve done so far.” We share an extremely sweaty hug in the changerooms. There is a sense of elation and relief we've finally made a show that we don't feel we have to change.

We bump out the set into the lift and down to the trailer.

Nona and the trailer full up with Kapow and Bubblewrap.

They drive almost alongside me in the traffic as I walk to the train station. Yelling out the truck window, down the street, “you’re the best.” “You’re the best.” “Woof.”

And home, to wash my costume, clean the bathroom, hug my boyfriend and, in an hour I'll head back out to La Mama by 8pm to bump in there.

Right now I feel pleasantly exhausted and hungry, like it would be so lovely to eat and sleep. But despite this, the late night bump in that has been looming since we learned that we didn’t have the theatre all afternoon, suddenly doesn’t feel so bad.

Kapow opens at Kingston.

Mick, Luke’s dad, drops us at Kingston at ten to eight in the morning amongst hilarious, ‘Ailsa-as-front-seat-mum’ play, where Luke and Christy whine from the back seat and I am OTT cranky mum with them.

Scout. Picture which made it into the Age and now graces Micks coffee table

We’re early. Christy stands on the front step of the arts centre, still trying to sort out the email situation, clicking through messages on her phone and checking things with us.

We get into the space, do a preset, talk logistics and then warm up to run through tricks. Its countdown time and all that bunkbed play I did with Christy yesterday while Luke was plotting lights has paid off. It goes real smoothly and I realise that the only bits I don't know, Christy can cue me for. Her eyes smiling at me under the bunk bed. A couple of tricks we haven’t tried in costume, need a bit of time. Luke does his big change much later in the show now and there are whole sections we haven’t tried in his big suit. I am flashing with anxiousness but it's all ok.

In the changerooms, trying to remember how our makeup works. Aaron giving us five minute calls.

I’ve got a coffee but am so full of nervous energy that drinking it feels like a real bad idea. Christy says she’s nervous, wriggling her hands in front of her tummy and smiling at me. I stand backstage in the dark as the audience comes in. I’m alternately jiggling, stretching and standing real still trying to focus on my breath. The stage is bright and full of our pretty set and I have a flash of being very happy that this is my job. At this point there’s nothing else I can do except the show and there’s a relief in that.

The audience laugh and talk to us in the show. Rosie bear misses the fence the first time round and Luke and I fall out of both of our penultimate tricks but things go surprisingly smoothly. I love the bit where Luke and I fight and he hits me on the head with a newspaper. It makes me very happy. Afterwards, when we sit on the grass and the children come up to say hello there is lots of appreciation. A couple of adults tell us they enjoyed it as much as their children. One little girl, Alice, stands in front of me, in all her pink and bows and big blue eyes, and just looks for a very long time. I ask her if she wants to tell me anything and she shakes her head but just keeps looking. It’s very lovely.

Kate has come, with her boys and we do notes on the grass with regular interruptions from Stan, her youngest, who wants to show us his spooky eye spy book. Then we preset for show two. Marissa is here, who was our contact person when we were rehearsing at Kingston last year. She hugs us in our sweaty costumes and is so smiley and pleased to see us.

This time the two and a half high falls twice and I have a horrible feeling it’s my fault.

two and a half high when it stays up

Still getting an understanding of how the show works, what Natalie is up to in each moment. I feel like I could run the show a lot of times and still discover little seconds of clarity and charater in the choreography. There's something exciting about knowing that this process is ahead.

Afterwards I drive Jordan, our awesome sound operator, to Glenferrie where he’s going to check out the new venue for his year 11 social. We talk fiction writing and online publishing. Yay. Come back to Kingston for the others and take them back to Mick’s.

The email situation has developed but requires a whole lot more time to sort out. I head home to Jono who is writing an essay but very pleased to see me. I have a migraine kicking in. Take two panadol, two iburprofin and lie on the couch under a sleepingbag with radiolab on practically silent next to my head. Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Taylor had migraines. I like to think I'm in good company. So thankful that I'm someone for whom these drugs work. I unpack, repack and sort out my stuff.

Catching a 7:08 tram towards Moorrabin for two more shows tomorrow. So happy that the set is already bumped in. Its been very fun to be a techy and general support on the Bubblewrap tour and there's something real nice about being on the stage again.

Fun Runs Aren't Fun

It’s a logistics day from hell. Drive back to Melbourne, return Bubblewrap set to storage, return the hire van to Budget by midday, pick up my costume from Prahan just after midday, get Kapow! gear to Moorabin and bump in and tech from 4 -8pm It doesn’t sound too hard at the start of the day.

But then we face this:

• Half the city shut down for a fun run and traffic everywhere going achingly slowly, Budget Van is returned 40 minutes late.
• I forget my dog head costume from my bedroom in Brunswick and Luke and Christy have to turn around and get it.
• We forgot the sliding table for the set and I need to catch the tram home and bring the table on Wild Rides (my ute).
• Swanston street trams backed up to about 12 waiting because a tram broke down.
• My doggy dress costume isn’t in Prahan, it’s in Black Rock and we need to go get it.
• Kingston Arts Centre a little confused thinking we only have one hour to bump in.
• The Asking for Trouble business email (vital for organising the rest of the RAV tour and Edinburg) has been shut down because it’s too full.

I travel in a van, a ute, a truck, two trams and a train. Despite all, we are ready to bump in to Kingston at 4pm. We get everything set and finish a cue to cue for the techies by kickout at 8pm.

Now we’re at Luke’s dad’s place in east Bentleigh. Christy has been ditched off the phone by their email server in the States several times and has gone to bed. Luke is drawing the strategy screen and he keeps sighing and saying, ‘we’re almost there.”

strategy screen begins

Tomorrow, two shows in Kingston and the afternoon off. Maybe?

Wilby forever

We rehearse Kapow! in the hotel in the morning. Jamming ourselves in between the beds and the flat screen TV, trying to walk through the show in some fashion and remember our lines and figure out the new choreography. It’s frustrating in the tiny space, and when we go out into the car park in the sun, it’s frustrating because we don’t have the bunkbeds.

We struggle a little and laugh about the fantasy of actually rehearsing a show in a proper rehearsal space, without being on tour with another show. We spend a long time watching over the footage of us doing the bunkbed play. I am learning how to use this process to remember choreography and it feels like Luke and Christy are ahead of me in understanding this. It's a whole different pressure on my brain; making it learn this way.

At 2:30 we check out tour notes and realise we aren’t performing in Yarrawonga at all, but in Wilby which is 16 minutes drive away. We head out of town towards Katamatite. I have a big flash of Gerald Murnane as we drive out here. Him saying over and over again ‘mostly level grassy countryside with a line of trees in the middle distance.’ It feels like all we’ve been looking at for the past few days and I didn’t really understand Murnane until now.

The Wilby hall has brand new curtains and we are to be the first event unveiled behind them. Unfortunately the show won’t quite fit on the stage and we have to do it on the floor.

Bob, from the hall committee turns up and shakes our hands then stays to watch us warm up, drinking tea and nodding quietly to himself.

Bob and the Wilby Hall stage in all its glory.

Luke rigs the pulley for the post box to be delivered and I take photographs. I think I want a series called ‘Luke rigs the box delivery’ It’s a different fun thing we need to work out in every venue.

Once you've tried it, it doesn't make you nervous anymore.

The audience arrive an hour before the show for a barbeque which is run from a trailer out the back by the hall committee. The hall committee seems to consist of at least ten people, all of whom are dying to help out; passing through and offering ‘anything you need me to do, anything’. The audience ranges from teeny tiny children to teenagers to middle aged to elderly folk. I go get a sausage and am struck by the difference between this and a ‘school holiday’ city show at 11am which would basically be young parents and their children. Here it feels like we have a proper cross-section of the whole town.

The children at the front are responsive and loud and the adults near me shake silently in their chairs with little smiles on their faces.

Afterwards:

Country supper

We stand around in the hall and chat and eat little triangle sandwiches and way too much sugar. Bump out around two cackling members of the hall committee who have dropped a basket of cream scones on the exit ramp and are stooped down gathering them up. I feel like they must have been laughing like this together since they were teenage girls.

Back to Yarrawonga for sleep and an early morning.

passing Tallygaroopna

Wake up to the sound of Greg frying eggs in the kitchen.

Lovely evening where Jacinda (Cindy) showed us a film she’d made at awakenings, one of those beautiful, funny, heartbreaking projects that makes Christy hold her chest and smile. The boys (Billy and Brady) got more and more hilarious as it got further and further past bed time.

Billy post-bedtime

I found myself saying ‘overtired’ in the exact tone my dad used to use just as things were getting really fun and then clicked and reigned myself in. Christy pulled out i-photo on her computer and set the boys up with the distorted faces. It pulled the whole family into the hilarity before bedtime.

This morning we follow Cindy in the van down to Marnoo where the ‘Navy Blue Supporters Group’ are presenting us at the Marnoo hall. The ‘Navy Blue Supporters’ started 27 years ago to fundraise for the Marnoo Blues. Ten years ago the Blues ran out of football players, but not supporters. So the group still goes on, now organising all kinds of local community events and fundraisers. It makes me so happy. The brilliance of the way this community has figured out to hang together.

We bump in and I set up our four PAR cans on tables and tall wooden plant stands and plug them in with Gregs so-far-from-tagged-and-tested extension leads. I run the sound out of Christy’s little busker’s amp and we’re away.

Cindy has said we may only have an audience of eight kids so be prepared. But we were on WIN tv last night after the show in Ballarat and the Navy Blue supporters are all talking about it as they chop fruit in the kitchen. We end up with a crowd of about 80 and the little hall feels full up. The show is cute and uneventful and there is lots of laughter. Particularly around the upside-down map gag – which it takes the kids a moment to cotton on to and then they jump into it hard.

Afterwards one boy says, “I never thought anything like this would ever come to Marnoo” and a little girl comes up to Christy and says, “When I grow up I want to be like you.” It’s like a cliché but in the most pure gold kind of way. It makes me think about all the theatre I ever saw as a child and I feel like my role models were all ballet-alikes or pantomime princesses. So happy that this girl has seen Christy carrying a boy around on her shoulders and it’s who she wants to be.

We bump out quickly as a sausage sizzle happens outside and then Christy brings all the kids back in for a workshop. They are totally up for focussing, 'freezing' and playing all the games. Christy takes a crew outside to hula hoop. Luke teaches hilarious acroballance for teeny-tinys and I wander around and take photos and keep time.

Then we drive to Yarrawonga.

The sun sets forever and we watch the light which is peachy in Shepparton, turn to twilight on the highway and by the time we pass Tallygaroopna and Katamatite it is a stunning deep orange against a black-blue sky. At one point a thousand tumbleweeds sit and roll gently on the road and Christy turns down the music so we can just look. Luke directs me and we delight in the placenames, the falling down pubs, the gorgeous houses amongst trees and the rusty trucks with their rounded wheel arches and grass growing on their trays.

We talk about Bubblewrap and little ways to tweak the show. They reminisce about touring Spilt Milk and what it’s taken to get this show on the road. How it’s so good to be about to take a show to somewhere as tiny as Marnoo. We watch the road and the sheep and the big sky and talk about making work and all the things that make it good, make it possible.

Yarrawonga by seven to check in at the motel and take ourselves out to dinner. Luke buys a whole sara lee pie for desert for himself, Christy finds a trashy magazine and I get blue cheese and crackers. We laugh about our own special ways of going on a bender and all sit around on their motel bed to consume.

Ballarat to Gre Gre

Googlemaps and Melways fail us this morning and we do a massive blocky before we figure out how to get to the Ballarat Mining Exchange. Liz is waiting out the front when we get there and shows us around the building – which is stunning, old brick, full of beautiful archways, alcoves and a balcony.

the view from my place

The little fourpack dimmer-desk melts down when we are half way into bump in and over two hours four little monopacks arrive from various places (the uni, her majesties theatre etc) We have four white lights, two red and two blue and we manage to do something pretty effective for the whole show.


The kids are mostly holiday program crews and are wild and interactive and raucous. One girl screams at the top of her voice when Luke turns the shark postcard around. Others cling to the caution tape and don’t want to let Christy have it back.

Bump out is easy and we eat noodles in Ballarat and buy a mini-jack to rca lead because its what most sound desks seem to need.

Then we drive to Gre Gre on the outskirts of Marnoo (90ks’ from Horsham)

Luke pumps Bon Jovi through our new usb port to the car speakers and we drive through Avoca and St Arnoud howling along to ‘young guns’ and ‘in these arms’ and ‘bed of roses’ while the sun sets. Christy is collapsing with laughter in one corner, I am bouncing up past the speed limit each time I get carried away with the music and Luke dances in the middle, banging dramatically on the Melways and trying to predict the words he doesn’t know, to stunning effect.

Jacinta lives just out of Gre Gre with her family and paddocks full of horses. The little boys get around on a four wheeler motor bike and remember me as the dog from Kapow. There is so much food and friendliness and we sit around the kitchen discussing whether we’ll be able to rig the lights off a fence post or just lash a bit of two-by-four to a window frame or something…

Knox to Ballarat

I wake up in the morning and book my ticket on the Eurostar over breakfast. Now I know exactly when I get into Paris and Europe is starting to feel more real.

Breakfast late and we drive out to Knox for an 11am tech. It feels pretty relaxed and Richard is really welcoming when we get there. The stairs to the lighting box are a walk in the rain around the outside of the building. I keep running down them to the stage and then back out up to the box again.

The Knox Steve (different to the Whitehorse Steve) is lovely. He introduces me to his five year old twins who come up to the box to 'see where daddy works’. I ask him questions about how to make out tech notes better and he is funny and complimentary

When Christy is holding up the map, half the crowd are yelling, ‘Australia!’ 'No!' ‘Australia!’ as she points to Russia, Europe, China, New Zealand. This time she sees a little girl who is clearly desperate to get up and show her where Australia is. The little pink-top, blonde-pony-tail girl leaps from her seat as soon as Christy beckons and jabs her finger at Australia. Everyone (including me and my new friend Steve) laughs.

Once Knox is over, the real road trip begins. Southbank (for an automatic so Luke can drive) Brunswick (for the rest of our stuff) and then Ballarat by bed time. We do the first part of the drive in horrible rush hour traffic without having eaten and it sends us into our classic Asking for Trouble version of meltdown. This involves periods of silence interspersed with absurdity and giggles broken up by running through the things we need to get done and trying to do them on our i-phones while we wait for the traffic to move.

The automatic has two features which make our lives good. Sliding doors on both sides, not just one, and a usb plug in to the stereo which plays our music and charges our phones at the same time. It gets a lot of appreciation.

The Mid-city Inn in Ballarat has big comfy rooms and tempting mars bars, which we would have to pay for, in the fridge. Get up time will be 6:30 am.

Mooroolbark

It buckets down rain and in the morning Luke and Christy are both pretty sleep deprived. The drive to Mooroolbark is misty and full of morning traffic and we find the community centre with a mix of melways, googlemaps and common sense. I think directions for the whole tour might end up being like this.

Michael, the tech, has long dark hair hanging around his face and big friendly eyes. He has looked at the tech notes and pre-programmed whole scenes of the show already. He puts a hard hat over all that hair and drives a scissor lift around on the mats, refocussing lights and dealing with the lapel mic which we think we might need because the sound box is sound-proof and we’re afraid we won’t hear the cues.

I catch a moment in the show that I want to add to the lighting for. I watch over Michael’s shoulder as he writes notes to himself on our cue sheet and think about editing the tech notes accordingly. After the show I ask him if he’ll show me how to program the lighting desk and he is all for it. Luke comes in and we are both full of questions and Michael has all the information. I have to drag us away because we need to bump in to Knox that afternoon.

Richard at Knox hugs Christy saying, “hello gorgeous” and Luke hugs him saying “hello gorgeous” and then everyone laughs as Richard and I, not knowing each other, go to shake hands and hug instead. Richard is really friendly and full of ideas and information. We bump in the show while chatting to him and when we leave Christy smiles and says he reminds her of her primary school soccer coach. It makes her nostalgic.

I drive home to my house because Luke’s knee injury is really not working for him if he has to operate too much clutch. We’re supposed to rehearse for Kapow tonight, but Luke’s head is falling from side to side and we are all absurd/exhausted. Luke has a nap and goes to fix the trailor Christy sits on my bed with me and we both do computer business.

I spend hours and hours looking at accommodation in Paris.

My Birthday on tour

It’s my birthday and I spent last night being towed back from Orbost because I put petrol in my diesel ute. Not sure until late at night whether I was going to be back in time to do the show at all.

Wild Rides versus unleaded petrol. Petrol wins. Wild Rides is towed to Melbourne in discrace


Whitehorse theatre has 400 seats and a rigging bar you can lower electronically to tie the post box to. Set up is fun and feels simple and schmick

Steve, the techie is late and is pretty desperate for coffee and smoko. He doesn’t want to see a physical cue to cue. “You just call it” he says. I’ve kind of done it before and I think I can do it but am nervous. “You can give me a ‘standby’ and ‘go’ call or just say ‘go.’” I tell him I’ll just say ‘go.’ He grins at me and heads out for a break.

As the show runs I realise pretty quickly that my brain does a standby anyway and the lighting cues are minimal so I need to do standby calls or I’ll lose the tech to the show. At the end of it he says the show is really easy to stage and I think, good, that’s how we designed it.

We go home to pull me together a birthday dinner. Christy has gleaned figs and pomegranates from making friends in Brunswick and I buy fresh pasta from Marias where they slice the tagliatelle for me in a machine and twist it into pretty cardboard boxes.

Foster war memorial arts centre

The team come in the morning to set up 250 chairs in the hall. One of them says, “You might think we’re a bunch of middle-aged women, some might even say elderly, but we have a good time.” As they arrive they leave a lovely collection of hand baskets in the foyer. One is the Chair of the festival committee and she jokes about being the chair arranging Chair. They all very much appreciate our Rock’n’Roll hits of the fifties list and one of them does a stunning chair-arranging interpretive dance to ‘smoke gets in your eyes.’

the chair arranging Chair post show

Afterwards, my favourite overheard comment: “It was perfect. who wrote it? It was perfect.”

We bumped out fast and caned it back to get to Preston Clarkes Rubber in time to pick up mats for Kapow! bunkbeds

Rock'n'roll lifestyle

Start of the Regional Arts Victoria Bubblewrap tour. I drop my English cousin off at international departures and get back to my house at 8:20pm to head to Foster. No-one has quite looked up the directions yet so we leave East Brunswick in a mess of melways, googlemaps and Luke’s recollections of years of travelling to the Prom as a scout. Just before we get to Heidelberg Road Christy realises we forgot the amp and we swing back for East Brunswick.

It's an easy 2 1/2 hours drive out of the city and down a dark windy road with some rags of mist across the last few k's. Christy recites her new lines from Kapow! Luke drives the speed limit. I take my boots off and put my feet on the dash, sitting in the raised up middle of the Budget hire van with the rearview mirror blocking most of my view of the night. We talk about the best way to communicate tech specs to a venue and make bad jokes about Poowong leaning over Christy's i-phone for directions.

It’s been a week of re-rehearsing Kapow!, doing the RAV tour handover and making two new Bubblewrap sets so one can be sent to Edinburgh and the old one can be laid to rest. We’ve been joking about the Rock’n’roll lifestyle and now I’m sitting up in bed in the Foster Comfort Inn and I guess this is it.