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.