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.