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.