stupid-happy-doggy-happy

This week we get the best review so far. My new friend Max is ten years old, the son of one of the other performers in the Garden. He finds me at my window in the box office and hands this over to me.

the best kind of review

Saturday morning. It’s the Clipsal 500. The world has gone mad with men wearing Holden merchandise and the air is a constant whine of V8 supercar engines that aren’t far enough away.

In the dark before the show I sit stretching on the astroturf listening to the engines and feeling a little sad. Bubblewrap and Boxes did much better than this in terms of ticket sales last year. We think the reason is that previously the Garden put out a “Kids in the Garden” guide and the program itself was arranged so that it had a family section. Finding us is much harder now. We have had more promo and done more work flyering than ever before. But it does feel a little bit hopeless.

As Alison opens the house and our little audience enters through the tent flap the Australian Defense Force Air Show (highlight of the Clipsal) begins above our heads. The booming roar of a plane flying so close it shakes the tent walls, so loud you couldn’t hear your own voice screaming over the top.

Then it’s gone and the children are crying.

There’s another plane. And another. Each one feels as though its about to crash land on top of us it’s so loud.

I feel as though there’s no point going on. I hope and hope and hope and then thank all the gods of circuses and clowns and aeroplanes when they stop, just as the lights come up on the start of the show. 

The Beyond the Wall crew are there, in one corner, eyes smiling. It’s so nice to run out onto stage and look them in the eye – I know that I show all the stupid-happy-happy-doggy-happy I am aiming for because of how pleased they are to see me. Throughout the show, they laugh so much louder than everyone else in the audience.

At the end, after we bow, we kneel by the exit path so people can talk to us on the way out. A child totters up to me (they’re so tiny and wide eyed these children, it breaks my heart) She stands for a moment looking straight into my eyes and then says: “I love you.”

Nothing beats it.