near death experience with a sewing machine, a caravan and a handstand chair

Today is Saturday-set-building-day. I spent the morning dealing with my ailing computer with my dodgy computer-man and dropped by GJ’s on the way home. GJ’s are the dance fabric specialists and the glitter, spangle, tulle element there is very high. I bought cream cotton drill and ended up needing to go to spotlight for the right red gingham. I got round to Pigeon Hole by about 2pm. Luke was building the hills hoist, Christy was finishing up emails and developing a shopping list, Flick and EJ were there with friends developing their caravan show.

I set up the sewing machine next to the caravan and started on the doona’s and pillows for the bunks. Christy set off with her shopping list. Flick was on the roof of the caravan where they have built a little wooden stage and had her heavy handstand chair up there. I could hear their conversation and the little creaks of the chair just behind and above me.

I’m fine now, just a bruise, but the next moment was a scary one. I heard a gasp and a bang and must have put my hands up to protect myself because the handstand chair hit my wrist and shoulder before landing on the floor. I had a moment of sick, sick feeling in my stomach at the how hard the chair had hit my wrist. To everyone else it looked like the chair had smashed my head. Luke was there with his hand on my back in a second. Flick looked terrified. I had a moment where I thought ‘the first thing you do when you’re in shock is tell everyone your ok, I just need to check in with my body’ so I sat there at the table, still, breathing, checking my head and my arms.

Then I thought it wasn’t fair to leave them all that scared and said, ‘I’m fine. It didn’t hit me on the head, just my arm and my shoulder.’ Its hard to reassure people when all you want to do is cry, but I managed to convince them I was ok and then put my head on my arms on the table and sobbed the shaky, shocked fear sobs. Luke stayed right next to me with his hand on my back and his face right next to mine and the others got ice and water and talked about rescue remedy. I thought, ‘I don’t need rescue remedy, I just need to cry.’ After a while I stopped and hugged Flick who felt awful and together we moved the sewing machine table away from the caravan.

I spent the afternoon and into the evening sewing the long doona and pillowcase seams while Luke finished the hills hoist and moved on to the fence and Christy made laksa for us all, painted metres and metres of rope silver, fixed elastic on her kneepads and helped me think about the doonas. A big sense of satisfaction putting each doona and pillow in its cover and then folding the big pile of creamy linen. By ten o’clock at night I was feeling a tickle in the back of my throat and the bruise on my wrist and I kept standing there looking at piles of things that needed sorting and not doing anything.

Luke got the fence up – though not on castors or its proper feet – and we looked at it. It suddenly looked very tall. How are we going to get Christy over it? We looked and then stood with our hands high and compared our height made suggestions. Christy said, ‘lets try it now!’ laughing in the cold dark warehouse. No way we were up to trying tricks. “We’ll figure something out….” I left her beginning to tidy up and went home. I sat up in bed with my laptop and corrected and formatted and added to the script. Christy rang me at 11pm to say, ‘Let’s not go to Artplay in the morning. Let’s rehearse at Pigeon Hole…’ The idea of loading and unloading the set again was pretty daunting.

dogalogue

Today is a post tumbling rehearsal at Westside and Kate arrives early as we are setting up the bunkbeds. There is a whole lot of cute chatter that happens with Kate and circus trainers and tumblers gathered around the kettle.

Kate sits us down and asks how we are. We are all tired and it shows in our laughter at the question.

She says that the plan today is to do a timed run and then to work on some of the looser scenes. Christy suggests that we do a walk through before the timed run to get it into our heads and we all agree. The walk-through becomes the time to work on the things we needed to work on, so Christy pulls out the gadgets and we create the gadget scene. We realise that fighting the bad guys should come after Terry gets his costume and need to do a bit of renegotiating. we create the training montage number three. I realise that I still have a hurried feeling like it's the walk through and we should be getting to the end quickly to do the real work - and actually this is the moment of creation right here as we make the scene. I slow myself down.

Pete emails us a track for moving towards the fence and we all pause to listen to it and to email him feedback.

Its getting closer and closer to one o'clock and christy will need to run at 2pm on the dot to her next reahearsal.

Kate asks us all how long we think a timed run of the show will take '40 minutes' '38' '32' we laugh and go to beginning positions.

Kate stands by the computer on the rigging box, running the sound and prompting us. Phoebe and Briar come and watch moments. Briar snorts with laughter when Scout says 'He's thirty five and he does a paper round.' Phoebe watches my dogologue with bright smiling eyes.

As we are nearing the end, Amanda arrives with the costumes for the last trial. We push through the run with her watching and grinning. Christy has ten minutes and needs to run: she whips herself into her costume. Luke and I dither into ours and the three of us line up. There is a lot of hilarious cuteness. Amanda sews a tail onto my schooldress. Christy's costume needs new tights, Luke's needs buttons. She has brought a sample table cloth swatch but didn't get the full amount so needs to get more.

Christy is on the phone explaing that she's going to be late, Kate is waving and leaving, Amanda is sorting piles of things she can leave and things that still need work.

I go to the bathroom and look at my cute doggy costume in the mirror. It makes me very happy.

Luke and I are left with the set and the scattering of costumes and props. We pack in slow motion. Hauling ourselves from task to task. For some reason it takes forever. I think of Christy at another rehearsal and am amazed that she has the energy.

'we're too good for OH&S'

Loading our stuff in and out of the northcote uniting church hall- Christy and I are carrying hundreds of kilos of equipment across a narrow road, through a gap between two parked cars and then up an insanely high step (how did anyone think the step should be that high?). I laugh about safety regulations and Christy says "we're too good for OH&S."

Kate sitting rugged up on a stretch of astro turf, taking her gloves off and blowing on her hands before typing the script as we improvise. Ania emailing us MP3 files which arrive on the i-phone so we can rehearse to them. Googling a courier to get the costumes to st Kilda. The constant round of phone calls, scheduling, rescheduling and date checking that needs to happen.

The to do list. We need gadgets, a cornflake serving device, sheets that also look like a doona for the bunks, the astro turf for the pole to be cut and fixed, a fence on castors, a letter box on an angle, lots and lots of balls...

We are rehearsing a show but we are also producing it and Luke and Christy are doing the set design and build. There is a lot that needs to be done by Monday - tech run.

passing the milestones

Today Christy got her driver’s licence, and did a pike press. I did six handsprings on the mats. Luke held a handstand for 45 seconds with no spotting. We stumbled through the show from start to finish - with some gaps and discussions, but definitely from beginning to end. Today was a milestones day.

Fourteen Hours of Asking for Trouble

Luke called me at 7am about the Ian Potter submission and then came round with a DVD showreel of previous work while I was making tea in my pyjamas. We pulled the pieces of the submission together and Luke signed the final letter, practicing his signature first on the back of an envelope while I laughed at him. I gave Jono the envelope as he raced out the door to hand-deliver it to Collins St in the city.

We rehearsed again at Kingston today and, like a miracle, the set was already set up and ready to go. As we warmed up, jogging and stretching on the polished floor, I could feel the difference in my body of not having just lifted a heavy bunkbed and freestanding pole. My shoulders felt looser and everything felt easier to warm up.

We have a regular warm up hour now which goes newspapers, stretch, bunkbed play. I started to get the bunkbed play choreography, watching Luke who often throws the toy to where I’m supposed to go. We ran the training montage we made on Saturday and remembered it with only a couple of blank moments. It was still hilarious and Christy’s face was red and laughing and Luke said “What? What?” She said, “It’s you’re eyes. Your face is neutral but I can see the smile in your eyes”

I did a coffee run while they worked a couple of tricks they want in the slapstick and came back to the list of tricks. Watched and talked and watched and talked and wrote the routine order down as they made it up. Came in and spotted a layout throw that they were less certain of. Then we scripted. This scene comes straight from Luke’s brain. He thought of it, thought of the tricks and pretty much had the dialogue scripted in his head before they ran it. I typed as he spoke and Christy added moments of Scout into the mix. Stubbed toes and bandaids and stingy stuff for grazes.

We worked on the moving towards the fence scene – which felt a bit funny, the tricks aren’t really spectacular but they felt hard. The melting, the slowness, Luke and I both flying things and all of us negotiating the costume situation. Luke won’t have bare knees and Christy will be wearing shin pads. The two and a half high felt like it would be difficult under those circumstances but we tried it. It’s a good one for me – every single time I do it there is a moment when Christy steps across onto my shoulders and I think my feet will slide off, but Luke shifts the weight and it is totally solid. I always remember, after a moment of panic, to trust him. “Trust Luke,” runs through my brain.

We raced to Amanda’s studio in St Kilda to pick up the undyed costumes before she left for Blackrock. She hasn’t finished them yet, but are really feeling like we need to try all the tricks in them in case they need some serious adjusting. Tomorrow we’ll work in them and then possibly courier them to her so she can finish them. It feels like all our time is too precious now to do costume driving.

In the truck on the way home we talked invites. Arts Vic, Ozco, circus industry, physical theatre companies we love, presenters, producers, who do we want to see the show?? Northcote Town hall has the dates wrong on the website, gasworks need to let us know how many comps we will have.

Back at Pigeon Hole, Flick was standing in front of her caravan with a paint roller dripping ‘latte’ coloured paint. They had decided that ‘mushroom’ didn’t quite work and she was redoing the whole thing. We unloaded the set into the Pigeon Hole front yard and Luke started angle-grinding the spikey bits off the bunk bed welds. Christy was on the phone about One Trick Pony things looking grim. Apparently they can’t put up their tent on the balcony where they had planned because they don’t have an engineer’s report about the load. This will change their show a whole lot and mean a bunch more organising.

I left Luke and Christy in goggles and overalls, spraypainting the bunkbeds. Told them how much I like them and our show and got on my bike.

Just spent the last couple of hours sending out email invitations and now its ten to nine I realise I've been working on Asking for Trouble things for fourteen hours.

Not tired though...

In the Age!

Christy texted me at 9:06 to say we’re in the paper – M-magazine. I go buy it on my way to work and read it to her from the tram and laugh.

"Run Terry! Run!"

We go down to Kingston and set up the set. We do newspapers as a warm up and then bunkbed play. I’m still learning the pathway of the bunkbed play and now we add throwing a toy. It’s pretty fun. We stop and start, stop and start, figuring out when the toy can be thrown where. A whole other level on top of the previous choreography. Christy and Luke have it down and I’m still a bit lost. Standing at the end of the bunk bed unsure what I should be doing next. When its smooth its really fun - feels like a really nice opener to the show.
Then we start making the training montage. We brainstorm ideas out loud and there suddenly comes a point where we realise that we should be writing them down. Christy gets her computer and we try to remember all the thoughts we just had. Then we play the music Ania wrote us. We sit there on the table, bobbing our heads and looking at each other. We like it – just the bobbing is great. Luke is listening for changes in the music and calling out suggestions. The scene builds itself steadily. This is the scene where Terry is going to be transformed into a superhero. When it gets to that point Scout starts getting emotional. Luke says, “you should grab my collar and shake me and do a bit of that tough love thing.” Christy is clutching Luke’s lapel and collapsing with laughter trying to yell, “It’s under your suit terry! The costume is under your suit! Run Terry run!” We are all in hysterics. We watch the footage back and say. “It’s a scene. It feels like a scene.” Amanda sends us a text late that night that says “I love Terry!”