Montmorency

I live in Montmorency. The gumtrees in the backyard are massive, leaning out across the kitchen window. I walk to the train in the misty, overcast morning and find a window seat and read voraciously. I am absorbed in stories and words. I open my laptop on the train and pour ideas into it. I walk home via the Monty shops and buy organic potatoes and chilli continental sausages because we don’t live with vegetarians anymore. We have central heating and winter feels cozy and homey and unlike any sharehouse Melbourne winter I’ve ever had. I walk Ooms, the dog that comes with the house, late at night in the empty misty streets. We email the folk we are house-sitting for and tell them we love their house and sometimes we look for rental properties online but only because we feel like we should.

When Jono is away, for days at a time for work, Luke and Christy drive Nona out here and we spread out across the centrally heated house and plan and organise and take it in turns to pat Ooms. Put ideas on butchers paper in the study, watch superhero movies in the loungeroom, sit at the kitchen table and eat and talk and talk and eat. Sweet treats and tea. Marx for Beginners in the toilet and we take it in turns to read snippits.

Kate Kantor

We organise to do two workshops with Kate before we find out about Arts Vic, to start. To start working together. For us to get t know her and her to know us. For us to have someone there the first time we start to play impro together.

She shows up at the Dancehouse in her pigtails and red coat and is immediately friendly and funny. We do up-balloons to warm up and laugh. She is gentle with our clowns as we find fun costumes to wear. Christy’s face softens behind her nose and her eyes go sweet and quiet. Luke turns into a little boy dominated by the idea of a motorbike. He wears my leather jacket which fits him beautifully. Kate leads us through Feldenkreis on the floor. She asks our clowns to do advertisements selling darkness, the sky, clouds. Make up jingles, dance, keep going through the awkward and the flop because you’ll find something. Be curios, childlike and get commercial. You want the audience to love you. Check if they love you. Check if they think you’re doing it right. Make it up. You’re always the expert and you don’t know anything.

We lie on the floor and write our childhood superhero stories in quick stream-of-concious scribbles. We impro with them in our minds and fall in love with the language. With the storytelling.

We love Kate and we think we could do an 8 hour session with her and not feel tired. We say, ‘as soon as we find out about Arts Vic we’ll talk to you.’ Wave goodbye on the Dancehouse front step.

Circus Oz Opening

Went alone to the oz show opening. Ended up next to two people I know. The whole of the Melbourne circus industry, half the state MPs and a cohort of City of Melbourne employees waving at each other across the big top. Paul O’Keefe the hilarious Roller God in tiny blue satin shorts, Ania cycling round and round on a little bicycle with old- school lanterns at each end and a toy piano instead of handlebars. Her hair piled and in messy curls, fitted white coat and a little smile on her face. Sarah, charismatic, tough, political, feels to me like she is bringing back the roots of oz and at the same time holding the show. She is stunning.

Afterwards I drink opening night wine with Ania out of a plastic glass and she is bright and keen. We talk about Kapow! and she wants to make music. “Oz is at night and I have so much time during the day I don’t know what to do.” I say when we find out about Arts Vic we’ll make a plan.

Called Arts Vic and asked what their timeframe is for letting people know. They said their time frame is ’very late.’ So we are still waiting.

the eviction

So we really did get evicted. The sheriffs came round again, to make a time with us to change the locks. We talked to the bank’s solicitor and they spoke to the bank and then the real estate agents who spoke to the landlords and then to us. And in the meantime the landlords’ parents leaned over our fence in a neighborly way and asked why we were moving out. Very sad. They’ll miss us. Their children are keeping secrets from them and I don’t have the heart to let them know that the house is being re-possessed. So two days of packing a 50sq metre truck and several trailer loads later (not to mention a day of scrubbing walls, mopping floors bicarb, citro clean and sugar soap) we are in our temporary house-sit in the total burbs.

training - we're back!

Training. Nona is parked outside the Westside Circus warehouse, spilling coffee and breakfast-making ingredients out her door. Luke sleepy and cute, me ready to train. Skipping, strength, cardio, handstands, acrobalance. My handstands have gone backwards. I don’t hold anything for longer than 30 seconds. Conscious about over-training.

Christy trains hard and is red faced from the work but smiling. “We’re back. I feel like we’re back,” she says over coffee at the end.

We run acro tricks that we’re already comfortable with. Do easy tricks but with combos we aren’t used to. Moments of standing sweaty, the three of us facing each other “What will we do now?” and then thinking of the next thing.

Luke says, “You know what? When we do this show, everyone is going to say to you two ‘you’re so strong!’ and no-one will say it to me.” We laugh. It’s true.

While they’re making breakfast and I’m putting my shoes on to leave, Luke starts talking about an idea. An acro-against-the-wind-scene. The three of us struggling to get somewhere. The tension and slow motion of that. The new show is starting to feel like a reality.

I’m home now. Another letter from the bank's lawyers. Looks like our landlord has made a very big mess. Odds of getting evicted 100 to 1. Jono and I looking at housesitting in Montmorency – which makes training at 8 in the morning a little harder... but not impossible.

kick ass

Christy and Luke are back from Gippsland. Went round to theirs in the ute and took them to the Brunswick baths last night for the last hour til the pool closed. Sat ourselves in the spa (tripping over the old men) and talked scheduling. Three sessions of physical training and one of performance work a week? Getting performance trainers in to work with us? Shannon to train us in acro? I think: I should have a look at the Arts Vic dates. We’ll know if we got the funding 15 weeks from when the application went in. That will effect our planning.

Drove out to Northlands with a bottle of juice each. ‘Kick Ass’ Luke said we had to see it. ‘It’s creative development for the superhero show.’ Which it is. Squealed with laughter and horror at the action and the gore. Appreciated the soundtrack immensely “I don’t give a damn about my reputation.” And were slightly disturbed by the whole child-soldier element.

Drove home through the dark Northcote streets and talked. Talked about how often superhero movies will have a moment of redemption where the superhero lets a bad guy go after having him fully at his mercy. Or the classic moment where an action hero will let a bad guy go and immediately be attacked by him again and need to kill him.

I think you could do that moment over and over and over again. The hero nearly killing the bad guy and then relenting. The bad guy coming back for more and then the hero getting him in his power and nearly killing him and then relenting and so on…until someone breaks it up. Could be hilarious.

About how revenge makes violence ok. Or how it doesn’t really. About how satisfying it is to see a bully go down. How Spiderman and the Phantom don’t kill.

Luke despises the phantom. I tell him he’s prejudiced and Christy laughs and nods. He tries to explain that it’s the costume. No one could look good in that.

I drop them at the warehouse and kiss them goodbye. Eight o’clock in the morning for training.

Anzac bisuits on the table when I get home. Cute, baking housemates.

ps. addicted to statcounter

So i put a statcounter on here and I can't help checking it all the time. It's kind of amazing to know that folk are at least ending up at this site - whether or not they are reading it. (it can't have been my mum every time!)