Three New Things

The problem with deciding to write a blog post every day is that… well, you have to write a blog post every day. And it turns out I don’t actually have enough time to write a blog post every day. Especially not in the middle of a theatre conference in Alaska (I’M IN ALASKA! AGAIN! HOORAY!)

But, I am a dedicated person. And I started this stupid idea and now I’m really attached to it, so I’m going to try and do it even if its really really really inconvenient and means I wind up missing out on a lot more sleep.

So, without further ado, three more new things!

1) See Anchorage

On Friday, my new thing was ‘See Anchorage.’ I have always wanted to see Anchorage. A treasured childhood book of mine was called ‘Julie of the Wolves’ (I may have mentioned it before) and it was about a girl who lived in Alaska. So I developed a bit of an obsession with Alaska. And, as I found out when I used to stare at the atlas pages for hours on end, Anchorage was the biggest town in Alaska and a certain mythology then started to grow up around it for me.

Because I left it so late to get plane tickets this year for the theatre conference, I ended up having to book a ticket a few days earlier than I needed to get into Alaska. Which gave me a whole day on Friday to see Anchorage.

When I first found this out, I thought I would use the day to do something exciting – climb a mountain, go kayaking. But, because I was so busy organising things for Brighton etc. this year, I was really slack about organising myself for Alaska. I turned up in Anchorage on Thursday night realising I hadn’t actually worked out anything to do on the Friday.

Not to be deterred, I got up early on Friday morning (I didn’t have much choice – jetlag), got dressed and headed out. It was raining. But, I was not going to let this bother me either. I headed to the bus stop to wait for a bus. Of course, one left just as I arrived. And, as I found out when I checked the bus timetable, buses don’t come in Anchorage as regularly as they come in London (every half hour? Every HOUR??? WHAT IS THIS??) But, I’m a chipper person (well, I was that morning) and I was in Alaska and it wasn’t raining that hard and I WAS NOT GOING TO BE DETERRED. I decided to walk into town.

All went well until I took a wrong turn and found my pedestrian walkway suddenly disappearing. I was wet, I was cold and I was not in anyway heading towards downtown. But, it was nothing a little bit of a capella Kool and the Gang singing and sidewalk dancing couldn’t fix. I found my way back to the right street and continued on my way.

A bus finally came along and I jumped on board. I put a $5 bill into the machine and got my ticket. But no change! I questioned the bus driver. “Oh, yes, that’s a full day ticket you have there. It costs $5.” But I didn’t want a full-day ticket! I only wanted a single ticket! (which cost $1.75) This was way more money than I had intended to spend on the bus that day (a single into town and a single out = $3.50). But, I was NOT TO BE DETERRED! I was NOT TO BE DISHEARTENED! I took it as a sign – I should catch buses around Anchorage to see the town and hide from the rain and also to make use of my ridiculously expensive bus ticket.

Which I proceeded to do. And what I discovered was – Anchorage isn’t a particularly pretty town. Well, ok, its not a particularly pretty town when the cloud is covering the surrounding mountains. And the buses don’t seem to go to particularly pretty places. I saw a lot of malls. There were the occasional interesting, pretty things around – suddenly coming across a Russian Orthodox Church, the University of Alaska’s campus. But, all in all, I’m sorry to say it, Anchorage was a bit of a let-down. I really don’t blame the town. It’s very young (having its centenary only next year) and it does have the feel of a frontier town. It’s a place so surrounded by natural beauty that it’s not really so necessary for the town itself to be that beautiful. But the climate is also harsh, so people are much more concerned with their houses being warm and being sturdy than being beautiful, I imagine. The town has a functional feel, a place that you come to at the start of your journey, as opposed to somewhere that you spend a lot of time in. I hope I’m not being too insulting. I’m sure its a lovely place to live and it has lots of good points about it. I know lots of lovely people who live there. But it was not quite what I was expecting – at least, what I saw from a bus window with a lot of cloud and rain was not quite what I was expecting.

2) Glee Club Concert

On Saturday I went to a full-length Glee club concert. I have always wanted to go to a Glee club concert. Not because I’m a fan of the show (I’m really not), but because I love a capella singing and because I think Glee club’s seem really, really awesome.

Oh, and it was. The University of Alaska, Anchorage’s Glee club pretty much rocked my world all of Saturday night. it was just so much fun, as well as a lot of great singing. Its hard to pick out favourites, but a dance routine to ‘Sexy and I Know It’ was certainly one of the funniest things all evening, and I am a sucker for a show tune, so their versions of ‘Chim-chim-cheree’ (Mary Poppins) and ‘The New Girl in Town’ (Hairspray) were particularly delightful.

3) Kia Corthron

I’m really struggling with Sunday’s new and exciting thing. I mean, I am really, really not thinking about new and exciting things are the moment – most of my thoughts are taken up by the conference and readings and line learning and workshops and hanging out with great people and many other things. It’s kind of difficult to, amongst all that, think of new things to do (and then actually do them).

(I mean, really, the whole week is just new and exciting things, meeting new people, hearing new ideas, writing new stuff, yada yada yada, but I do feel like I have to pick actual singular things to talk about for this darn one day, one thing, one post project)

Anyway, at the conference, everyone gets a panel of experienced practitioners who are tasked with responding to your play. Last year, I was meant to have a great American playwright named Kia Corthron respond to my play, ‘Fishtail’. But, unfortunately, Kia got very unwell just before the conference and wasn’t able to be there. Ever since, her name has seemed to pop up all over the place – one of her play’s is being included in an anthology that Tonic Theatre was writing (the group I was assisting over the end of last year). I found videos of her chatting about playwrighting whilst researching women writers. It felt like a really missed opportunity.

But, this year, Kia has arrived! And the first writing workshop I did yesterday was with her. I wrote a couple of scenes, with *some* good lines (some awful ones too, but what you gonna do with half an hour to write) and found the whole thing quite useful – in particular, it was meant to be helping you ‘come unstuck’ with a play or character you were struggling with. For this particular play, I now believe I have one good page of dialogue. Of course, I still have to deal with the 75 pages of CRAP that is sitting on my computer. But, hey. You gotta start somewhere, right?

Later that evening, Kia (as well as the other featured playwrights) did a few readings of excerpts from their work. I was really happy to hear some of Kia’s work, because I hadn’t ever had the opportunity to read it before. Actually, all of the playwrights were excellent, and most of them I had never read before, so that’s always an exciting thing – finding new writers that you admire. But, again, not really something that I actively went out and did myself (well, I guess if you count all the work I did to get to the conference – writing the play, submitting it, booking my tickets, travelling to Alaska etc. – then maybe I did do all the work necessary for this new experience myself). But, anyway. It was a great night.

So, that’s three new things for three more days. I’m going to try and actively find something to do that’s new and exciting tonight. I’m guessing, because of how the conference works, that its probably going to involve alcohol. This will most likely be the easiest way to get around this pickle that I have got myself in.

29: Day 3

My ‘do something new and then write about it for the last year of my twenties’ plan is already hitting snags.

Yesterday I travelled to Alaska (yes, I am currently lying on the bottom bunk of an Anchorage hostel) and spent a good 13 and a half hours in planes. I spent approximately another 5 hours in airports and a good 1 and a half on the tube before that. Add in another hour or two at either end to get up, get dressed, check into my hostel and get ready for bed and that was pretty much my entire day taken up with mainly non-exciting, fairly standard, on-the-edge-of-boring things (ok, so if it were someone else, perhaps travelling to Alaska would be something new and exciting. Perhaps even travelling to the USA, or overseas, or in a plane would be new and exciting… But, well, not to brag, but I have ‘done it all before’. Oh, and look how we’re already back on the topic of privilege… Is my final year of my twenties just going to be an endless realisation of how darn lucky I’ve been? That probably wouldn’t be so bad, now that I think about it. I could probably stand to do that… )

ANYWAYS.

What is one to do that is new and exciting whilst spending the majority of their waking hours in a plane? I could’ve joined the mile-high club, I suppose, though most of the men around me were married and/or elderly. And the women not much better. I could’ve been upgraded to first-class, but I don’t rightly know how that works (though, perhaps I should find out for the return trip?)

It also brought up the question: the new and exciting thing that I have to do each day, does this have to be a deliberate act on my behalf? Or, if something new happens to me can I count that as well? My particular example in this case is that I actually watched (and enjoyed and LAUGHED at) Delta’s safety announcement. That was certainly a new experience for me. But, its not something I actively went out and searched for (‘ooh, let’s see if I can find an entertaining and well-conceived airline safety announcement! I’ve always wanted to see one of those!’) It was just sheer luck that the airline I was flying had spent a little bit of time considering their announcement and the fact that nobody paid attention to it and perhaps there was a way of fixing it. Oh, and by the way, its here, if you’re interested. How cheery and happy is that flight attendant? I could join the mile-high club with her, if you know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge nudge…

But, in the end, I decided that I couldn’t really write an entire blog post on that one safety announcement without risking losing all of my friends and readers.

Which left me with food. Again. I guess the good thing about travelling is that it is more likely that I can do something new every day, even if it just ends up being food.

By the time I got off my last flight in Anchorage last night, I had been awake for almost 20 hours. I was absolutely exhausted and absolutely starving. I wanted to go out for a burger, but I also wanted to just go to sleep. In the end, sleep won out and I ended up just buying some snack food. In particular, I got a Crunchy Peanut Butter Cliff Bar.

You may think that the Cliff Bar is a bit of a cheat, considering one of my other rules was that the new and exciting thing I did had to be something I had always wanted to do. Au contraire, my friends, au contraire. I have a story that makes the Cliff Bar the perfect and obvious choice for my new and exciting thing that I did yesterday.

When travelling in South America with my ex, we did a hike in Peru to some ancient Inca ruins. It was called Choquequirao and it was fabulous and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Unlike the Inca Trail, this trek isn’t so popular, because the ruins at the end haven’t been restored in the way Macchu Picchu has. So, apart from my ex, the guides and the porters, the only other person on the trip was a red-headed Georgian, whose penchant for using the phrase, ‘y’all’ when talking to our group would have me in fits of silent and uncontrollable giggles.

This Georgian was quite the outdoors-man and was putting me and my ex to shame by not only doing the epic 5 day trek we were all on, but following it with the Inca Trek. He also had with him his own personal supply of Cliff Bars in a variety of flavours. My ex and I were very interested, because we had never seen them and the packaging was pretty and this Georgian had clearly cared enough about them to cart what must have been at least a boxful to Peru with him so he could eat at least 2 a day throughout his treks.

‘Oh, they’re really, really good,’ he raved. ‘The flavours are great and they really fill you up on treks. They’re a good snack food, you know, not too sweet. I mean, they’re meant to have all this nutrition for exercise, but, really, they just taste really really good.’ And with that, he held out his choc-chip peanut-butter Cliff Bar to the both of us and said, ‘Try it.’

My ex, not being a girl and not being neurotic, and being skinny as fuck, immediately took a bite of the bar. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he enthused, ‘that’s great’. The bar was then held out for me. I stared at it. I was, bizarrely enough, at this particular moment in my life, for some strange unknown reason, in on a diet. The diet I was on didn’t necessarily mean I wouldn’t eat sweet things at all, but it did mean that I needed to look at the nutritional information on the packet and calculate exactly how many calories I thought I would be consuming with a nibble of the bar and then make a decision about whether or not that nibble was worth it. And, because that would have been an embarrassing and time-consuming process, and because I knew things that were advertised as being ‘high in energy’ usually were high in calories, and because I knew that peanut-butter and choc-chips were DEFINITELY high in fat and sugar, I said, ‘Oh, no, that’s ok.’

Ever since I have pondered what that Cliff Bar might taste like. I have seen them around, when I’ve been travelling and in a few specialist stores outside of the USA. Look, I’m not saying I spent my days looking out the window as the rain poured down  and crying because I didn’t eat that Cliff Bar, but it did seem to be just another example of my ridiculousness around food and the things that I might be missing out on because of stupid, stupid diets. I mean, what delights could a glorious ‘healthy’ energy bar, made with my favourite thing – peanut butter – have in store for me? What had I missed out on?

So, last night, I finally put my demons to rest. I bought the peanut-butter Cliff Bar. I devoured it. I inhaled it. And it was…

Fine.

You know? Like, it was… fine.

There was no fire and brimstone. The earth didn’t open up and swallow me because I had consumed an inexcusable amount of calories and fat. Conversely, angels didn’t come down from heaven to sing me songs that were appropriate for such a delectable experience.

Because the bar was… fine. It was fine. I mean, it was no cheesecake, but it did fill me up, so, yeah. You win some, you lose some.

Probably not worth putting off for 5 years. Probably not worth BUILDING UP for 5 years. But, hey, bigger issues and all that.

So, lesson number 3 from being 29: don’t put off little things for stupid reasons. Because the likelihood is that the little things will be much less exciting 5 years down the track, and by listening to the stupid reasons, by giving the weight, you could be giving them licence to torment you for the rest of your life.

Turning 29…

So, I had a crazy idea the other day.

I had the idea on my birthday.

As one does on one’s birthday, I had been considering my age. Of course, when one is little (one does not know why one is speaking so posh-ly, but perhaps it is to make up for the old wizened baseball coach of yesterday), growing older is an exciting thing. When one gets to one’s twenties, things kind of even out a little – one is not majorly excited about getting older anymore, but one still likes the presents and the general hoopla – whereas now that I’m in my late twenties, I’ve noticed a certain reticence about my b’day, about telling people my age and about each new year that was never there before. Not even the hoopla seems to make up for the fact that I am slowly but surely inching through my life. And as I was mulling all of this over, I suddenly realised I had only 365 days left of being ‘in my twenties’. I know that’s a very fatalistic way of looking at things and life doesn’t end at 30 (IT DOES IT DOES IT REALLY DOES), but it still kind of struck me. Like… a lighting bolt. Or a two-tonne garbage truck (not that I’ve ever been hit by one of those). Or a… Or a… out-of-control soccer ball on a school playground. And, then, when I woke up this morning, I thought, ‘Huh. Only 364 days left of ‘being in my twenties’.

There were many things that I had assumed I would achieve by the age of 29. Most of these things revolved around what my parents had achieved by this time. Luckily they were both hard-working, long-studying, world-travelling, high-achieving types, so neither of them were married with kids and a mortgage before they were 30. This has always given me great comfort by its seemingly inherent approval of the endlessly confusing back-and-forth wilderness of my twenties. However, as I get closer and closer to 30, I find myself creeping nearer and nearer to the milestones I had always assumed I would achieve by this point. At 28, my mother had met the man she was going to marry. By 28, my mother had finished her constant shifting and changing of degrees and countries and set up in Sydney and begun a ‘proper adult job’ as a medical registrar. At 28 my mother would seem to have had her life in some sort of order with some sort of discernible, approved direction. I, on the other hand, would appear to be floundering, with no real clue of what I’m aiming for, where I should be, what I am, who I like or anything else of any real significance and life importance.

But, anywho, this is not meant to be one of THOSE posts, where I moan and groan and whinge about how difficult it is to be a middle-class white girl who was lucky enough to pursue her passion and who had too many opportunities and now has far too many things to choose between and wouldn’t it all be so much easier if I didn’t have to CHOOSE things all the time, oh, woe is me my life is so hard I have to decide between eating the pretty rainbow cake with gold leaf and pink sugar flowers whilst seated on a goose-feather bed; or the triple chocolate mud cake covered in glitter and edible love hearts whilst swimming in a pool of milk and honey (I’ve been eating a lot of cake over the last few days. For my b’day. Not because I’m some kind of modern-day Marie Antoinette. Though I’m kind of that too maybe).

No, no. See, I came up with a PLAN. A plan to mark the sad and much-regretted demise of my 20′s. A plan so that I could remember EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE LAST YEAR OF MY TWENTIES.

The plan goes like this:

Every day in the last year of my twenties, I do something I have always wanted to do and have never done.

Then I write a blog post about it.

That’s it. That’s the plan. So, as long as the internet doesn’t die, I will have a complete record of the final year of my twenties. In case I ever want to re-live it. Or force other people to re-live it. Probably my relatives.

I don’t know that it’s necessarily going to work. I mean, first of all, the only things I can currently think of that I have always wanted to do and have never done are: dye my hair brown (achieved on the last day of being 28) and getting a tattoo. I can’t very well fill up 365 days of a year with getting a tattoo and dying my hair brown, now, can I?

Still, I quite like this idea of doing something new and exciting every single day. Apart from the fact that I’m almost a responsible adult (a really, truly, proper adult one now) I do sometimes feel very aware of the fact that my time in London seems to be slipping away faster than… faster than… well, faster than something that’s slipping away really fast (I was going to say sands through the hourglass, but I don’t want to remind you of soap operas and sands through my hands rhymes so I couldn’t do that and then I just got bored of thinking of other things). And that, despite this blog (which I’ve been very inattentive of recently), I feel like many days I am just going through the motions in London. Admittedly, some of those motions can be quite exciting (I met a man today who was on his way to Mi5! COULD BARELY CONTAIN EXCITEMENT), many times those motions are just work, eating, watching TV and sleeping.

So. To the plan. I’ve already had two days as a 29-year-old. I’ve done two new things on those days, and I will report on them forthwith.

1) Dying my hair brown

Well, ok, as I mentioned previously, I actually did this whilst being 28, but as I haven’t done anything new today, I’m counting it as my new thing for today. Shut up its my blog and my idea and my rules and I can do whatever I like and you’re not the boss of me and who made you king of the world anyways. Because I had naturally blonde hair up until moving to Ireland, I was always told by many people (well, ok, my stepmother) that I was not allowed to dye my hair. People spent many hundreds of dollars trying to get the hair colour that I just happened to have by sheer dumb luck and so it was insane to try and cover it up with cheap dye. Furthermore, she said, people with natural blonde hair who dyed their hair another colour hardly ever got their natrual blonde hair back. Dying your hair therefore became an incredibly mystical thing for me, something promising so much (who knows what wonders awaited me as a redhead or a brunette? Perhaps I would suddenly realise MY TRUE WORTH AND PURPOSE IN LIFE – this really is the only conclusion to be drawn from all the hair dye advertisements) and yet it came with grave and unpredictable consequences also. As a teenager, imagining dying my hair always produced a little terrified thrill deep within me – probably something akin to kleptomaniacs before they steal something (I think I think. I’ve never been one, so I can’t be certain). Anyway, after a few months of no-sun-Ireland my lovely blonde hair had turned the colour of dirty dishwater and suddenly dying my hair didn’t seem like such a stupid idea anymore. In fact, it seemed like the only logical solution to my dull, ordinary hair – at least, it did after reading a few back-issues of Cosmopolitan. I’d always wanted to try out red – it seemed so interesting and unique – so I did that first, with varying results. I mean, I liked it enough to keep it for a year, but something always felt a little bit wrong. For one thing, my eyebrows didn’t match.

So, on Monday, I bit the bullet and went out and bought a packet of ‘Chocolate Truffle’ hair dye before I could think about it too much. My first impression was that I looked like I was trying to be Wednesday Adams. I’ve now revised that and think I look like Louise Brooks. I’m pretty happy with looking like Louise Brooks. Despite not having realised my true worth or purpose as a human being, dying my hair brown was, overall, a success.

A chocolate success!

 

2) Tasting gold leaf.

I can’t say that I’ve ever wanted to try gold leaf, really. In fact, the idea of it has always seemed a little ridiculous and capitalism gone mad and not at all in anyway anything that I would be at all interested in at all at all.

However, last night my friend and I went to a very posh cocktail bar to celebrate my b’day (Oscar Wilde used to hang out there, in the day) and one of the cocktails had gold leaf decorations on it. So, I tried it, of course. Because it was there. Because we’d already ordered the cocktail. Because it was my b’day.

And it tasted like… nothing. Absolutely nada. A slight metallic twinge on the back of the tongue and that was it.

I mean, apart from the overwhelming feeling of shame and embarrassment that I was actually consuming gold leaf when, you know, there were starving children in Africa (hell, there were starving children down the road), the whole experience would have pretty much passed me by entirely. ‘Gold leaf? Huh? What? I thought that was just a mildly crunchy piece of air’.

Now, don’t get me wrong. These cocktails were a work of art. They rank amongst the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Their transient, opulent nature only added to their beauty. But, yeah. Gold leaf. Yeah. Edible gold leaf. Talk about your over-privileged consumption. Though, perhaps another way of looking at it is that I’m pretty much always that privileged in my consumption compared to the majority of the world  – I’m just not ever so painfully aware of it.

So, yep, edible gold leaf was pretty much everything I ever thought it was going to be – overpriced frippery for people with too much money on their hands and nothing left to spend it on. The fact that I, myself – a bleeding-heart of the first degree, who has always had more than a soft-spot for socialism and has shied from conspicuous consumption – was actually tasting gold leaf, sent wave upon wave of identity crises crashing over my head. More so even than the brown hair (which WAS kind of making me feel like a French spy, but only really like a pretend sexy French spy from a B-grade Hollywood film – as if I was playing dress-ups). The gold leaf, however, was making me question my position in the world and how I got there and what was I doing with it and why on earth was it me and not some other person down the street that was getting to taste the exquisite nothingness of over-privilege that is cocktails with edible gold leaf.

As a taste sensation, gold leaf was certainly lacking. But, as a moral quandary to mull and ponder and worry over in the days to come, well, there are few things I can think of that would be more provoking.

To sum up the first two days of being 29 – Confusing! Thought-provoking! Identity-challenging!

Let the adventure continue!

Beautiful, Beautiful Brighton

So I haven’t had time to write anything yet this month.

But I have an excuse! A good one! I’ve just finished a season of 4 shows at the Brighton Fringe Festival of my show, ‘Operation: Love Story’. Last night, in fact. I’ve barely recovered. In some insane attempt at bringing back some normalcy to my life after the last hectic couple of weeks, I have, this morning (after waking up at 6:15 am to go to work and then finding out I wasn’t needed until 3pm), done three loads of washing, put a new comforter on my bed, cleaned my windows for the first time since I moved in and am about to dye my hair a different colour.

I don’t exactly know how this brings things back to normal.

All I know is I don’t do anything by halves.

Anyway. Last Wednesday night I lugged a massive, too-hastily-packed bag to Clapham Junction to take the train to Brighton (said bag did not include toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo or conditioner. It did, however, include overalls/dungarees, so even if it was a little underprepared for hygiene, it was, in many ways, superior to your average travel bag).

I arrived at Brighton ridiculously early, having wanted to avoid the after-work rush. I was proud of myself for about five minutes, until I realised I had a massive bag, no idea where I was staying, no key to get in to the place I was staying and had about 3 hours to kill before the show I was seeing that night started. I hadn’t even brought reading material. I lugged my bag to the nearest pub, bought a cider and sat down despondently to look at the free advertising material left lying about – and we know its a desperate moment when we start to read free things. The doctor’s surgery. The tube. Awkward date gone wrong. I wasn’t even hungry yet so couldn’t even justify ordering food. Luckily, just as I had decided to hang out in the pub for another 45 minutes until a show upstairs in the pub theatre would start (I didn’t really care what show it was, as long as I could be distracted for a little while), the friend I was staying with messaged me to let me know she was home and I could come to hers. I immediately jumped in a taxi (I WAS wearing heels) and headed over. I had met this lovely friend of mine in Stockholm last year at the Women Playwright’s International Conference and it was great to sit down and catch-up a bit on the last year. We chatted for an hour or two as she got dinner ready and  I recovered from having a large cider on an empty stomach. As a side note, playwright’s conferences have been ridiculously successful in terms of making random, lovely friendships that continue over continents and time. I am still waiting for them to be ridiculously successful at making me into a wildly famous and rich playwright (JOKES!)

That night I headed off to see Shit-Faced Shakespeare, which I had been wildly excited about. Basically, one actor in the troupe becomes ‘shit-faced’ each night before the performance and then attempts to perform a serious Shakespeare play with 4 other (sober) actors. I thought the idea was brilliant and had heard excellent things. But, as is often the way with things that you are wildly excited about, I left feeling a little disappointed. Don’t get me wrong – I laughed. I laughed A LOT. However, I think what I was really excited about was the potential chaos and spontaneity and interest the drunk could bring to the show. How would the other actors deal with the drunk, how would they keep the show going? What I saw, which was less interesting (though amusing at the time), was a bunch of actors doing Shakespeare and, then, completely separately, a drunk guy doing whatever the hell he liked. Also, it was pretty clear the other actors were very used to working with a drunk actor and it no longer took them by surprise. What I thought would make a show less manufactured and controlled actually ended up being just as controlled and manufactured as your average Shakespeare play. Well, not your AVERAGE Shakespeare play, but you get me…

Thursday morning was tech rehearsal and it went pretty well – my techie, producer and one of the venue staff saw the show for the first time and they all seemed to enjoy it (laughed in the right places, so that was certainly encouraging). We had a brief break for lunch, did some plugging of the show on various internet sites and then headed to a ‘Meet the Media’ event held by the Fringe for the participants. Of course, in the end, it was mainly participants and only a few promotors/industry people around, but it was still really lovely to meet up with other fringe people, compare events, experiences, talk about our shows etc. I even met up again with one of the stage managers I met on ‘You Me Bum Bum Train’ when I first got to London last year. Around 5:45pm, however, I started to get anxious and we all agreed it was time to head back to the theatre to get ready.

We had a tiny audience, but I had expected this and had made my peace with it many days earlier. Actually, I tell a lie. I didn’t even need to ‘make my peace with it’. I had done a performance of the show in my director’s apartment for three of her friends a few days earlier and it had actually worked really well. I didn’t need to ‘make my peace’ with a small audience because I had decided that the piece actually worked perfectly fine with a tiny audience. That said, when people file into your space and there are 40 empty chairs and only 6 audience members, it does look a little sad. It doesn’t necessarily look great to the audience, who don’t necessarily know that you, the performer/writer/producer, has ‘made your peace with it.’ It kind of looks like failure. And we did have a critic in that evening, and ‘MASSIVE FAILURE’ was not really the message I would necessarily have liked them to be picking up on. But I decided not to care. Because, you know what? I actually didn’t care. I was just happy to be doing the show. Because I liked it. Because I thought it was good. Because I liked speaking out loud the words I’d written down in a mad rush at the start of the year. Because I had had fun working with my director on the piece over the last 4 months. Because I thought people might actually like it (those who saw it, of course). I liked all of that.

And so, I just tried to enjoy it. I enjoyed the laughs I got. I squashed the little voice that said, ‘They’re only laughing because they’re you’re friends.’ I ignored the voice that said, ‘Look how stony faced that critic is – she’s clearly not enjoying herself.’ I amped up the voice that said, ‘They’re clearly all listening to you, clearly paying attention – look how their heads all moved at the same time when you moved to a different side of the stage.’ And I graciously accepted as real and heartfelt (not forced or expected by the rules of politeness) the clapping at the end of the show.

This is all kind of a new experience for me. I’m used to caring. I’m used to caring about what other people think. I’m not used to considering what I personally think in spite of other people’s opinions. I lack the conviction of my own convictions. Which is why I could never be a politician. And why I sometimes find it very difficult to be a playwright or theatre-maker. I can always see the other side of an argument, which might sound like a nicely pleasant trait to have in a friend, but isn’t particularly useful when you’re in the business of arguing ideas, creating stories and convincing people that you, and you alone, are going to entertain them for an hour.

You gotta have conviction. You gotta have ideas. You gotta believe ‘em, in case no one ese does. And if they don’t believe ‘em, you gotta believe ‘em more. You gotta believe ‘em ’til someone else does. That’s what you gotta do. I don’t know why I’m typing in some weird accent, but it somehow feels more convincing than my normal tone.

And that’s what I continued to do for the rest of the four days. Apart from a couple of low points, I continued to believe in the show and I continued to believe in what we had created and I continued to believe in people’s good reactions to the piece. Jenny from several years ago (hell, Jenny of just a few months ago) wasn’t able to do this. That Jenny would have damned my current state of being as ‘delusional’. But I actually feel more clear-headed about everything that occurred over the past few months than Jenny of several years ago. I went into Brighton not expecting to suddenly become a star. I want into Brighton not expecting to make money. I went into Brighton wanting to perform a piece that I have been thinking about for 3 or so years. I wanted to get a couple of reviews and have it filmed. And that’s what I did. Anything else that comes out of it is a bonus.

I think probably my biggest problem up until this point has been caring too much. I know this might sound strange, but I think I have always wanted to be an actress and to be involved in the theatre too badly. Its been too emotional for me. The current school of thought in movies and TV and chat shows on becoming an actor goes, ‘You have to want it so badly or you’ll never make it – you’ll give up because its too hard. You have to want it more than anybody else or anything else, so you can sacrifice everything else to make it happen.’ But that is bullshit. That is unhealthy. Because the fact of the matter is that only a very few people ‘make it’ in the way that is portrayed in those movies and novels and chat shows etc. And wanting it badly enough doesn’t necessarily mean its going to happen. Wanting is just another word for wishing in this instance – and wishing ain’t gonna do anything (here comes that voice again – the wizened ol’ baseball coach voice). People ‘make it’ for all sorts of reasons – hard work, talent, the right opportunity, luck – but just sitting around and wanting it ain’t one of them. You gotta love performing to do it, sure (because otherwise there’s no other reason to do it – certainly not fame or money), but if you’re wanting it for the sake of wanting it, you’re always going to end up miserable. Because its never going to be enough. My advice would be to care less. Enjoy your life. Enjoy the opportunities you get and the opportunities you make. Don’t spend them worried about what you’re missing out on.

So, despite doing 3 out of 4 shows for an audience of less than 10 people, I had a fabulous 4 days in Brighton. Of course, I was helped along by wonderful friends (who also happened to be my creative team and/or audience). There was a drunken night at the Spiegeltent, which can only make things better; cuddling with the tiny kittens of my producer (so tiny! SO FLUFFY!); seeing friends’ shows and friends of friends’ shows and random shows as well as cheese, cheese and more cheese (There was a delicatessen near were I was staying. There were many different types of cheese).  There was also sleeping in a gorgeous bedroom in a beautiful house (I want to move to Brighton! Where the rents are so much cheaper!) shopping in vintage stores (I was very restrained – no clothes were bought) and going to the Brighton Pier and watching a friend try to stay on an electric bull for 30 seconds (he lasted 4. Which was still the best that I saw out of all the other people there).

One of the best things about the whole experience though, was being able to put something in front of an audience and not to freak out so entirely that I couldn’t figure out where things were going well and where they were going badly. To be aware enough of myself and my performance to know when I was yelling hysterically at them because that was needed for the character and when I was yelling hysterically at them because I was panicing about the fact that they weren’t laughing. When things didn’t go quite right or according to plan, I was able to consider why the things hadn’t gone quite right, talk them over with my director and consider what could be altered; instead of dissolving into tears and cursing myself for not being perfect and/or Judi Dench (who incidentally hasn’t ever done a one-person show, I don’t think – don’t quote me though – so, really, that’s one point to me).

We have many plans for the show after Edinburgh. One of the most exciting would be to potentially find an apartment to do it in, so that it could be site-specific. But, who knows? At the moment I am just delighted that I did it, that I was happy with it and that I get to do it again.

Found at: http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/time-to-say-thank-you/

Thank you Brighton. Thank you Brighton Fringe. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have been instrumental to this show and this character having its moment on stage.

 

Tough Girl

Over the past few weeks I’ve been feeling a little uncomfortable. A little unhappy about my default presence in the world. Its something about the number of exclamation marks I feel the need to use in messages to friends to let them know I’m excited or happy about our plans. The need I have to end all sentences with emoticons, (particularly the obscenely sunny  ) to ensure people know that whatever I have written is to be taken in a light-hearted way. Something about the need I have to encase myself in bright colours, floral motifs, swishy scarves and lacy tights. About my insistence at breaking into song when people accidentally use quotes from lyrics in conversation. After another run-in with an angry customer on Saturday afternoon left me crying out the back of the pub on one of the barman’s shoulders whilst telling my other colleagues to ‘stop looking at me’, I kind of feel the time has come to TOUGHEN THE FUCK UP.

I’ve never been the hardest of souls. I squeal over pictures of small, fluffy things on the internet. I slept with a stuffed toy well past the time it was legal for me to sleep with another human being. My reaction, at 6 or 7, to the discovery of where veal comes from, was to run to the bathroom and throw up (my younger brother’s corresponding response to the discovery of where lamb comes from was, ‘but they only kill the bad ones’). My father, like many parents, spent years telling me which movies were not appropriate. However, unlike other parents, Dad still does it and I still listen – I plan to see ‘No Country for Old Men’ when I’m an actual grown up, which, by calculations, will be around 68 years of age. I cry in Qantas ads (and, I don’t mean I’ve been crying at Qantas ads whilst I’ve been overseas – I mean, I have, but that’s kind of understandable – I mean, I cried over Qantas ads at home. When I did call Australia home). I’ve also, to my shame, used these seemingly endless tears to my advantage, bursting into sobs once on the train when I couldn’t find my ticket and the ticket inspector letting me off the hook from a fairly massive fine (yes, that’s right, ladies and gents, I personally am the reason that contemporary feminism’s progress has halted and stereotypes of hysterical, incapable women in need of protection and care from the complex, overwhelming modern world live on). And, in my defence, I was genuinely worried about the fine, so it wasn’t like the tears weren’t full of real emotion. Furthermore, I never once asked to be let off! The ticket inspector came up with the solution on his own. Irritatingly, because of this need for real, live, spontaneous emotion, I still find it nearly impossible to cry on demand in plays (yeah, yeah, I know, drama teachers, crying on demand actually means very little about your skill as an actor, but, COME ON, the only acting skills the general public seem to be impressed by are crying on cue and the ability to recite great swathes of text at the appropriate time. Actually. Now that I think about it, they may be the only skills that actors possess. That, and not walking into the furniture, of course). 

Most of the time I like that I’m such a soft-hearted person. I like that I feel things. I probably over-identify with Madame Bovary‘s desire for passion more than is strictly good for me. People criticise me for being anxious or over-reacting or taking things out of proportion, but the only reason I do all those things is because I care. I do genuinely care about other people and I don’t like it when they’re upset, angry or disappointed. This can, of course, be frustrating in customer service, sometimes, when the aims or policy of a business are in direct opposition to what might make someone happy. And, of course, the flip-side of feeling bad things too deeply is that I also get to feel good things too deeply as well. It might get annoying for outsiders, but being so excited you want to dance down the street, or so happy that you’re squealing is a pretty lovely experience. It may be a wild rollercoaster ride of emotions sometimes and there are many that would call it unhealthy (though not yet requiring medication), but I still feel the highs usually balance out the lows. And I’m neutral enough in between times to not wind up exhausting myself or the people around me.

But, after Saturday afternoon, I really began to feel the desire to be a tough girl. Bursting into tears at work doesn’t make me feel good about myself. It certainly doesn’t feel like something a  responsible grown-up would do. And, much as I have, occasionally, used the hysterical crying woman thing to my advantage (see above story of the train tickets), I certainly do not want to be dismissed or ‘handled’, patronised or accommodated in a place of work (as a side note, I feel it is unfair to describe women as ‘emotional’. Yes, some of us have a tendency to cry when things get tough, but men have a tendency to get angry, yell and/or punch each other when things get tough, and who got to decide that being sad was an emotion but anger wasn’t? That’s, like, the stupidest distinction ever).

Anyway, I need pointers on how to be a tough person, because the more I try to stop myself crying the more it seems I want to cry. Trying to explain myself is also an impossible task if I’m on the verge of tears, with each word becoming more waver-y and the longer I take to compose myself in between words, the worse it seems to get: ‘Well… all….. I…… want…… to……. say……… is…………WAAAHHHHHHH.’

I wonder if there is a tough girl program I could put myself through? Presumably the first step would be to convince myself I am not at all interested by fluffy things on the internet. I’d probably have to start eating meat again, and perhaps go and join a hunting team just to really get it out of my system. Perhaps I could just get people to stand in front of me and cry for hours on end until the desire to comfort or joining has  been completely dulled.

There’s also the question of what kind of tough girl to be. There’s bad-ass tough girl, as typified by Lara Croft in Tomb Raider. Or, there’s depressed-no-emotions-tough-girl, as demonstrated by Gwyneth Paltrow in The Royal Tenanbaums. There’s stiff upper-lip British tough girl, or the Queen, as portrayed by Helen Mirren in The Queen. And then there’s plain ol’ ice queen tough girl, like… Nicole Kidman in anything where she’s just had botox.

Found at: http://www.bangitout.com/articles/viewarticle.php?a=2116

So many tough girls, so little time. I’m cutting it short because my computer’s about to die and I want to publish this.

Things That Make You a Grown-Up, Part Two

1. Not crying at work. Not crying in bureaucratic buildings. Not crying in the post office when they tell you they no longer sell single envelopes.

2. Knowing when it is appropriate and necessary to cut someone out of your life entirely. And not being afraid to do so.

3. Understanding the different, complex social situations that require ‘Hide from News Feed’, ‘Block’ or ‘Unfriend’ on Facebook and using them appropriately.

4. Understanding what you should and should not put on the internet for all time.

5. Not eating chocolate for breakfast. Also applies to all other inappropriate breakfast foods: cheesecake, wasabi peas, cookie dough, Diet Coke etc.

6. Using lip balm when your lips are dry. Not licking them.

7. Having wardrobe and cupboard space appropriate to the amount of clothing you own. Doing one of two things when amount of clothing severely exceeds amount of wardrobe space: a) Culling clothing b) Purchasing more wardrobe and cupboard space. Not continuing to push clothing into drawers and/or wardrobe until said storage space breaks.

8. Buying a half-pint for your final drink of the night and not another pint.

9. Being willing and able to share desserts.

10. Wishing only to raise children in the era you yourself were a child in, as they were better, easier, more innocent, more fun-filled, healthier, insert-platitude-here… (Really, the ’80s were just halcyon days).

11. Owning bags that are not plastic bags.

12. Having a ‘skin-care regime’.

 

Things That Make You A Grown-Up

1. The ability to buy new household goods that match. Like, cutlery.

2. Buying expensive things that you intend to keep in the same place for a long time. Like furniture.

3. Mortgages.

4. A salaried job.

5. Having any of the following (and being able to refer to them as ‘my….’): a hair-stylist, a colourist, a masseuse, a plumber, a dentist.

6. Health insurance

7. The ability not to be interested in social media.

8. Babies.

9. Superannuation

10. Having someone else to cook a meal for.

11. The ability to know what to do when something breaks. And who will fix it for you.

12. The ability to fight bureaucracy.

13. The knowledge of when fighting bureaucracy is futile.

14. Attending friends’ 30th b’day parties. Only attending 18th b’day parties of people you are related to.

15. Buying useless things for your house that ‘look nice’ and not feeling stupid about calling it your house or feeling guilty about buying strictly decorative things that would be a nightmare to move, because you have no short-term plans to move.

16. Taking 2-week holidays instead of 3 month ones.

17. Staying in hotels or B&B’s or rented apartments instead of hostels.

18. Buying chocolate and not eating it all in one go

19. Making different meals every night (instead of cooking a large pot of lentils and snacking on it at intervals for the rest of the week)

20. Buying expensive clothes and/or shoes because they ‘will last’ or ‘are high-quality’.

21. Worrying about mattresses and pillows.

22. Doing stretches to warm-up before, and cool-down after, exercise.

23.Not knowing, or understanding, the latest pop, or fashion, sensation.

24. Not owning or buying things with cartoon characters on them.

25. Knowing that eating now will ruin your appetite for dinner. Therefore, not eating now.

26. Knowing that sacrifices must be made. Being ok with making those sacrifices.

27. Doing your own taxes (without crying). Or hiring someone else to do them

28. Choosing a bank. Choosing a bank not based on which of their cartoon characters are the most loveable.

29. Going on weekend trips to the country.

30. Buying your own subscription to things.

Just to be clear: I have, and am, none of these things.