Archive - Apr 2007

I was at the Lord Roberts for a bit of a Lamb Burger when I checked my phone. There's a message from my sister up in Darwin asking me if I was going to be on Dancing With The Stars next week. Almost immediately it dawned on me: DB and WB, the poster children are going to be on DWTS. When the rehearsal director pulled the couple aside just before lunch we all joked that they were in trouble (that they had to go to the Principal's office because they were naughty children, or something like that) and, because they were the poster children, they were simply required to do another publicity thing for True Stories. Nothing special.

I thought that maybe I just missed the announcement that they had this gig, I try not to think too much about work things during lunch, I rang to confirm. Maybe WB was to do Moth with DB; boy there would have been hell to pay if that was the case. But, no, they're going to be doing new choreography, which is far more appropriate considering that we're opening in Melbourne pretty soon.

Anyway, it's pretty exciting for them. And the rest of us have been fielding enquiries from friends and relatives for the last couple of days: "no, we're not all going to be on the show, just the poster children". But we'll all be down at the local pub eagerly watching twist and tangle into the various headstands, lifts and one-arm-cartwheels-on-partner's-bended-leg movements.

Oh, and why on Earth is Tim not in the final??? Him and Nat are easily the best couple in the entire series, there is no justice in the world.

Does anyone know why the harbour has just exploded? I love random fireworks. We had just finished work and were sitting in the office checking emails and stuff when suddenly it sounded like the pier was being bombarded. Racing outside we found the sky ablaze, which lasted for the next half an hour.

Sydney loves a good fireworks display and, besides New Years, this was pretty special. We just don't know what for? It would have been nice to have had some warning so I could have brought decent equipment to work to take pictures.

Well THAT was a fantastic Easter Weekend, wasn't it? I mean, it started out slow (experimenting with customising MySpace pages over Good Friday) but there's nothing like a seventeen hour party to get the festivities going. Actually, after that effort I was pretty much a wreck for the rest of the party season but I had a good time. And its only now that I feel like I've recovered. Easter Tuesday and I'm sweating out all the fun of the weekend and ohmigod I spent the morning standing on my head way to get over it all.

The last couple of weeks I've been suffering from a persistent cold. From uncontrollable sneezing to aches and fatigue, it was hard to get over it after doing full days of rehearsals and by pre-Easter Monday I just had to take the sickie that I should have taken at the start of the whole ordeal. Wasn't really inspired to blog about anything. But thank God I was feeling much better by the weekend, and I guess the alcohol did its thing and killed off the bugs. JPB still has a nagging cough that keeps you up all night though...

I haven't written much about the love of my life lately but everything is going well. It's just a bit too personal to talk too much about us. But he's been absolutely adorable and we've been having a great time. Well past the eighteen month point and still going strong.

Puppet Up! @ The State Theatre

It was slightly eerie to walk along Market Street to The State during Earth Hour. Sure the CBD away from George Street is always quite dead on weekend nights but on this particular night the city streets were, well... dead-er, would you believe. Even the glittering entrance of the State seemed less radiant. Maybe it was just because I've got this cold that's been lingering on for over a week now, everything already seemed slightly muted without CBD businesses flicking off their lights.

It's not really feasible to turn off all the lights at the State. The show must go on, and all of that and, besides, the puppets freak out in the darkness so one of them made a statement of apology and switched off the lights for five seconds, which as it turns out was as much as the puppet could take before they ended up in hysterics.

When you combine puppets with adult themes, you're pretty much set up for laughs. And I barely stopped laughing for the entire show. After a snappy lead-in song with the puppets and a quick introduction by host Patrick explaining what would happen (think theatre sports but with puppets), the scenes came through thick and fast. Uncovered, the puppeteers performed in front of a camera with the footage projected onto screens on both sides of the stage and to see them create the scene is an experience in itself. You just have to be impressed by their ability to take just about any suggestion from the audience and make up something funny on the spot, over and over again, night after night, I'd rather have it choreographed thank you very much.

Too many highlights to mention all of them and, besides, they probably won't ever happen again, such is the joy of improvisational theatre. The puppet singing an apology for saying another puppuet's face looked like a vagina, the Zimbabwean yodellers and knife-throwers, the milking of the cow, Tom Cruise snogging L Ron Hubbard... we could have had the Opera about Tourette's Syndrome but they had that one the night before and the cast don't do repeats...

Umm... actually, they do: