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Notes on a Festival

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

I didn’t want to write this post because I felt in danger of being all like ”and then THIS happened, and then THAT happened” – aka, the blog equivalent of making someone sift through 18,000 of your unfiltered holiday snaps.

But I do have to write something, otherwise I’ll be leaving a gaping hole in this vague chronicle of my life.  Plus, I need to move on with what’s on my mind now – or, rather, what should be on my mind now – which I fear I won’t be able to do until I tell this story.

So, in recounting the month that has just flown by, I’ll do my best to avoid the aforementioned pitfall of boring…

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never done the full month of a festival before.  Most I’ve ever done is two weeks.  I’ve certainly never performed for 27 consecutive days before, as per our schedule for our Edinburgh Fringe debut.

So, based on my limited previous festival experience, I had the following expectations.

Cuisine a la Fringe

Expectation
I’ll get to cook healthy food in the apartment, thereby saving money and ensuring health simultaneously.

Reality

  • Breakfast: Fruit and toast at the apartment (not the porridge I’d aimed for and quickly forgot about, but so far, so good)
  • Lunch: Toasties from Baguette Express, paninis from Baguette Express, the occasional baguette from Cafe Lucano – all accompanied by these two phrases from me: “If I eat one more sandwich, I will turn into one” and “baguette-me-not”.  And once or twice there was the gleaming beacon of lunchtime deliciousness that is M&S food court – thanks Suz!
  • Dinner: something ready-to-go from the supermarket, pizza slice from the van outside the Gilded Balloon (have chilli oil stain on jeans to prove it… mmm, chilli oil), Susie’s Wholefood Diner vegetarian deliciousness (ah, my people…), carrot sticks and hommous (giving my people a bad name), or a French martini (What?  There’s fruit in it…)

The apartment

Expectation
31 days in an apartment with 7 other girls.  I’ll probably hate them all after this.  And they’ll hate me.  I’ll probably spend a lot of spare time in cafes with free wi-fi, blogging my gripes.

Reality
We are the Sisterhood of the Travelling Leggings-As-Pants.  I heart each and every one of them (but not the leggings).  Hopefully I was at least bearable in return (even if I used the phrase ”baguette-me-not” on a daily basis).

Also, we stole free wi-fi in the comfort of our own apartment for the entire month.  Bam.

27 shows in a row

Expectation
Overkill and insanity

Reality
Had a freaking ball, night after night after night…

Special mention must go to closing night, when we all decided to go a bit bollocking crazy – the pronouncement of a ‘sexy eunuch’ before the madrigal, the utterance of “toots” after Belle’s butt-slap (this had been in the works for the full month), my own alterations involving the stepmother’s hand-mirror and an angry moonwalk from Aladdin, but most hilarious of all: Bella insisting Edward grab her boob in the Twilight sketch.  Corpse-o-rama.

Houses

Expectation
Ooh, I dunno, it’s our first year… they say the average house at the Fringe is 6.  Hopefully we won’t sink below 8.  Every night I fear that we’ll turn around in the opening number and be taunted by that ironical icon, the tumbleweed.

Reality
Average house?  78!!!  That means 2111 people came to our show!!!  Ahhhhaaaaaa!!!

Will people like us in the ‘burgh?

Expectation
I suspect so, but you never know till you go.

Reality
Just for the sake of handy reference (yeah, right):
***** – The Edinburgh Guide
**** – Hairline
**** – The Scotsman (praise aside, this was a beautifully-written review – and so totally got us)
***** – one4review
***** and other cool stuff from Edinburgh Festival Insider 
And a nice write-up from The Groggy Squirrel 

Best of all, though, our audiences clapped and laughed and cheered and talked to us afterwards and came back again.

Twitter

Expectation
Cute and fun idea of Brydie’s that the characters should have their own Twitter accounts.  Might glean us a bit more attention.

Reality
Our supreme Twitter presence (at one point, we were the most Tweeted show at the Fringe) got us on the front cover of Scotland on Sunday‘s ‘Fringe Review’ lift-out – in full-colour, full-page glory!!!  Ahhhhaaaaaa!!!

Flyering on The Royal Mile

Expectation
I’ll probably hate all humanity after this.

Reality
The first week, the sun was shining, punters were excited, performers were excited, everyone felt generous, and it was fun.  But by week three, there’d been enough rain and enough refusals that it was hard not to be at least a teensy bit bitter when somebody blanked you or was needlessly smarmy at you – or handed you a flyer they’d just been given by someone else!  If you don’t want to be flyered, don’t walk down the Mile at Fringe time!

Breathe, Daley, breathe…

Surprisingly, though, the most offensive people in the end weren’t punters, but other flyerers.  You’d expect a camaraderie, no?  And with the more civilised of us, there was.  But scores of others would get in the way, or even interrupt our conversations with punters, in order to accost them with their own shows.  So rude!

Anyone in a crawling tableaux wearing a lycra unitard (‘multi-tards’) is just asking to have their flyers lodged so far up their wahzoos they’d require intricate surgical removal.  Heed this warning for future years.

However.  Just when you thought you couldn’t take anymore, that you really just wanted to go back to Starbucks for a second nanna nap till showtime, someone would tell you that they’d seen the show and loved it.  And with that, you could put your spruiking smile back on again with ease.

Edinburgh ghost tour

Expectation
It’ll be a bit creepier than the last time I did it because this one’s at night.

Reality
Someone threw up and fainted.  It was like The Exorcist.  I don’t want to talk about it.

The Chippendales

Expectation
Greasy, fake-tanned, steroid-infused stripping that we’ll all have to be quite drunk for, but a bonding exercise for us all to go see it together (plus it’s in our venue and, hence, free).

Reality
Firstly, my expectations were fulfilled, except that we were relatively sober – but I’m grateful for this because, whether intentional or not (suspect not), this show was a work of comic genius.

The slow-motion, deeply unco strip to Enrique Iglesias’ I Can Be Your Hero (which we determined – from the military garb, the Statue of Liberty lit up on the backdrop, and the oh-so-subtle American flag boxers - was a tribute to the heroes of 9-11) may be the funniest thing I will ever witness in my life.  The mere thought of it still brings tears to my eyes.  The rest of us should retire.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers concert

Expectation
It’s right in the middle of town, it wasn’t too hard to get tickets, and they were only £18 or so for general admission – amazing!  Most of us are going, we’re all really excited, and having seen them years ago, I know they’ll do a great live show (even if singing is not Anthony Kiedis’ best talent).  I can see us all singing along and moshing and having a great time – one of the highlights of the month.   This will be awesome!

Reality
Turns out we didn’t have The Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets.

We had The Red Hot Chili PIPERS tickets.

Yes, that’s right – PIPERS.  As in, BAGPIPES.  As in, cheesy rock music featuring BAGPIPES.  I write BAGPIPES in caps because a loud, obnoxious ‘instrument’ (a word I use in the least musical sense possible) calls for a loud, obnoxious font.

Do you know what I hate more than BAGPIPES?

Nothing.

So yeah.

French martini anyone?

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All this madness

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
We pass each other at a bus stop, our hands full of flyers, surrounded by the bemused gazes of civilians.

“This is a surreal moment, isn’t it?” I say to the people carrying novelty boobs made from pilates balls, en route to the Royal Mile.

“Yep,” they reply, nodding at my pink princess gown.  Again.

Having spent the better part of 13 days on cobblestones, dressed as Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty), procuring Princess Cabaret to strangers from all over the world, surrounded by scores of shouters, stilt-walkers and unitard-wearers (or ‘multi-tards’, if you will) who are also procuring themselves, amid a festival which prides itself on living up to its name, The Fringe – on the edge, out there, sometimes a bit frayed - I have a question burning inside (or that could just be this crappy wine I’ve resorted to).

What drives us to partake in all this madness?

 Image by Trixta Photography

Did we not get enough attention as children and, hence, are now doomed to spend the rest of our lives making up for it?  Or did we get too much attention and were so over-indulged that we can’t help but continue to seek out our fix of the limelight, with our threshold ever-increasing?

While a sensible person would fear an overdose of attention, my greatest fear – and primary motivator, like any addict - is not getting enough.  If I approach someone to tell them about our show and they shun me, I am simply outraged.

To your complete lack of surprise I’m sure, I’ve taken to snide under-the-breath remarks between rejections to get me through the day.

“Yes, please ignore me – that’s why I chose this casual gown today.”

“Clearly, you hate fun”

“Clearly, you have no soul.”

“Clearly, you… don’t speak English?  My bad.”

Then there’s the all-powerful thought that there could be fewer people out there on seats than there are on stage.  That image alone is enough to make you whore your wares with gusto until right before lights up at 5.45pm at the Gilded Balloon every day of the Fringe (I may have said this once or twice in the last fortnight).

I feel blessed that, at the half-way mark, this horrifying image has not materialised for us (yeah, yeah, yeah – *touch wood*).  Mind you, blessings are lovely (just ask the guy Elise and I spruiked today who informed us, without a shred of Blues Brothers-related irony, that he’s on a mission from god), but we’re working our fingers to the arse to that end.

Princesses get rained on tooIt’s both a blessing and a curse that whatever we’re doing is working.  People are coming to the show because of our charming Mile demeanour.  But on the flipside, we have to keep doing it and, ideally, not develop a permanent hatred of humanity in the process.  Being nice is so much hard work!

A more Edinburgh-centric aspect to all of this is the inevitable issue of weather.  We awake and it’s pissing down.  We decide it’s too wet to wear costumes.  We arrive at the Mile and the sun is strong enough to burn.  We put on our costumes and the rain starts again.  After several hours of this, getting on stage is the least stressful event of the day - at least there it’s climate-controlled (albeit a sauna).

A few days ago, at 11am on the Royal Mile it was raining so hard that Smil and I had little choice but to stand mid-torrent and wait.  Were it any other time of year or in any other place in the world, the image would force you to question your sanity – a green fairy and a pink princess standing on deserted cobblestones, huddled under an umbrella that says “I [heart] Scotland” (FYI: not).  But during the fringe, Edinburgh is, by definition a madcap parade in which no corner is safe. Image by Trixta Photography

Out of necessity, we frequent cafes, sandwich shops, and festival bars in full garb.  Between flyering shifts, we have arvo nanna naps in Starbucks and in the park, buy supplies at Boots drug store, order coffee, and catch buses, all dressed as the iconic fairytale characters.  It’s become so ridiculous, we’ve started a photo gallery on Facebook called “Princesses are people too”.

The most bizarre part, though, is when we do go out in ‘civvies’ (talk about a balmy army) and are suddenly not stared at, not photographed like landmarks, and not accosted by children we have to disappoint with the phrase “It’s a grown-ups’ show”.

So while every day teeters on the fringe of sanity, it’s pretty obvious that normalcy is a crashing bore.  ‘Clearly’, all this madness suits us just fine.

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Princess Cabaret: “Tsunami survivors”

Monday, July 20th, 2009

Standing tall on the oceanfront, with surf life savers as our princes and the historic building itself as our castle, we knew that Sydney’s iconic Bondi Pavilion would be the perfect setting for Cinderella, Belle, Jasmine, Snow White, Aurora and (especially) Ariel to perform Princess Cabaret‘s Edinburgh fundraiser shows.

Or so it seemed, until an earthquake in New Zealand meant that a tsunami alert was issued for Sydney’s coastline – just before our show time. When both TV and internet tell you to “get away from the sea”, an oceanfront location that’s fit for a princess suddenly seems more like the evil queen’s pool party.

Sure, Tinkerbell was able to fly away, and Ariel was excited about showing everyone her natural habitat up close, but the landlubbers known as our audience were somewhat less safe and enthused. It was time to evacuate.

As The Sydney Morning Herald would have it, we promptly ‘ejected’ our patrons from the beachside venue. We enjoy this image, even if it is less storybook and more Toy Story.

For what it would be worth in the event of megatonnes of water descending on our theatre, we locked up our tech equipment and snack-bar before we scarpered to higher ground. Unfortunately for our fundraising, though, we had to give back quite a bit of money. But on the plus side, we wouldn’t have to stand around feeding a surplus of soggy chips to the seagulls. And we’re, like, alive and stuff.

We piled into cars and zoomed away from the Pacific Ocean, still reeling from performus interruptus – feeling a mix of “What just happened there?” and ultimately relief that, were a disaster to occur, at least we would live to do our show far, far away in Edinburgh (our relief still stands, despite some weather nerd claiming we overreacted).

That said, our hastily abandoned props and costumes would be somewhere deep in Davy Jones’ Locker, with only two weeks to remake them. Sure, it’d take a lot longer to rebuild our beautiful city (less funny), but we’re all about the Fringe right now and we promise we would’ve helped in September.

But happily for Sydney, as our accidental foray into international news points out, the not-quite-tsunami had but one ‘casualty’: the evening’s performance of Princess Cabaret.

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A careless wish

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

“Oh,” I said with the longing of a peasant girl at the start of a fairytale, “I wish I could take a few months off (from, what, tending to millet crops?) and just write.”

Carelessly, I made my wish. And, in perhaps an equally careless way, it was granted. Now I have to damn-well make the most of it. Right.

The show

Two of the months I’ve been awarded are, for the most part, governed by Princess Cabaret – the comedy cabaret show, already established as a winner with audiences, that I’ve ever-so happily stepped into.

We’re in the middle of a NSW tour – beginning with Canberra and Wagga Wagga last weekend, continuing with Katoomba tomorrow night, and rounding off with a five-day run at Bondi Pavilion next week. Then it’s off to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for all of August. I know, right? Like, wow.

When I first joined the show, barely two months ago, I was pretty sure I’d have fun being a part of it. I’d enjoyed watching it in a few different incarnations since early 2008 and was incredibly flattered to be asked to join them for their Edinburgh Fringe run (truth is, I nearly fell off my chair reading that email from director Brydie). What I didn’t expect, though, was to enjoy it THIS much.

“The audience stopped us in the middle of that song and clapped and cheered!” I exclaimed last Friday night after my first show as Princess Aurora.

“Yeah, they do that,” my castmates dismissed. And then they realised: “Oh wait, you haven’t done this before!”

No, I hadn’t. But I could get used to it. Just waltz into a show that already works? Don’t mind if I do!

So… so far, so good on that front. It’ll be interesting (read: all the more terrifying) to perform in our hometown next week, but hopefully the three out-of-town shows in the lead-up will have fortified me (read: been enough practice for me to stop stuffing up moves in the opening and closing numbers).

We sang for the Canberrans who loved the clever musical jokes. We sang for the Waggan footballers who loved the crass, edgy jokes. And somewhere in between we got lost, nearly ran out of petrol on a deserted road, had a key-locked-in-car scare at a servo, met with a few of bouts of carsickness, and had our bladders nearly explode outside a pub in Yass – which, incidentally, wouldn’t let us in because it was after midnight.

There was also a plentiful supply of car games, including Travel Guess Who (played with personality traits rather than physical attributes. Eg: “Do you use humour to mask underlying pain?” “Do you enjoy macrame?”), 20 questions, the form-the-alphabet-from-words-on-road-signs game, and my old favourite: the song lyrics substitution game (heart = arse, love = knob, baby = c***face, and any place name = Yass). No plebeian I-spy for us.

I was a teensy bit worried before I started this show because, compared in age to everyone else in the cast, I’m less like a princess and more like an elderly post-monarch. But thus far, be it my immaturity or the girls’ grown-up-ness, it hasn’t really factored in. Even amid the ups and downs of taking a show on the road, everyone has been welcoming and generous and a joy to be around both on and off stage.

But don’t tell them I said that – if anyone asks, they’re a pack of bitches and I’m planning to stage a coup on day three at the Gilded Balloon. I may even pee on the floor.

The job

After the whole restructuring fiasco at work, there was only one thing to do: skip the country. Actually, that had been planned months in advance and, in a glorious coincidence, took me right through till two days before the redundancy date. HA!

So I flew off to America and played tourist for awhile with my mum who had never been overseas before. We marked the occasion by springing for a helicopter ride into the Grand freaking Canyon!

After three weeks of city-hopping, show-watching, photo-taking (and sunburning) fun, I landed back in Sydney. The next day, I returned to work where I spent two semi-surreal days answering emails and tying up as many loose ends as I could.

Then it was over. Three years, one month and fifteen days after it began.

Two days later, I was on the road with Princess Cabaret.

Excuse me while I wait for my brain to stop spinning.

I’ve spent most of this week with a nagging feeling I should be doing something somewhere, as opposed to faffing at home. Though I do suspect that’s just where I’ve needed to be. Plus, though it feels like weeks, it’s actually only been two days of genuine bludging.

The words

I did say, though, that I wanted time to “just write”, didn’t I?

Well, now that I have the time… I’m suddenly petrified.

This blog entry alone has taken me days to even build up the courage to start. I figure it’s just because life has been so bizarre (in a good way) of late that I’m “reconfiguring my senses”, to steal a phrase.

But in good news, I re-read the TV episodes I wrote back in April for Script Frenzy and, surprisingly I don’t hate them. The characters still make me smile, and I still like the idea. The writing itself isn’t too horrendous either – especially for something written for quantity over quality. Not sure what to do next, exactly, but I’m hoping my enthusiasm will pave the way to better rewrites and funnier scenes (especially in the bits where I wrote “[insert something undoubtedly hilarious here]”).

In any case, I have time now. Time to make it count, Daley!

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Finding the when

Monday, July 6th, 2009

That word, “when”, made my jaw drop. When. A word that points to a timeframe – or, in this case, a use-by date. Our use-by date…

“ATTENDANCE IS COMPULSORY” the invitation said. 

I didn’t recognise the sender’s name, but since the meeting place was in my building, I figured it was less risky than accompanying an attacker to a second location. And it was… marginally. 

At 11am, I stepped out of the elevator into a throng of people I didn’t know. There was a hubbub. Was I in the right place? The drove started moving. I followed. We entered the boardroom, blue and dimly lit, equipped with plasma screens and projector. I sat at the shiny white table and looked at the projector screen, displaying a title with the word ”restructure” in it. 

A man I’d never seen before stood at the podium just to the left of the projection screen. Without introducing himself, he began by saying there was ”a lot to take in”. 

For the first 10 minutes, all I could think was, “So, who are you?” 

He clicked through a PowerPoint presentation about the aforementioned ”restructure”. He talked a lot about revenue and percentages. None of us were business or sales people, so a haze of “What’s all this about?” hung in the air. 

The dude mentioned some changes but, for my part at this point, there was no sign of a change for me, except for a different job title.  Admittedly, that was a bit of a red flag, but I held my horses to see what happened next. 

After a good half hour of corporate speak, they said it. 

“As a result of this restructure, there’ll be X new jobs…” 

More corporate speak ensued, aka: “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. 

And then the whammy. 

“When you apply for these jobs…” 

WHEN… we… WHAT now?! 

ie: When we apply for repackaged versions of our own jobs.  

I nearly guffawed, but my tainted mirth was muted by a vacuum of shellshock. In the boardroom, no one can hear you laugh – that is, unless you sit in a leather swivel chair with a hairless cat on your lap. 

It was only when we were allowed to ask questions that we got an explicit statement of our fate. 

“So you’re saying that we’re all redundant as of this date?” an employee asked. 

“What we’re doing is we’re restructuring [insert more corporate speak here, aka: "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah"]… …yes.” 

It felt like an awkward break-up – where the dumper doesn’t want to say anything directly for fear of reproach, and kind of hopes the dumpee works it out on their own. 

The “When you apply” spiel was akin to saying: 

“When you beg me to take you back, I might… but on different terms and only if I feel like it and nobody better has come along.” 

Because, oh yes, while we were free and encouraged to apply for these roles, so was the rest of the company. And while there was a theoretical 1:1 jobs-to-people ratio, several of these jobs have new and different requirements and demands that many of us wouldn’t be qualified for. 

“There’s no agenda here,” they said. 

Uh-huh.

Allow me to check the information you’ve recorded on my file… Ah, here it is:

Name: Keira Daley
DOB: Yesterday

That explains it!

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