This is a re-posting of my original Blog Posting Events in Theatre Australia. I have chosen to republish this under Bulletin Boards as it is the most frequently read forum. We still have far too many entries submitted without an accurate tagging of key search items such as Location. 2011-09-22 Updated to cover a section on To Post New or Re-use

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Blog #8: Audits and new adventures

Overview of week’s activities:
1) audit compliance requirements
2) avenues for exploration open up

This week has been reserved for catching up on all those tasks that were postponed to concentrate on the reading and signing off on the grant requirements. There’s been a disproportionate amount of time, energy, and money put into securing the grant against the quite small amount we received for the project (all of which went to the director). So the question has to be: was it worth it? That is, was all the personal time, effort and money pout into securing the grant worth the employment of a professional director? Did my playwriting benefit enough for all that effort and expense? I am very tempted to say “No” and a resounding “No” at that. If anything I would say it has damaged the process, because the actors became jittery and insecure about the project once they heard what the director said about it. They then stampeded for the door and disappeared into a cloud of anxiety like a herd of Thompson gazelles with the scent of lion in their nostrils. Having said that, the process did make a few things clearer for me (see previous blog) and I suspect, the benefits of both the grant process and the secondment of a professional director might become more apparent in the future.

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Blog #7: Major milestone reached

1) acceptances & RSVPs
2) program snub
3) no shows & an unexpected arrival
4) overview of project to date

The week leading up to the public reading was full of promising developments. For instance, from the 13 invitations I’d sent, I received 8 acceptances. This seemed like a very good ratio of invite to acceptance and allayed any creeping misgivings about how many might turn up. As the six confirmed actors were instructed to bring at least one person each, it seemed a reasonable expectation that we’d have an audience of between 10 and 20 people; and that ladies and gentlemen would, in my mind, be a very successful outcome indeed. Alas, the reality proved quite different, but before I go into that, I’d like to describe one of the less positive occurrences of the week.

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Dear Readers,

Edited highlights:
1) second reading disaster, nearly
2) funding approved
3) venue change
4) actors appeared
5) positive script evaluations at third reading

The setting was set. Tea, bikkies, milk, sugar, apples, nuts, and scripts to chew over. Some ambience-producing music echoing around a hot empty hall. Too hot. Queensland hot. Moved outside. Waiting, waiting, waiting. No phone calls from interested prospective actors. That’s a worry. I waited outside the hall shifting locations following the shade, reading my own scripts, waiting. The phone rings. It’s the drama student. “She can’t make it” I think, rather too pessimistically. “Hello, yes sorry, which hall?” she asks. “Opposite the school” I reply with renewed hope welling up into my vioce. “OK we’ll be there in about 20 minutes”. And they were. But we could coax the BF to come in and help, so it was an awkward duet of an old guy and a young girl shifting around looking for the coolest place to read. But we read. She was enthusiastic, raw, also hopeful. We talked. The session ended after a couple of hours with a mutual declaration to meet again during the week and an offer from the young ‘thing’ to round up some actor friends for the next reading. Outcome: Positive but not perfect.

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Unbelievable! Utterly unbelievable! What a fortnight!

In brief, this is the fortnight's highlights:
1) a professional director
2) funding application submitted
3) session one of phase one completed

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