Hello again.

Here's a second "review" of our show: click here. Gawd bless the online community!

It was Earth Hour straight after our show on Saturday night.

The show was heaps of fun, really warm audience and nice to start a two night break with a big bang. Then we all filed out into the darkened hallway at trades hall to discover we were standing in the dark.

When I say dark... Really, exit signs are good enough. Exit signs and the odd candle and suddenly everyone's gorgeous. Suddenly the bar looks rustic and European and it's hard to believe we sat in the Old Council Chambers on Easter Friday with a full house sweating it out in almost forty degree heat. In the downstairs bar at Trades Hall, there are heaters. Those big ones on sticks. They looked wonderful, glowing away up there, illuminating people's features and giving the beers an amber glow. Then, a debate ensued about whether they consumed more energy than electric lights, and at about that time the lights all went back on and the mystery was gone.

Our show is about the environment, and if we'd taken a microphone around and listened to people's conversations in the dark that night, I reckon we would have had a Part Two for sure.

Earth Hour. I know it's symbolic and subject to debate, but that's kind of the point and in my view it should happen more often.

We are nearly at the end of the second week of our comedy festival show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them. It is so much fun. So worth all the angst and horror of writing in a tiny office for months on end. Maybe. The cast is brilliant, the show is heaps of fun, and the audiences have been excellent.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the capacity of each audience to have a personality of its own. It's a fact. Each audience feels different, laughs in different places, understands and favours certain elements (plot, character, jokes, serious bits) and as a result each audience sees a slightly different show each night.

Who leads these audiences? Who is the mood-setter? How does group psychology work in a situation like that?

Of course, a lot of it is circular. The actors are slightly different, the pacing is slightly different, the weather is colder, or hotter, or the traffic was bad, or good, or they've just come from work, or they haven't eaten, or they have.

And there are always the pedants. There are the people who notice the newspaper the guy is reading is outdated, there are people who suggest the main character wouldn't say a certain thing because it conflicts with an earlier statement about bananas/life/chess/umbrellas.

The study of audience. Audienceology. I'm into it.

You never know, when you do a show, particularly a comedy festival show, whether you'll be able to turn your metabolism upside down so that you're totally pumped at seven each night and able to get out of bed again the next day for work.

It's only after it all finishes that you realise you're really ready to run a marathon at about ten to seven each night and you get tired and tetchy at four in the arvo.

Someone saw me hanging around in Trades Hall the other day and asked me if I was IN our comedy festival show. I said no, I wasn't performing, I was just writing and directing.

"Oh", she said, "Oh well that's great! How relaxing!"

I would like you all to know that she remains unscathed. Didn't lay a finger on her. Didn't flick her with a towel or douse her in flames or anything.

Relaxing. Pfft. Pass me that paperbag.

 After a great first week (excellent audiences and great work from our team including the actors and our lighting tech, Johnboy) we start it all again tonight for tightarse Tuesday and the rest of the week full of shows. 

I had an easter break which consisted of me getting relaxed enough to remember what it was like to sleep and as such my body doesn't understand what all this rushing around being vertical business is all about. I will have to re-educate myself with a glass of wine at Trades Hall tonight before tottering off to bed. 

See you there! (Trades Hall, not bed).

We got our first review today for our new comedy festival show.

Check it out here.

Our comedy festival show opens tomorrow night.

I have always thought there should be a word for "not enough time but heaps too much time". Sometimes I feel like that when I see someone I haven't seen in a while. It has been ages since I saw them and heaps has happened but conversely it feels like no time has passed at all. That's what waiting for a show or a deadline to arrive feels like. Heaps to do, so little time, but so long away that you can't imagine it happening.

Maybe there is a word for that. Maybe the word is EEEEEK!