I know I've said it here before but Black Lung really know how to take all that is average in theatre, set fire to it and take a dump in its handbag.

I saw Avast and Avast II: The Welshman Cometh on Friday. They were scary, funny, touching, beautifully acted, and the set made me forget where I was but without rotating painfully in four separate subsections. They were amazing. And Avast wasn't even as good as I remember it being the first time (reviewed, if you can call it that, somewhere in these pages).

I read a bad review of these shows in the newspaper. The review said something about how the shows were both monstrously immature and in fact were really just boys with smelly bedrooms doing Dada mixed with Beckett mixed with Monty Python. Of course, there are elements of truth to this criticism, because it's the sort of criticism that can be levelled at any production involving the sentence That's so gay - that's gayer than the time you said, "Dad, I'm gay", and I have to say, if you can't take Avast and Avast II The Welshman Cometh on their own terms, you've obviously started to enjoy David Williamson plays at the MTC and you should send the younger reviewers (say, the forty-year-olds) along to review the real stuff. Brilliant, bracing and gutsy theatre. I wish they had something on every week so I could send everyone along.

Standing There Productions consists of lots of people, only three of whom meet once a week (if you squint) and the rest of whom are involved less directly.

Those less directly involved peeps are usually directly involved everywhere else, doing clever and entertaining things, from plays to setting up small businesses to (as many people have pointed out to me this week) advertising Hairhouse Warehouse, superannuation, and soup.

Here are some examples: Dylan Lloyd, who was our Dad in For We Are Young And Free last year at the comedy festival, is on stage again at Chapel off Chapel this August in Closer (he's the one down the bottom of the page). Luke Lennox, who is excellent, is in it too. Miriam Glaser, who was Paris Hilton and also played the boss in the red suit in Greatness Thrust Upon Them, this year's Standing There Productions comedy festival show, graced our TV screens in City Homicide a week or so ago, and Stew has just finished the behind-the-scenes shoot on an ABC TV show which, coincidentally, contains an episode in which Miriam appears. Tim Stitz, who has been around since the start of Standing There Productions, is, usually, in everything. Check your local guides. He seriously should have his own theatre. 24 hour Stitzy. Only a matter of time.

Also, some friends are setting up a creative universe in the form of office/studio space in the middle of Melbourne, so if you're a writer, designer or filmmaker and need office space and creative vibes in Melbourne, comment below and I'll see if there's anything left.

Obviously there's also Rita, one of the regular three, who heads off in a minute overseas to attend the Palm Springs and Rhode Island festivals in an official producer capacity, only to return to meet the rest of Standing There Productions (Lorin and Stew) in Bundanon, where the vibe will be, I presume, a little more relaxed than LA and New York, possibly borderline catatonic.

See, this is why people in theatre and the arts have an inconceiveable number of facebook friends. They meet people all the time, collaborate with everyone, and only ever see each other in theatre foyers or art galleries or, you know, edit suites. As for me, it's the fellow state library folk and whoever I bump into on my way to the Law-Talking-Job at the moment. That's a baffling network if ever there was one.

Everyone else, I watch from afar with pride.

Sometimes when you're rehearsing, you work over something so much that you find yourself analysing how an actor says the word "the". You find yourself thinking about the possible meanings behind things. You think, wow, maybe this bit connects to that other bit and what's really going on here is a deeper reference to a far more important (yet more subtle) point in relation to the symbolism of this metaphor over here.

You know what's particularly interesting about this process in our rehearsals at the moment?

I wrote the play.

I'm finding double meanings in things I wrote myself. I'm seeing interesting links between things that weren't there when I was writing it.

It makes me think that all the kids in my English class were right when we insisted to our teacher that Sylvia Plath "really was writing about mushrooms". Nothing more to it, we reckoned. Not death, not lost love, not complex relationships. Mushrooms.

Discuss.

Having written the script for our show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them, I am now 100% more fun. Given that during the writing of the script I was probably 300% less fun than, say, wading through pineapple juice with open leg wounds, I am probably still in need of 200% more fun points in oder to render myself social again.

Many of my friends are not speaking to me. Some of them because my absence is rude. Some of them because they're waiting for me to resurface. Some of them, I suspect, are currently down at the cop shop describing my hair colour to the missing persons unit.

What happens when you stop writing (and thus being locked in a room avoiding things) is that you have to do the long list of things that has built up while you've been locked in a room avoiding things. My list currently runs to one A4 page and consists, pathetically, of the following three things which will be on my list of things to do for the rest of my life.

1. Clean your room.

2. Go to gym.

3. Get a haircut.

The last of these was thrown into stark relief this morning when, on my way to my "other" job (the one where they actually pay me money) I was contemplating whether the massive gash in my stockings really did require the (annongly time wasting and expensive) purchase of a new pair of stockings. During the walk from home to work, the stocking gash - like an animated cartoon or a flicker book - majestically stretched further down my leg, into my shoe and across my big toe. Extremely uncomfortable. Ergo the answer to the question RE requiring new stockings becomes a resounding yes.

SO... (yes, I am aware this is a tangent and please hold on to your tickets, there will be an interval)... there I was thinking "gee, I need me some stockings - pity Myer isn't open this early" when Lo and behold! There's Myer - doors flung open, people streaming in off the street.

Now. At this point, it's important to flag that while I am not a vain person, neither am I particularly self-conscious about my appearance. When adults told kids that beauty was on the inside, I was the only kid who listened. Well. Me and the backstage dude in the trench coat and the acid wash jeans tucked into his shoes.

So - not usually very self-conscious. But for some reason, this morning, stumbling into Myer with my stockings ripped to shreds, my stupidly unfashionable, way-too-windswept total lack of a haircut, and my New Scientist laptop bag, I unexpectedly felt unusually... well... ugly. 

I wondered why that was. I deconstructed my subjective approach to beauty. I wondered why I suddenly felt unnaturally short and piggy, with extra limbs and stupid lips and big forehead, and the kind of haircut celebrities list in interivews under "biggest regrets". Was it because I'd been locked away writing for so long that I'd forgotten how to be around other people without doubting myself? Was it because I was so tired from rehearsals? Was it the moon?

Turns out, Myer wasn't open. Turns out, I'd walked through the doors of Myer accidentally, ushered (perhaps herded is a better word) into the ground floor of Lonsdale Street by Melbourne Fashion Week models arriving for work.

Yup. Turns out it's fashion week. Turns out, the doors to Myer had just been opened and the models (with Melbourne Fashion week registration) streaming into Myer had been waiting outside together on the footpath when I joined them. Turns out I was right in there with the best of them, displaying the new "stocking-tear with lack of haircut in the morning" look. They were all checking it out. They were all wishing they'd thought of it. They loved it.

Next big thing. You heard it here first.

Seriously though. Beauty is subjective and all that, but honestly, if you're going to mix with the supermodels, try not to look like Helena Bonham Carter baking people pie in Sweeney Todd.

So I've been missing.

Here's why:

1. We have a cast for Greatness Thrust Upon Them. We finished auditions and we had long and agonising conversations in Vietnamese restaurants and pubs and we now have a cast. Chris Buchanan is Robin - the Prime Minister's Press Secretary, Miriam Glaser is Sam - who runs the United Nations Environment Conference, and Julia Harari is Megan - who works for Sam and eats jellybeans.

2. The publicity for the show has been keeping the rest of us busy - tomorrow night we have a show launch - an evening of drinks at Trades Hall bar from 7pm. Here are the deets, writ large because I don't know how to make the image smaller:

3. More publicity, including a photograph of me looking about twelve and sporting a bowly haircut I know I will live to regret: here.

4. More publicity, in the form of a photograph for the local newspaper in my home town of Greensborough will not be reproduced here due to the fact that I was photographed jump-staring a tree (with jumper leads - not kidding), hanging upside down from a branch, and testing our public liability insurance (and my own dignity) by falling out of the tree mid photograph. The reason for this is because our show is in the comedy festival and therefore I have to be whacky. I am not, nor have I ever been, whacky.

5. Our website has had a bit of a facelift. It was done by SuperPaul, who is our Website Guy and who we all want to marry every now and then for his design expertise, his speed, and his generous dedication of time and effort to make us look much cooler than we really are (I speak for those of us falling out of trees).

6. Tickets for our show, Greatness Thrust Upon Them, in the comedy festival, are now ACTUALLY ON SALE ALREADY AND PEOPLE HAVE STARTED BUYING THEM. Yikes. Go here.

7. Did I mention I finished the script?

8. I went on a two day trip to regional Victoria (Warrnambool) for my "other job" earlier this week. Just when I was starting to think the entire world was about Standing There Productions' new show (honestly, have you READ the paper? Environment this, environment that. They're all talking about us)... it was lovely to go somewhere with a beach and to find out about things happening in local communities.

That's it from me. Those are my excuses for my absence. Here's hoping it was shortlived. See you at the launch!

I first started a theatre company with a group of like-minded friends when I was at Melbourne Uni. Like-minded, in this context, means “pissed off”.

We were pissed off because we had all auditioned for theatre shows or attempted in some way to be involved in theatre during our first year of university and, despite each of being shockingly gifted, nobody was interested in us.

I remember turning up to an audition, being asked whether I went to one of the residential colleges and if I knew “Bigsie”, and then when I said I was unacquainted with Bigsie’s work, I was told I probably wouldn’t get in since they were “mostly casting our friends”.

That show, which I saw later in the year, was about as good as you’d expect it to be. There was an in-joke involving the sheer hilarity of a man wearing a dress that lasted for approximately two hours and the man next to me wolf whistled every time a particular girl arrived on stage, due to the fact that she was wearing what appeared to be a postage stamp.

This triggered my asking at Melbourne Uni what it took to start a theatre company. We started one, we advertised auditions for everyone, regardless of race colour and creed, and we had 260 people turn up.

Since that day, I have had a rather different view of auditions. Here are five things I’ve learned:

1. The people who are auditioning you already like you when you walk in the door. Seeing actors work is invariably a privilege.

2. The people who are auditioning you have a headache. If they repeat themselves, forgive them.

3. Some people can act their pants off but not be right for a role.

4. If you can’t commit to a show, it is absolutely CRUCIAL that you tell the people holding the auditions BEFORE they work day after agonising day thinking through every possibly combination of performers. There should be legislation in relation to this vital issue and I plan to start a lobby group.

5. 100 does not go into three. I’m sure I was right about the cronyism of the play I auditioned for in first year, but I think upon mature reflection it was a teensy bit dramatic to scowl at the director every time I saw him in the union building. Although he did wear a pretentious hat and call everybody “babe”.

Otherwise, if you have a question, ask it. If you want to do something a different way, give it a burl. If you see the people who auditioned you after the auditions, please be nice to them, even if they are wearing pretentious hats. Or torn old tracksuit pants and T shirts they’ve had since year seven. As the case may be.

Nobody tends to care as much about these things as I do, but these are the things I’ve learned. Headaches, tracksuit pants, and the mathematics of auditions. All good things to know.

According to Wikipedia, a theatre director "is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production".

Which is obviously a very helpful description when someone asks you, "What exactly does a director do?", which is a question I get asked surprisingly often.

I say surprisingly often because, to me, people should be asking what writers do. Writers are the the ones who spend a lot of their time deleting and redrafting and reading things and getting distracted and researching a completely redundant potential plot line and then cleaning out the entire fridge and organsing all their New Yorker magazines in chronological order with the fiction editions in a special section to the right of the...

Never mind.

Anyway. Wikipedia also divides theatre directors into types. The dictator, the negotiator, the creative artist and the confrontationalist.

They all sound like wankers to me. None of which helps me answer "What exactly does a director do?"

Anyway, fat lot of good the internet is. I looked up acting and I got this:

“Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”

Well anyone who has been on stage in August knows that isn't true.