This weekend in Melbourne was the football Grand Final. It's an infectious day - almost always sunny and full of the joys of early Spring. It's hard not to go to a BBQ and pretend you care about this team or that team or indeed know anything about football whatsoever.

I stayed in this weekend. I escaped briefly for essential things like a walk in the park with my mum, but I stayed in, mostly, and recovered from the huge week I had. Then, yesterday, I opened my laptop and I wrote. I actually did some writing.

Doing writing on the weekend is just like doing writing on any other day except IT'S THE WEEKEND AND EVERYONE ELSE IS RELAXING. Therefore, like most people who work on Sundays, in my head, I get paid double time. On Sunday, I made a fortune, in bonus points, self-appointed. Yay for me, and Spring, and walks in the park with my mum.

There are some people (the guy who made this website is a great example) who can be directly pinpointed as supporters of Standing There Productions.

There are others whose contributions are less tangible, but whose support is constant and deeply valued.

Every time Standing There Productions does a show, these people emerge from nowhere, smiling warmly at us from across the foyer, only to disappear back into the night without knowing how much the warm smile offsets the panic, calms the nerves and puts things in perspective. Rita has a few constant supporters, Stew has a few, I have a few, various performers always point out theirs… It’s a real thrill.

One of my longest-standing supporters has been the Principal of my primary school, the wise and wryly amusing Pennie Puckey, who ran the school I attended from prep until grade six, where I was encouraged to write, draw, paint, and perform, and where I was discouraged (unsuccessfully) from making mud pies and abandoning entirely the practice of mathematics and science.

When I was a kid, Pennie Puckey knew when I was lying, knew when I was showing off, and made me think about how I treated other people. She encouraged me with my writing and performing. All these things have shaped how I live and work as a writer, director and as a human being. In 1998, she and others from the school (somehow) discovered I was writing and directing shows at Melbourne University. Since then, she has seen many of my theatre shows, up until very recently.

I never really got to talk to Pennie, as an adult, in the theatre foyer where I was always having brief conversations and grinning at everyone. I never got to tell her how proud the little kid in me was to see her in the audience, attentive and keen and never missing a trick. Being so sensible and wise and having such a large impact on my early life, I was so proud to have her in the audience.

Pennie passed away on Friday.

I will miss her.

Thank to everyone who comes to our shows, comments on our website, sees our films and videos, and smiles at us from across the foyer. We appreciate it more than you know.
 

While we were at Bundanon, we were called upon to describe our work to people (students, other artists, Bundanon staff who wondered what the hell the three of us were doing the whole time). After a while, we had a little three act play (I was the first act, Rita the second and Stew the third) which described us succinctly and interestingly but without making any bold claims we couldn't back up (expressions like "in development" and "workshopping" usually help here).

Now, I'm back at work. I'm a project manager. Simple as that. I'm going to Wangaratta today for work and I'm project managing until Thursday. It sounds much simpler than a three act play. It's not. It includes:

- Project management

- Catering

- Being the AV and IT girl (I know, I know, shoosh please)

- Workmate Liaison Officer

- Writer (some of my best material, I'm sure, is one day to emerge from my "day jobs". Day jobs are fascinating and sometimes - when I'm not trying to work out how to configure the laptop to the projector - I reckon I wouldn't trade a crazy job for anything).

Describing my writing, and my work with Standing There Productions, is a lot more difficult than describing my work in my day job, but on the days when I'm completely exhausted and my brain is total oatmeal, I reckon I would, in fact, trade my day job for anything. So maybe simplicity is in the eye of the jobholder. Wish me luck. So long!

Dear Arthur and Yvonne Boyd,

You don't know me but I've been living at your place. For almost a month. So have two of my friends. We didn't have any parties or leave cigarette marks in the couches or anything (none of us smoke - I did spill some beer on my favourite chair, the white one that looks out my studio window - some of the beer got into my DVD drive and I ended up having to sit there for forty minutes blow-drying my laptop with Rita's hair dryer... but other than that you should find it as you left it).

Over the last three and a bit weeks, I've done more work here than I've ever had a chance to do in one stretch in my life. I've written what I came here to write and I've written things I never saw coming. Stew is a cinematographer and he's been experimenting as well - with stills photos and video. We've combined our efforts in some short videos we're going to post on the website over the next month. In the last week, Rita and Stew and I have had massive meetings, huge debates, workshops and hard slog sessions getting things done by a deadline we can actually meet. Purely on a practical level, the three of us being so busy and so rarely in the same place the rest of the time, this has been an astonishing opportunity.

So I'd like to thank you, and your family who could have inherited this place, for donating it to the Australian people and for instigating the Artists In Residence program, which (and I know I'm prone to exaggeration - it wasn't forty minutes with the hair dryer, it was twenty) I'm pretty sure has changed my life. The inspiring environment, the historical and artistic legacy of the place, and the fact that other artists and school groups and travelers will come here, will look out this window, will stand in Arthur's studio and smell the paints... it makes you want to keep doing what you're doing. It makes you treasure your solitude, find your natural rhythm, collaborate in new and interesting ways, and develop an unnecessarily obsessive interest in wombats.

I've learned a lot about you and about Australian art through your collection and the addictively well-informed Julia and Jen who have generously provided me with access to everything from postcards and phone messages to Picasso and Nolan and books about you guys and what you got up to (or did you? hard to tell).

Rita and Stew and I were talking about whether we would, if we could, donate something as beautiful as this place to the Australian people. We decided the hardest thing would be: you'd want people to use it properly. You'd want them to understand it, to love it as much as you did. We realised, as we came home to pack our stuff away and go back to our real lives, that we'd be (despite our best intentions) a teensy bit jealous if someone we knew got a residency here. We'd feel possessive and dislocated. So we decided maybe that would be the worst part - letting go and hoping it turns into what you intended it to turn into.

So, we'd like you to know this place is integral to Standing There Productions now - all our future projects will, in a way, come out of this. Maybe if you saw our work, you wouldn't like it, maybe you would. Thank you for the artists in residency program especially because of that.

For what it's worth, I think the residency program is run exactly how you'd like. Everyone here has the perfect approach (we've been left alone to do what we need to do but after a few days it feels like home - everyone is lovely and we're always reminded of artists and their work - which makes it feel worth doing and worth loving). I wonder if you know this. I wonder if you know that when you see someone coming (Barb, Tanya the visual artist, Tracie) you think "Oh goodie! Now I can catch up on the gossip!" Usuallay it's about the lamb (leg getting better), the next artist moving in (writer's cottage - pianist), how Tanya's work is going (interesting - what do you think about Koalas?) or something truly scandalous like the time Tanya went to Nowra and ended up being chased out of a bar by a bunch of 21 year-olds wanting to beat her up for sitting next to a boy with peroxide hair (Tanya: I don't F---n think so). It's a wonderful place to be, and that's not even factoring in the sunsets and the wombats.

We're leaving tomorrow morning. I'm about to pack up my studio. I have no idea how I'm going to cope back in the real world, but I will miss this place deeply. Rita and Stewart and I have been dragging our feet and sighing at sunsets and staring off into the middle distance on and off for the past few days and tomorrow is crunch time. Rita is going to live in Sydney. Stew and I are back to Melbourne. Today we spoke to some school groups in here and I found myself pointing to the Gonsky apartment and saying "I live over there". I don't, which is good, because other people deserve it, but should you ever need a house-sitter Yvonne, please let me know.

Yours,

Lorin Clarke. Standing There Productions.

Today, at Bundanon, gorgeously and relentlessly, it rained. Pretty much all day. Like this:

That bird on the post is, we think, a Bower Bird. This has created considerable excitement (they are velvety and sleek and proud and big and shy) as have the many other birds who spent the rain and post-rain periods dancing about being loud and excited. HOWEVER.

However. When you want to shoot a short video, and you have a limited time in which to do so, and the video requires sun, and you have spent the past few weeks preparing for it, and it is very much site-specific, you don't necessarily want it to rain. So Stew and Rita and I had to bench our plans of shooting a video and spend the day getting other things done instead.

This is Rita being very busy and important inside, away from the rain:

You will note our studio has changed a little since we first moved in. Yes there is still an adorable wombat on the back wall, but yes there is also a lot more clutter. This is called art.

Speaking of which, Rita and I went for a walk this afternoon just before the Bundanon people went home and guess whose light was on? Arthur's!

Yup, this is Arthur Boyd's studio, with the lights on, in the light rain. It made you wonder whether Arthur himself was somehow spirited back into the place. All very romantic and mysterious. We didn't look inside because we liked to think Arthur is with us on this rainy September day, listening to the sounds of the rain on his tin roof and the frogs in the pond. Was he there this afternoon, watching the mists lift from the hills after the downpour? 

Was he watching the kangaroos out his window as the dusk fell, just like I was?

Yairs. We're not so different, Arthur and I.

Or, sure, it could be one of the Bundanon peeps. Maybe. But you never know.

In other news, tonight we went on an evening excursion up the hill with some hummous and beer to the musicians' cottage, where a dancer/choreographer called Cobie is staying and working. We were invited because the musician (Stu - a different one) from the cottage down near us had agreed to play the gorgeous piano. We were treated to an excellent performance, an extended version of which is going to be played at the Opera House in Sydney next week. It was a pretty special Friday evening, as Rita pointed out later. That was when I thought to myself, Oh It's Friday! How nice!

Stu and Ash had walked in the dark, in the rain, to the musicians' hut holding only two candles (he had earlier proposed to her in the Bundaon hills). These are the candles. The lillies grow outside the cottage. You can't quite see him but Arthur is just out of shot, thinking the hummous was nice but maybe we could have brought some eggplant dip as well.

Either that, or it was Stew.

Either way.

They say any publicity is good publicity.

I suspect "they" are publicists.

I tend to think of it like this: any publicity is somebody else's publicity. So, unless you are actually WRITING the article about yourself, you are going to be pigeonholed in someone else's version of the story. Thus when I was interviewed for Standing There Productions' first comedy festival show, I tried to remember to say when and where the show was on and what it was called. Because any publicity is good publicity.

The next day, I was quoted in the paper saying I was thinking of handing in my citizenship documents and deserting Australia for more enlightened shores. Hilariously, as I was agonising over being completely misquoted and not in any way promoted or mentioned in the context of my show, I received a text message from one of my besties that said simply, "Bon Voyage, traitor".

So, with that in mind, it is not really that surprising that when the Bundanon artists' residency was described as part of the Triple J "Hack" programme today it sounded great and excellent and fabulous, BUT it sounded a little less like an inspiring history-steeped artistic and natural wonderland and more like a "fully tax payer funded" relaxation retreat for dole bludgers who liked wombats and dancing.

While I do like wombats and (tragically given my attempts in this field) dancing, Standing There Productions is not on a fully-tax-payer-funded artists' retreat. Nor would we want to be, actually, I don't think. From what I hear, retreats involve eggplant facials and yoga and vows of silence and "spiritual discipline" and weeping through the pain and so on, and although a face massage or a moment's silence is okay once in a while, we have work to do here.

By the way, in terms of historical and artistic legacies, check out this building (Ropes, this is for you).

This is the Education Centre on the Riversdale site up the road from us. The Boyds originally bought Riversdale and moved to Bundanon when it came up for sale, because they'd loved it once when they visited friends there.

The Riversdale site is gorgeous and great for a fully-tax-payer-funded walk in the afternoon sun. Just looking at wombats. And dancing.

Byeee!