The Imitation

I'm sitting in our new digs in Adelaide whilst my erstwhile cast companions have gone to breakfast/for a run after I had what can only be described as a personal spaz out. As Phoebe has detailed in the previous post, we had an interesting day yesterday, dealing with a cockroach-ridden crisis which resulted in me watching my best friend sob with frustration while all I wanted to do was punch our 'landlord' in the face. Knowing that violence solves nothing I did nothing except metaphorically hold Phoebe's hand while she dealt admirably with the situation.

The Adelaide Fringe is special to me too, this being my third foray into the South Australian state for this festival. My first experience was difficult for a myriad of reasons I will not go into, my second experience was phenomenal due mainly to the excellence of the cast I was lucky enough to be hanging with, so my expectations for this trip were through the roof, given I was again with a bunch of people who are excelling in excellence and my best girl, who I have not had the chance to perform with since we graduated from the course where we met. Needless to say, when I rolled off the plane at 7.50am yesterday morning I was met with "So, the house is ... uh ... quirky."

And so began the adventure of yesterday. This is very much the adventure of art imitating life imitating art imitating ad nauseum. I am oftentimes bemused by the Universe's ability to orchestrate these moments, providing us actors with real life events to draw from, concurrently allowing us to deal with those real life happenings through what we learn in the theatre. I remarked to Phoebe last night that it was interesting that we were collectively undergoing the experience of being housemates dealing with a shitty situation during the time in which we're performing a play about housemates dealing with a shitty situation. Different shitty situations, yes, but we're pulling together in exactly the same way as our theatrical counterparts.

Until I woke up this morning after a crappy sleep filled with crappy dreams about the crappy things that are currently happening to someone I care about back in Melbourne, which put me in a crappy mood and I became a crappy person, as I am wont to do at times. My best friend left me with a kiss on the cheek and a whispered 'I love you' before she left for breakfast and I had a moment with a cigarette outside pondering the possibility that perhaps I am a complete wanker with moments of nicety rather than the other way around when I had the realisation that again, life is imitating art is imitating life etc. Thank fuck for theatre. It reminds us that we're not robots.

That's the beauty of Phoebe's writing and this piece particularly. She has an ability to capture the absolute humanness of her characters and exhibits that humanness with unapologetic poetry. I have moments of poetry in dealing with life's arse crack, as we all do. So it's no wonder that we, her actors who are giving these characters life, are experiencing that same life simultaneously.

Well, this is only day two for me. There's another week and a half to go of this particular Radelaidian exploit. Already, the kids are back from breakfast and we're laughing uproariously, so the wanker has been stuffed back into her tool box/bum bag/wanker pack until next time.