Silver Linings....

The silver lining from a catastrophic completely avoidable falling out was an amazing new independent theatre group.

I will explain ... but first I suppose the current situation regarding theatre needs to be addressed..

Right now in Melbourne... we are staring down a black hole of the loss of live theatre, big well established companies and tiny wee groups like ours... are all the same leaky, no make that completely shipwrecked ..boat. No audience.. no new shows, no old classics, nothing. 2019 had been a fantastic busy year, the second year of our company’s existence ... and we were surprised and delighted to have a well attended run of shows, we wrote it all ourselves and were taking a risk putting it out there. It was a risk that paid off, not handsomely.. but we did not lose out... and gained a loyal following..

Fast forward to this year... well what can I say ? .. we carried on writing .. had plans to branch out into a webseries... we had a story and a crew... not only is live theatre not allowed... nor is filming. I hope you will get to hear more of us in 2021

But I digress.. ... Orange theatre Au was born out of the weirdest of situations ... some people if they were being ungenerous might say it arose out of a mid life crisis of sorts.... but to them I say... if the unfortunate events hadn’t happened the way they did, what would there be to write about? As someone embarking on a new career, well more passion than career I suppose, it has to be accepted that one isn’t going to be making a living out of it, particularly as one started at the age of 55...

In fact I almost gave up as soon as I started. I’d done the audition and been accepted on what was supposed to be a 3 year acting training course. Initial excitement turned into dismay... when I found out that for at least half of our weekly class was taken up by running round in circles... I was a good 20 to 30 years or more older than everyone else of course. This didn’t seem to matter too much though. While I accepted it was beginners course, I was very uninspired by it for the most part, particularly to begin with. I’d had an exhausting day at work, if I’d wanted to run in circles I’d have joined a gym. Anyway long story short I found something or someone sufficiently interesting to keep me walking through the door, I’m not a fan of giving things up once I start, so even though it was completely misunderstood in the end ... and a fun friendship became my worst nightmare....I was ultimately glad that this distraction kept me on task. It was an ensemble based friendship... meant to be lighthearted and fun. And so it was for a while..but It ended up providing me with enough “battle of the sexes” misunderstandings, jealousies thoughtless provocations, ageist assumptions patriarchal judgements, threats.... you name it... to provide comedy fodder for a large proportion of two stage shows. Another two friends from that time, who I managed not to fall out with, provided more writing and with a huge well of enthusiasm and bloody hard work... our Orange Theatre Au was born.

What of the course..... ? well it was summarily cancelled without much warning, disappointing in a way... it was badly handled... but not a loss as far as firing my passion was concerned. I found courses more suitable for me. I acted in many student and independent films, and co founding my own theatre company was the greatest learning curve. I never did fix things with my former friend. That’s ok... I did want to leave things well with them though.. without necessarily following what they were doing in their life. It was as I say an ensemble based friendship.. nobody really had time to process that our ensemble suddenly ended. I don’t like that things were not left civilly... I did try to smooth things over. But if things hadn’t gone the way they did... perhaps I would never have co founded our wonderful theatre group.