I don’t want to upstage Jesus, or anything, but the fact I’m writing this today is an Easter miracle.
Good grief, at last I’m up and about, after two days of disgusting turmoil — dizzy on my feet, sweaty and restless in bed, hunched on my knees with my face over a bowl. There were a clear 24 hours, all of Good Friday, where I didn’t eat a thing and I can tell you with complete honesty, that’s uncharacteristic.
Don’t ask me what caused it. A virus? Possibly my old mate, dehydration? A touch of gluten, although my meals have been rigidly conservative and I’m presently afraid of eating out? I still have hotel buffet PTSD from a year ago. One friend who reads this newsletter texted, IS IT THE JOB?
My bedside table has been crammed, these past two days, with the usual ephemera of the sick. Blister packs of tablets. Lip balm. Water, or worse, no water. A cold cup of tea, because drinking it was too much effort. An eye-mask. Books (hollow laugh! The last thing you want to do is read). A phone (eventually switched off. The last thing you want to do is talk). That gleaming metal bowl.
You can chart a life in the clutter of a bedside table. In your twenties all you needed beside the bed, let’s face, it, was something sex-related and maybe Marie Claire. In your thirties it’s a baby monitor, nipple balm and Up the Duff by Kaz Cooke. In your forties, both perimenopausal and prone to bruxism, it’s probably a mouth guard, cold cream, and a hopeful but stupid book — let’s say, anything by Glennon Doyle.
The fifties are the Paracetamol Years. Everything on that table is health-adjacent, even the books (Navigating Life with Restless Legs Syndrome). You don’t mean to be hypochondriac, but it’s a natural response in these weird, post-pandemic times. Your body, by this point, is made up of carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, trans fats, microplastics, palm oil and industrial quantities of unsettling information, fed relentlessly to you by undersea cable. Who wouldn’t fixate on every twitch or twinge?
Late last night I felt on the mend, and I knew this because I did something unusual. I opened the windows to the darkness.
We usually don’t, because at midnight in the suburbs there’s always some big dick with a tiny muffler who decides to rip along the streets on a motorbike, just for the pleasure of waking up babies and old people. Also, our house overlooks a public lane, and I’ve been disturbed too many times in the pre-dawn by brisk pairs of women marching terriers, talking loudly and urgently about Book-A-Bach.
But it had been weirdly humid and hot, for April. I needed to breathe cool, circulating air. Owing to my delicacy I had the bed to myself, and thankfully, someone else had the cat; I pushed the windows open and lowered the blinds.
It was nice, listening to the leaves chittering. There was an occasional spatter of rain. Water gurgled in the guttering and clattered down the spout. There was no traffic - no machine-like sounds at all, until the first flight of the day rumbled overhead. I get why King Charles insists on sleeping with the windows open, even though Camilla doesn’t like it. It’s quite a large compromise to make, so no wonder she kept her own house.
I didn’t exactly sleep well, but it felt good to be back in a body with no waves of nausea, no headache. The return of health feels wonderful. You realise how badly you’ve missed it; you want to hug its ankles.
I’m probably at eighty percent capacity, but that’s more than enough for my purposes. I can’t lolly about sucking ice chips; I’ve got a big week coming, as on this day, Jesus probably said.
Yes! Opening night is this coming Saturday!
Shit is, as nineties rappers might say, getting real. Among the helter-skelter of tasks this week were writing, designing, and proofing the show programme before sending them off to print, confirming catering arrangements, locking down telly and radio coverage, expediting print and digital advertising, checking in on the kindly volunteers who have been crop-dusting this town with leaflets, and watching the billboards go up.
As for the creative side of things, the actors have had their final rehearsal upstairs at Circa. They’re now commencing PRODUCTION WEEK and I can tell you, by glancing at the schedule - an Excel spreadsheet more heavily engineered than the Auckland Harbour Bridge - the crew today is ‘packing in’ at Circa One.
This includes things I understand, like Unload Truck, and things I definitely don’t, like Mark Up and Prep for Focus. Tomorrow looks equally technical, and on Tuesday, the first of three days of intensive dramatic preparation begin. There are three dress rehearsals. THREE. And I thought my life was busy.
A highlight of this week, this week of building intensity, of the emptying out of dressing-rooms by earlier productions to make way for ours, of the diminishing available hours until the stardust, greasepaint, spotlights and the call FIVE MINUTES ‘TIL CURTAIN UP, was the arrival of Radio New Zealand’s Susie Ferguson at rehearsal.
A week out from a show, the media gets interested, so Susie came for a preview ahead of interviewing Steven Page — Invercargill postie by day, dazzling playwright by night, and Dave Armstrong, our unflappable producer, who lives and breathes the theatre.
Susie sat and watched the opening numbers, laughing in the right places and asking Dave useful and pertinent questions. She marvelled at the tiny model of the set. She suffered through my insistence that she be photographed with the cast. She did drama at university; she understands the ecology of rehearsal rooms, the waxing and waning of confidence, the terms and the timings, the ever-present danger of opening night.
I’d been looking forward to sitting in the production suite while Susie interviewed Steven and Dave yesterday, live to the nation. Melanie, Saturday Morning’s unflappable producer who lives and breathes radio, brought her dog Zebedee. I wanted to meet him; I wanted to watch the texts roll in, to feel the electricity of a live broadcast and to drink RNZ coffee, which is saying something.
Sadly, I could not. I listened, sweatily, from bed at home. It was a lovely interview; I would even call it, medicinal.
Pedant’s corner
I bet you five bucks my mate Ness, this country’s finest copy editor, who CORRECTS HER OWN TEXTS if she makes a mistake (which are as rare as comets or eclipses, and usually made by autocorrect), has noticed something new in this post.
Yes, Ness! After a year, I’ve finally found the em dash!
I heard the interview yesterday and pricked up my ears when one of the men said ‘’my wife got a job at Circa’’. Then realised there is so many involved in a production and that it was probably Dave talking. (Husband-related curiosity on my part). Anyway wishing you rude good health and all lower limbs intact!
‘I’ve got a big week coming, as on this day, Jesus probably said’ = much snorting and guffawing.
Glad you are on the mend. Good luck for opening night (and all the nights thereafter).