Shut your face
Autumn hits Wellington, a dog gets high, and we're putting on a show
I don’t know about you but when walking the dog, I tend not to listen to music or poddies. I prefer to be alert to things like traffic, weather and birds; also, I like to be ready for little exchanges with other dog walkers or passersby.
(If I’d had earbuds in last week, for example, I wouldn’t have learned that a placid golden retriever who lives around the corner ate a hash cookie she found in the bush up in Johnson’s Hill. Jessie, the dog, quickly got off her norks. She started to wobble and appear spacey so her alarmed owners, a lovely couple of roughly the same age and personal habits as me, took her to the vet.
The vet led Jessie out the back and presumably, made her throw up. The vet came back into the room and gave the couple a hard stare. She explained they needed to keep their recreational drugs out of reach of pets. You can just imagine how this was delivered: by the book, without judgment, just like they’re probably taught at vet university, and yet disapproval suspended heavily in the space between all parties.
Now, whenever this couple go back to the vet, they don’t know where to look.
During our conversation, Jessie sat patiently with gentle eyes and a soft mouth. She has the wisdom to know what she can and can’t change and is sober, these days.)
Anyway, listening to nothing on walks. Mostly it’s so I can keep my mind open to the great yaw of the universe, in case something worth thinking about catches in the butterfly net of my brain. You need a sort of emptiness to in your head let this happen and it helps if you’re moving, too.
When I capture a fleeting, useful thought, I can ruminate for blocks and blocks, or for the entire loop of Karori Park, or up and down the rows of dead at Karori cemetery, as I tug the dog along to stop him weeing on a grave. Because I’ve given myself this quiet dome of mental space, I can examine the matter from all angles, hold it up to the light, and eventually come to clarity.
At the moment, it’s whether I should get my eyebrows tattooed.
Remember I told you I have a paid job? Theoretically, it’s part-time but in reality, it’s ALL the time. This is because I don’t have the discipline to divide my life neatly into paid and unpaid working hours, let alone factor in parenthood, wifedom, pet ownership, being a loving daughter and being a decent friend. My life and responsibilities are all jumbled together like clothes in the wash, and they’ve all come out the same, wan colour.
Most mates have given up on me by this point. I’ve vanished, socially. I visited my mum last weekend for the first time in ages and she did well to identify me. Perhaps it was my split ends she recognized first, because I’m well past due for a cut and my frizz has begun to block out the sun. Let’s not even mention my nails, which haven’t had a good seeing-to since the week before Christmas.
Working from home doesn’t help matters; there’s no hour that cannot be lassoed around the neck, like a rodeo calf. Nor does learning on the job.
I’ve discovered being a theatre publicist in 2025 is very different to being a publicist for a symphony orchestra in 2011. To make sure I’m not a drag on everyone’s speed, I’m having to get quickly to grips with the jargon of graphic design and digital marketing, the ebbs and flows of a campaign to sell a month’s worth of seats, the granular data behind a Facebook or Google ad, and the many, many ways there are to understand and reach a theatre audience, the most elusive group in all nature. More mysterious than a pangolin, less able to be tamed than a leopard, nervier than a bat-eared fox - the theatregoer is almost beyond science.
All this, and I’m also about to learn the most romantic lingo of all: theatre-speak.
(Yesterday I learned that verbatim theatre means the script is drawn entirely from the recorded words of real people. When a young director explained this to me, I felt a sudden impulse to blurt out “Shut your face,” in disbelief. But I’m highly professional these days.)
Returning to the smart world of work is exhilarating (emails with colleagues! Huddles over laptops! A six o’clock drinks meeting on a Friday! Phone calls from numbers I don’t recognise!), and rehearsals haven’t even started yet - imagine how overstimulated I’ll be when the whole cast comes together, the show becomes a collective act of will, and the magic begins. And when the billboards go up in April, I’ll probably have a cow, right there on Cable St.
But in the meantime, here at home, our laundry hampers are piled high and spilling onto the floor. Our sinks are sticky. The fridge is the seventh circle of hell. We ran out of yellow council rubbish bags a week ago, which means the roadside collector won’t stop for our trash unless I remember to buy some. They’re too valuable to put on shelves, and you have to ask the supermarket cashier to dig under the counter whenever you need a roll of five. I go to the supermarket constantly but never seem to remember to do this. Since getting a JOB.
The dog is baleful, disgusted by our shorter walks. The cat expresses discontent by sitting high on my chest in bed, so close I can smell the tuna on her breath. You Are Neglecting Us, she seems to be telling me, her paws neatly crossed near my chin.
Just this morning, as I was furiously typing, the dog deposited a dry little packet of leavings on the landing outside this room. He left a message in the poop, and the message was You Should Have Walked Me, Shouldn’t You?
I did an eight-hour day yesterday, I texted my friend Ness, who has balanced plates at the ends of poles for years with far more ability and aplomb, Plus the usual Mum things, and I can’t understand how full-time working women have to do all this, plus make an appealing dinner.
Nobody said dinners have to be appealing, she replied.
How we laughed!
By last night, my own tea was white rice with a miserable bit of broccoli I found curled up in the fridge, and five cashew nuts. I threw readymade pies at the kids. My husband, I believe, foraged in a skip.
I won’t deluge you now, but suffice to know that the show, Give Way - The Musical, is a gently satirical take on the big scrap of 2012: the year NZ changed its singularly odd Give Way rule at intersections. Instead of right-turning traffic going first, we reversed it overnight. Left turning traffic would get first pop.
This kicked up a fuss. Some people felt it would cause chaos, snarl-ups and smashes; others genuinely believed it would dilute our national identity. (On the day? Nothing bad happened. We all drove with courtesy and went back to our tiny lives. How Kiwi is that?)
Anyhow, playwright Steven Page had the genius to see the theatrical possibilities of the whole thing. He sat down in Invercargill and wrote a musical. It won a South Island scriptwriting award and now, here we are. Five weeks from opening!
Rehearsals begin on Monday, and I haven’t met the whole cast, yet - nor the stage manager, lighting designer or choreographer. Being a publicist and not involved creatively is a strange sort of business. You’re part of the team, but you’re not doing the actual hard hours in the rehearsal room. Maybe it’s like being the driver of a bus on a class outing. You can enjoy the jokes and merriment and feed off the children’s excitement about going on a trip, but you’re staring fixedly ahead the whole time.
But I have met the set designer (from Karori!) because I had to pick up two prop signs from his house before a photo-shoot last week. I needed early images and videos for social media and our press release, and my goodness, when you need something, nobody swings in behind you like theatre people. Suddenly we had cast, props, costumes and agreement to meet in front of the Beehive, with our producer standing by to explain our presence to any security guards who might think we were actual protesters.
My mate Bee saved the day. She has a brilliant eye for an image, a wealth of experience handling social media marketing for Karori businesses (Marsden Books, Gipps St Butchery) that I immediately thought of her. Years ago, I asked her what motivated her to support these Karori shops and she said, “I like books, and I like meat”.
Very kindly, because she is community-minded with a heart the size of Wellington, Bee agreed to come down and take the pictures for us and I have to tell you, they turned out beautifully. She was absolutely the day’s MVP. Just having her there halved my stress level, although you wouldn’t know this from the photos I blundered into. I look like I’m crackling with static.
Of all the videos, this one is my favourite. Actor Carrie Green just has funny bones and radiates charisma. She plays a variety of roles in the show but here she is as Leo, a demented protester determined to prevent any change to the Give Way rule.
I just love how a passing siren started up just as she did this crazy run in character. I expected her to be tackled to the ground by security but somehow, we got the shoot out of the way, quickly packed up our things and left the Beehive lawn to tourists, Parliamentary staff, and the pigeons.
Summer has vanished without leaving a note. I can’t pretend the darker evenings and creeping chill aren’t bothering me. I enjoy autumn and believe Wellington puts on some bangers. But after 45, somehow you begin associating yourself with trees at this time of year. Their summer radiance fading, their leaves dropping, their lignum weakening. I drive past my favourite elm, just inside the Botanic Garden boundary on Glenmore Street, and can’t help but notice how yellow and dehydrated it looks after months of natural loveliness.
That reminds me. I need to ring Sheldon to get my roots done.
Here’s the official Give Way - The Musical booking page! Once I’ve had a yick-yack to Box Office I’ll be able to suggest a proposed date for a Drink & A Show, but in the meantime, there’ll be heaps to tell you about goings-on behind the scenes, as we roll towards April 26, opening night. I hope you’ll indulge me. I’m having a ball.
The youth of today! Who the hell can afford to throw away a hash cookie in this economy? Great piece as always.
So funny - congrats on the job, the show sounds great - a nice little piece of kiwiana - some people still don't get the right of way stuff - especially at jolly roundabouts where I think the real rule should always be 'if someone can smash into the driver side of your car - it's not your turn to go'.