Salon and writers meeting this week.

Feeling a lot like this year so far has been strangely long and full of one thing after the other.

Trying to carve out the time to write my solo show, Twist is proving trickier than I’d like it to be, but tickets for Adelaide and Melbourne are now on sale, and I’m bouncing emails back and forth to sort out my edinburgh venue (and accommodation oh god what a nightmare) as we speak. I have the bones of what I want to say, I just haven’t been on stage since doing JFL at the Opera House in December, so I’ll be writing the funny bits in a bit of a feedback vacuum basically until I hit the stage in Adelaide and find out if what I’ve built is a tower of garbage or a weird earnest lecture or a (fingers crossed) real human comedy show.

Venue decisions are weird. In Melbourne this year I’ve agreed to a room in the Trades Hall, which is either a cool hub where they tend to put quirky and unusual acts, or a depressingly out of the way place to stash the shows you don’t really know what to do with, depending on who you talk to about it. My producer ran out the old “you’re a special kind of act because you bring your own audience / walk up traffic isn’t what it used to be pre covid”, and I’m feeling more skeptical about that now than I did when we were having the conversation, but time and ticket sales will tell!

Also, if the show is solid, I imagine I can get word of mouth and if the show is bad, do I really want people coming to see it by accident? (Probably yes, a ticket sale’s a ticket sale). For edinburgh venues I’m tossing up between two offers - a room at the gilded balloon, and one in the underbelly Bristo square. There are pros and cons to both.

Anyway, salon this week is Thursday morning 9am Sydney time, Wednesday Arvo/eve for you US and U.K./European side people. Time conversions below.

The writer’s meeting will be same time on Sunday. I will send through the links a little bit before the salon, stick it in your diaries.