Having spent a month at Bundanon doing an artists' residency, returning to be what can only be described as a daily slogger in residence, there are certain things I really miss about Bundanon:

1. Silence.

2. Wombats.

3. The fact that when you turn the hot tap on, the lights dip.

4. My new friends.

5. Arthur.

Being a Daily Slogger In Residence is sadly not quite as rewarding, although financially it has a little more to say for itself, and I have traded in the above for ready access to good coffee.

There are some people (the guy who made this website is a great example) who can be directly pinpointed as supporters of Standing There Productions.

There are others whose contributions are less tangible, but whose support is constant and deeply valued.

Every time Standing There Productions does a show, these people emerge from nowhere, smiling warmly at us from across the foyer, only to disappear back into the night without knowing how much the warm smile offsets the panic, calms the nerves and puts things in perspective. Rita has a few constant supporters, Stew has a few, I have a few, various performers always point out theirs… It’s a real thrill.

One of my longest-standing supporters has been the Principal of my primary school, the wise and wryly amusing Pennie Puckey, who ran the school I attended from prep until grade six, where I was encouraged to write, draw, paint, and perform, and where I was discouraged (unsuccessfully) from making mud pies and abandoning entirely the practice of mathematics and science.

When I was a kid, Pennie Puckey knew when I was lying, knew when I was showing off, and made me think about how I treated other people. She encouraged me with my writing and performing. All these things have shaped how I live and work as a writer, director and as a human being. In 1998, she and others from the school (somehow) discovered I was writing and directing shows at Melbourne University. Since then, she has seen many of my theatre shows, up until very recently.

I never really got to talk to Pennie, as an adult, in the theatre foyer where I was always having brief conversations and grinning at everyone. I never got to tell her how proud the little kid in me was to see her in the audience, attentive and keen and never missing a trick. Being so sensible and wise and having such a large impact on my early life, I was so proud to have her in the audience.

Pennie passed away on Friday.

I will miss her.

Thank to everyone who comes to our shows, comments on our website, sees our films and videos, and smiles at us from across the foyer. We appreciate it more than you know.
 

 So I know day jobs are necessary when one isn't, let's face it, Richard Branson, but good lord they take away the ability for one to concentrate on creative projects for more than five minutes. 

Last night, at midnight, I came home from three days of working in Wangaratta.

I now intend to sleep for nine years.

Until then,

L

While we were at Bundanon, we were called upon to describe our work to people (students, other artists, Bundanon staff who wondered what the hell the three of us were doing the whole time). After a while, we had a little three act play (I was the first act, Rita the second and Stew the third) which described us succinctly and interestingly but without making any bold claims we couldn't back up (expressions like "in development" and "workshopping" usually help here).

Now, I'm back at work. I'm a project manager. Simple as that. I'm going to Wangaratta today for work and I'm project managing until Thursday. It sounds much simpler than a three act play. It's not. It includes:

- Project management

- Catering

- Being the AV and IT girl (I know, I know, shoosh please)

- Workmate Liaison Officer

- Writer (some of my best material, I'm sure, is one day to emerge from my "day jobs". Day jobs are fascinating and sometimes - when I'm not trying to work out how to configure the laptop to the projector - I reckon I wouldn't trade a crazy job for anything).

Describing my writing, and my work with Standing There Productions, is a lot more difficult than describing my work in my day job, but on the days when I'm completely exhausted and my brain is total oatmeal, I reckon I would, in fact, trade my day job for anything. So maybe simplicity is in the eye of the jobholder. Wish me luck. So long!

I've been putting this off. I sort of thought if I didn't update this page then nobody would know I'd left Bundanon and maybe neither would I.

Sadly, I have outsmarted myself.

I have been thrown back into the thick of things and am currently in Melbourne on my lunch break from work.

Here are some observations about the country versus the city that I've made over the past month:

- Country people don't use plastic bags in shops. Some country towns have a NO PLASTIC BAG POLICY. People in the city do not. Why is this?

- People in the city are angry drivers.

- Someone in the city is always unwell and coughing on public transport and looking miserable. This reminds me of John Brack, which reminds me of Bundanon and Julia and the Nolans and Arthur and cups of tea and wombats and fresh air and outrageously coloured birds.

- Work, while useful, is not as stimulating as it might be, if, say, it were near the Shoalhaven River.

- The coffee in the city is nice. I am unconvinced this makes everything else worthwhile.

So is this guy:

Dear Arthur and Yvonne Boyd,

You don't know me but I've been living at your place. For almost a month. So have two of my friends. We didn't have any parties or leave cigarette marks in the couches or anything (none of us smoke - I did spill some beer on my favourite chair, the white one that looks out my studio window - some of the beer got into my DVD drive and I ended up having to sit there for forty minutes blow-drying my laptop with Rita's hair dryer... but other than that you should find it as you left it).

Over the last three and a bit weeks, I've done more work here than I've ever had a chance to do in one stretch in my life. I've written what I came here to write and I've written things I never saw coming. Stew is a cinematographer and he's been experimenting as well - with stills photos and video. We've combined our efforts in some short videos we're going to post on the website over the next month. In the last week, Rita and Stew and I have had massive meetings, huge debates, workshops and hard slog sessions getting things done by a deadline we can actually meet. Purely on a practical level, the three of us being so busy and so rarely in the same place the rest of the time, this has been an astonishing opportunity.

So I'd like to thank you, and your family who could have inherited this place, for donating it to the Australian people and for instigating the Artists In Residence program, which (and I know I'm prone to exaggeration - it wasn't forty minutes with the hair dryer, it was twenty) I'm pretty sure has changed my life. The inspiring environment, the historical and artistic legacy of the place, and the fact that other artists and school groups and travelers will come here, will look out this window, will stand in Arthur's studio and smell the paints... it makes you want to keep doing what you're doing. It makes you treasure your solitude, find your natural rhythm, collaborate in new and interesting ways, and develop an unnecessarily obsessive interest in wombats.

I've learned a lot about you and about Australian art through your collection and the addictively well-informed Julia and Jen who have generously provided me with access to everything from postcards and phone messages to Picasso and Nolan and books about you guys and what you got up to (or did you? hard to tell).

Rita and Stew and I were talking about whether we would, if we could, donate something as beautiful as this place to the Australian people. We decided the hardest thing would be: you'd want people to use it properly. You'd want them to understand it, to love it as much as you did. We realised, as we came home to pack our stuff away and go back to our real lives, that we'd be (despite our best intentions) a teensy bit jealous if someone we knew got a residency here. We'd feel possessive and dislocated. So we decided maybe that would be the worst part - letting go and hoping it turns into what you intended it to turn into.

So, we'd like you to know this place is integral to Standing There Productions now - all our future projects will, in a way, come out of this. Maybe if you saw our work, you wouldn't like it, maybe you would. Thank you for the artists in residency program especially because of that.

For what it's worth, I think the residency program is run exactly how you'd like. Everyone here has the perfect approach (we've been left alone to do what we need to do but after a few days it feels like home - everyone is lovely and we're always reminded of artists and their work - which makes it feel worth doing and worth loving). I wonder if you know this. I wonder if you know that when you see someone coming (Barb, Tanya the visual artist, Tracie) you think "Oh goodie! Now I can catch up on the gossip!" Usuallay it's about the lamb (leg getting better), the next artist moving in (writer's cottage - pianist), how Tanya's work is going (interesting - what do you think about Koalas?) or something truly scandalous like the time Tanya went to Nowra and ended up being chased out of a bar by a bunch of 21 year-olds wanting to beat her up for sitting next to a boy with peroxide hair (Tanya: I don't F---n think so). It's a wonderful place to be, and that's not even factoring in the sunsets and the wombats.

We're leaving tomorrow morning. I'm about to pack up my studio. I have no idea how I'm going to cope back in the real world, but I will miss this place deeply. Rita and Stewart and I have been dragging our feet and sighing at sunsets and staring off into the middle distance on and off for the past few days and tomorrow is crunch time. Rita is going to live in Sydney. Stew and I are back to Melbourne. Today we spoke to some school groups in here and I found myself pointing to the Gonsky apartment and saying "I live over there". I don't, which is good, because other people deserve it, but should you ever need a house-sitter Yvonne, please let me know.

Yours,

Lorin Clarke. Standing There Productions.

I spilled beer in my laptop.

That is all.