I first started a theatre company with a group of like-minded friends when I was at Melbourne Uni. Like-minded, in this context, means “pissed off”.

We were pissed off because we had all auditioned for theatre shows or attempted in some way to be involved in theatre during our first year of university and, despite each of being shockingly gifted, nobody was interested in us.

I remember turning up to an audition, being asked whether I went to one of the residential colleges and if I knew “Bigsie”, and then when I said I was unacquainted with Bigsie’s work, I was told I probably wouldn’t get in since they were “mostly casting our friends”.

That show, which I saw later in the year, was about as good as you’d expect it to be. There was an in-joke involving the sheer hilarity of a man wearing a dress that lasted for approximately two hours and the man next to me wolf whistled every time a particular girl arrived on stage, due to the fact that she was wearing what appeared to be a postage stamp.

This triggered my asking at Melbourne Uni what it took to start a theatre company. We started one, we advertised auditions for everyone, regardless of race colour and creed, and we had 260 people turn up.

Since that day, I have had a rather different view of auditions. Here are five things I’ve learned:

1. The people who are auditioning you already like you when you walk in the door. Seeing actors work is invariably a privilege.

2. The people who are auditioning you have a headache. If they repeat themselves, forgive them.

3. Some people can act their pants off but not be right for a role.

4. If you can’t commit to a show, it is absolutely CRUCIAL that you tell the people holding the auditions BEFORE they work day after agonising day thinking through every possibly combination of performers. There should be legislation in relation to this vital issue and I plan to start a lobby group.

5. 100 does not go into three. I’m sure I was right about the cronyism of the play I auditioned for in first year, but I think upon mature reflection it was a teensy bit dramatic to scowl at the director every time I saw him in the union building. Although he did wear a pretentious hat and call everybody “babe”.

Otherwise, if you have a question, ask it. If you want to do something a different way, give it a burl. If you see the people who auditioned you after the auditions, please be nice to them, even if they are wearing pretentious hats. Or torn old tracksuit pants and T shirts they’ve had since year seven. As the case may be.

Nobody tends to care as much about these things as I do, but these are the things I’ve learned. Headaches, tracksuit pants, and the mathematics of auditions. All good things to know.

So today I called out to a guy who had left his bag on the roof of his car and was about to lose it on a tight right-hand turn. I saved his bag. In the street, for that brief moment, I was a hero. A benevolent stranger halting a bad day.

I thought my karma was coming.

Then my computer crashed and I spilled my coffee.

SOMEBODY OWES ME SOMETHING, YA LISTENING? YA BIG BULLY. PLAY FAIR!

So here’s something that doesn’t happen every day and I’m thankful for that, I truly am:

- The event you’re organising for your part-time job has a guest list of four hundred peeps.

- There is one coffee machine.

- There is no electricity with which to power the coffee machine to feed the peeps.

- There is a film crew shooting a reality TV show in one of the cafes in the laneway.

- There is a rumour there is a health inspector on the loose.

- It is seven o’clock in the morning. See that scenario? That right there is my life.

How jealous are you guys?

By the way: that means two deadlines down, one to go. My cup of tea is even lovelier than usual.

When I first started working for a production company (I was a glorified secretary at the time) I was taught about the central tension in all production companies between development and production. You’re either developing a project (writing it, in my case) or producing it (filming it, directing it for stage etc). I was told production is always better. The aim is to constantly be in production. Why? Because developing projects means you’re poor and you’re boring.

WHO WANTS TO BE POOR AND BORING?

Sure, being ONE of those things might be okay, but BOTH? But it’s true. If you spend your whole time developing stuff (for little or no money) then everyone gets sick of hearing what you’re going to do, and how little money you have to do it. Or, to bring it back to me (always) if you spend your whole time writing, people think you’re biding time in between your “real” projects (ie the stuff they see on stage/screen) and they think it’s very boring of you to go home and write your imaginary thing that doesn’t exist yet.

The mistake some people make is to tip the balance too far the other way and go into production with a not very good idea they haven’t thought about at all which means that they’re exciting, well-paid, and memorably shithouse. This of course says a lot about how arts funding works, but old Pandora should be left out of this for the moment.

THE POINT IS (yes please) that when I’m working on development, rather than production, I am THE most boring woman on earth. I don’t see anyone, I don’t go anywhere, I just sit in a room and write and then once a week I have a production meeting with Rits and Stew WHO ARE MY ONLY FRIENDS. I have a coffee from the same place each day and sometimes, AS A TREAT, I buy flavoured mineral water. FLAVOURED MINERAL WATER. TREAT. If I ever go anywhere, I’m late because I was in the middle of something. I am always “nearly finished”. I am always “coming in a tic”. Stew, whose job title at Standing There Productions (production coordinator) has never fully encompassed what he does, has gone ahead and suggested a title for himself: Head Waiter.

It is the devastating accuracy of the title that wounds me so.

I’m sorry, friends and family. I will totally make up for it when we’re in production. You watch me go.

*gets mystery illness*

A few good reasons why the Bundanon artist residency is going to be grouse:

If you live next door to a writer…

1. Please don’t own a drum kit.

2. If in breach of rule #1, please don’t bring your contraband drum kit out into the backyard at three in the morning to just bang it about a bit for the sake of it when persons are trying to get a specific number of hours’ sleep under their belt so they can write early in the morning.

3. Please don’t steal other people’s rubbish bins. Writers have rubbish too.

4. If you absolutely must have loud conversations right outside where writers do their work, please make the conversations intriguing and refer whenever possible to love triangles, criminal pasts, missing persons and/or secret identities.

5. If you are a mute mime-artist, please move into my street.

That is all.

So if you want to look important in a meeting because you're trying to convince a reality TV crew not to shoot outside in the laneway you're holding a breakfast of 400 people in...

Get your friend to bring a takeaway cup of coffee into the room and nod shyly at you, like unto an important CEO type person.

Works a charm.

I've heard.

(As you can see, day job going well. Writing... well... Happy Australia Day!).

Stressed out writer to lady in coffee shop: How much is a cup of coffee?

WRITER SIFTS THROUGH SILVER COINS.

Lady in coffee shop: three dollars.

Stressed out writer: Oooh yay I think I have enough.

Lady in coffee shop: How much do you have?

Stressed out writer: I have three dollars thirty. But that’s okay because I think I get paid tomorrow.

Lady in coffee shop: That's all you have left in the world?

Stressed out writer: Oh, no, don't worry. No, I'm okay.

LADY IN COFFEE SHOP CLOSES MOUTH, GOES BEHIND COFFEE MACHINE, MAKES COFFEE.

EMERGES WITH BIGGEST COFFEE IN KNOWN UNIVERSE.

Lady in coffee shop: I made you a big one.

Stressed out writer: Oh, wow, you're lovely.

Lady in coffee shop: You keep the coins. You might want to get a tram.

STRESSED OUT WRITER LEAVES FEELING A MIXTURE OF GRATITUDE AND EMBARRASSMENT THAT COFFEE LADY THINKS SHE IS ON LAST LEGS AND ONLY CHANCE OF HOPE IS A TRAM TO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

WRITER HOPES LADY IN COFFEE SHOP IS DELUDED, NOT WRITER.

WRITER DRINKS COFFEE.

WRITER AS HIGH AS A KITE FOR THREE HOURS.

WRITER FINDS OUT IT'S NEXT WEEK SHE GETS PAID, NOT THIS WEEK. WRITER IS VERY GRATEFUL FOR TRAM MONEY.