Erhem.
So some of us went overseas. Two thirds of us. That's a lot - percentage wise - so you can understand our absence from these pages and from the streets of Melbourne (we've been getting lots of letters).*
Anyway. We're all back in the one place now. None of this travelling through New York, London, Paris and Scotland seeing theatre and art and old friends including but not limited to Standing There Captain of Industry Melanie Howlett and talented performer and crepe officionado Ellen Heyward.
Nope. Now we're back in business.
Business - at least for me - means writing various things including a weekly television column for The Big Issue Australia. It's fun! Not only does it mean I write regularly, but it means I am allowed to watch television and, when interrupted by somebody, bark through mouthfulls of food "SHOOSH PLEASE I AM WORKING".
Also, if you haven't read my article in Meanjin about contemporary theatre in Australia, you should probably get right on that. All the cool kids are doing it.**
As for Standing There as a collective, well, we're really looking forward to our artist residency at Bundanon in August. We have a bunch of projects we'll be taking along with us (it's a small bunch but we're proud of them - they get along well and almost always keep their limbs inside the car). After Bundanon, we will emerge from the metaphorical phone booth with our metaphorical superhero clothes on... up, up, and away.
I imagine.
Anyway, it's nice to be back and it's nice to reach out into the silent, deserted ether and speak to you, the absent, quite possibly non-existent contributor to the ongoing Standing There conversation. Have a cup of tea and help yourself to a biscuit from the tin. They might be a bit stale, but you're always welcome here.***
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* We haven't been getting any letters. Sometimes we get letters from the RACV about voting in their elections and one time we got a postcard for a guy called Steve. He seemed nice.
** I have no idea who the cool kids are, or what, if anything, they are doing. I do not mean to slander in any way the cool kids. I'm sure they're actually wearing beanies and sitting in bars drinking short blacks and listening to French pop music from the early sixties while conducting secret affairs and submitting poetry to the New Yorker under noms de plume.
*** Erm. There aren't any biscuits. Someone want to pop down the shops and bring us back some Arnott's assorteds? Be a love. Yes? Gah, bless yer cotton socks.