More Life!

Six months ago I did a rash thing and booked tickets for Angels on Broadway. I say a rash thing, the moment we knew it was going to New York my Mum immediately said 'we'll have to go'. I'm starting this blog, written just an hour before I leave for the airport, by saying how incredibly grateful I am to my Mum for making it happen. Not only has my poor, long suffering Mother agreed to spend two days of her holiday sitting through a two day show of Angels, she's in fact positively shown off about it. Any friend she tells about the holiday gets proudly told we're seeing an all day show twice. Secretly she loves it as much as I do. But I'm really writing this about her to say thank you- to her and a bunch of dogs. Anyone who follows me on twitter knows Mum started working as a dog sitter about a year ago (after losing our beloved family dog) and well, those monstrous mutts have meant I get to go back to New York and see Angels. As Mum says 'The dogs are payi...

This blog is going to be about Angels, and why being the most nominated play in Tony history is important. But it's also a little bit personal. The Tony’s have book-ended my Theatre Nerd career, and so my research career. When I was 18 I flew to New York the night the Tony’s were happening. It was my first solo trip to the city, and I was going to see Hugh Jackman in The Boy From Oz again. I'd seen it by accident the December previously, and fallen in love. Not just with the show, but with theatre, and as every theatre kid does at some point, with Broadway. That show changed me in that it's the first I really connected with, but that show also put me on the path to my PhD. It is, for those who don't know, the story of Peter Allen, Australian Singer-Songwriter who died of AIDS. (Except they never mention the word AIDS in the show, but that's another thesis altogether). And to this day I can't explain it but being a slightly strange kid (evidently) that set...

Book what book? So it's been a while. And when I sat down to write this update that's not an update I thought I wouldn't have anything to say because I haven't been working on the book. But while I haven't been comitting words to a page, I guess there is still work that's been done. Even if it is mostly the 'waving pages around in rage' variety. Firstly, yes the book has mostly been on pause. This is mostly because for the last 6-8 weeks my life has been consumed with getting a first draft of a play to the page (and juggling temp job, and life). In April it came down to making a decision about which to work on. And the play won simply because timelines of me getting it to the page, impact more people than myself. I could have negotiated an extension, but the knock on effect there is wider than myself, and the book quite frankly isn't. So for the past 8 weeks I've been consumed by that. Anyone interested in that 'journey' can read ...