act without words

Pre advertising, I had come back from Europe and Sue Parker, the talented and fearless performer director I had met on 'Captain Midnight,' asked me to be in Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words. I read the opening stage direction. Something like 'he is thrown onstage backwards.'

I had done yoga at high school. After several terms I was discovered bunking off from dreaded sports and amazingly was asked what I would really like to do. Dance, I said, or Yoga. In the Yellow Pages my mother helped me find a woman who taught us the ancient vedic art of physical and spiritual harmony and health in black fishnet tights and leopard print leotard. But I hadn't done Yoga for a few years now, nor dance.


Standing on the rush grass matting tiles in my flat on Latrobe Terrace Brisbane, I bent over, tried to touch my toes and didn't get very far. I started to piece together some kind of routine from any dance and yoga exercises I could remember and that seemed relevant. I had no thought that I was 'warming up' or 'training'. We had no concept of 'improvising' or 'devising' or even 'playing'. We improvised in the most old-fashioned sense of the word as in we made do.


La Boite was in the round. That was never going to work for this piece. Nor thrust. We decided to play in one corner of the square. La Boite had no flies. Sue got an aluminium A-frame ladder and we had the wonderfully exuberant Sheldri Weston (art school) sitting at the top of it with the props that were delivered down to me by a fishing rod fitted with a butchers hook.


We had an all-female team. Our stage manager was Jo Hardy. One evening, rehearsing late in the theatre, we had a near mishap trying to strike the ladder. 'Hold it! ' said Sue. 'I've got it!' said Jo. 'Get a man!' shrieked Sheldri while I said with my trademark anxious conservatism: 'Put it back the way it was!'

We decided for whatever reason that I would be best dressed in black tights, a striped top (genuine sailor's matelot top - part of the spoils from the French boyfriend who rejected me) and fingerless white gloves. I had my first encounter with white face makeup. And my first struggle to control my lank hair on stage.


I have zero memory of the performances. The number of shows (one, three?), the quality, my sense of satisfaction, any accomplishment of anything like an emotional journey, post-show comments. Potentially more people were watching Sheldri than they were me.