…and then I forgot, and then I got busy and by the time I remembered it was far too late. And I think by coming back in today I prove that the habit is not broken despite the breaks, and I think I finally understand the phrase of ‘the exception that proves the rule.’
Fringe launched yesterday. The inevitable result? I was sent into a spin of ‘what am I doing’ ‘why am I doing it’ ‘how will I get it done’. Social media was on fire, pictures of themselves at the launch, in front of their venues, their arms wrapped around each other. Everyone else is hyper noisy and I’m quiet and small. Everyone else knows everyone and I don’t know anyone. And so on and so on and etceteragh. All of it exacerbated by the break I took last year, the resultant lack of stage time, and the niggle in the back of my brain saying, ‘You’re only as good as your last show,’ and wondering whether I should have tried for something more ambitious.
Then I remind myself that my endgame isn’t fringe, the endgame is my body of work. My work is part of the fringe program but the fringe isn’t what defines the work. I think to make myself properly understand this, I need to get outside of fringe more often. I really do need to work on creating work that stands on its own terms and outside the context of a big noisy festival, otherwise I will always have this feeling that I don’t quite fit. Of course, what is stopping me doing that is a complete lack of confidence in my work. Can the work actually stand on its own without the supporting structure of the fringe? It’s exhausting having no confidence in your work, even if I know that nearly everyone feels this way.
Maybe as I move into the next phase of work (now that the trilogy is finished) I can think about making work that has broader boundaries than the fifty-minute, lo-fi borders of a fringe production.
But all of this is getting way too far ahead of myself, because before I work out how I’m going to produce work outside fringe, I need to get this show ready. It will be ready, it always is, but right now it feels like it’s a long way away.
I’m down in the loungeroom at the moment, and the sun is going down and the keets are going as wild as they always do at this time of night. It’s time for me to feed the keets then light the lights then have an early night.