Year of the Queen: The Making of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert - The Musical (19 page)

Years ago I played in a Glam Rock cover band called the Melody Lords. We covered all the biggies like Gary Glitter, Sweet and Suzi Quatro. It was comedy and Rock’n’roll and for a time we were the biggest cover band in Melbourne. Glam is a kind of macho, music hall version of drag. It’s a rock’n’roll, dress-up fantasy in a “call me a poof and I’ll kick your head in” sort of a way. We dressed in wigs and make-up in the glam style and each member of the band adopted the clownish archetype of a 70s rocker. I was the sex kitten, Throbbing Glitteris, who sported a long curly Peter Frampton hair style, Red Symons’ Skyhooks make-up and pretended to fuck anything that had a pulse. Throbbing used to set me free in the same way this outfit is now. Between songs I could hit the microphone and spout the most outrageous tales of groupies and sex and debauchery. All of it lies, all of it made up on the spot but funny because it came from inside that character, that wig and make-up.

I do the interview with Deborah. She’s cautious throughout. We’ve never met with me dressed as a boy, so the ‘me’ she’s dealing with is a frightening creature. I find I simply can’t let my drag character drop. I pose and pout and vainly admire myself in any reflecting surface the entire time.

Deborah, I can tell, can’t wait to escape the monster and when it’s finally over she makes a dash for it. We scrub off the caked inches of make-up and head back to the stage for mic checks. I dissolve back to little old me again. I’m approached over and over by members of the ensemble still reeling with the transition which overtook me. I feel like I’ve just sobered up from a particularly heavy night of drinking and am being reminded of what I did.

We spend the afternoon having our head mics fitted and tested. The sound department gets levels as we chat through our dialogue. Boy, it’s been a very long day.

After a restless night’s sleep, I make my way to the theatre for more sound-checking. I feel churned today, nervous. I ask Tony how he’s feeling and he says he was nervous all yesterday.

Dan is in the dressing room next to me. He has totally “moved in”. He’s turned it into his private lounge room. He’s brought in prints and a sound system and draped his couch in beautiful fabric. He’s even talking about buying a bar fridge. My dressing room seems very stark by contrast.

Today we run choreography, placing exactly where each dancer needs to be on the stage. It’s time consuming and is crucial to avoid anyone running into sets or other dancers. Much to Spud’s and Ross’s frustration, people come in and out of rehearsal, as they are whisked away for costume fittings.

It’s Friday and the ensemble are away at a recording studio putting down vocals for the click track. Because this show is so physical to perform, the live vocals will be helped along by a recorded version playing along with the show on the computer. It’s cheating, but no one will ever know.

This gives the principles some time on stage to work the scenes with Simon. It’s such a luxury and being on stage liberates my performance. Trying to perform in a rehearsal room is stuffy because you always have the director staring you in the face. I feel self conscious most of the time. But now I feel a sense of ease about it and the scenes work well.

Yesterday, Simon had given us some rewrites of about five scenes. We all learnt them overnight and we try them out on the floor.

At lunch, Garry approaches me about a possible publicity call for next Friday. It’s a nightmare because it means cancelling some of our technical rehearsal time to do it but he justifies it by saying it’s a huge publicity coup. It will be at a very big, ‘high society’ fund raiser which will be attended by the Prime Minister. My face drops.

“Do you have a problem with that?” he asks.

“I do”, I tell him, quickly thinking through how to handle this. I’m by no means a Prime Minister Howard lover and have no desire to be in the same room with him.

“I’ll do it,” I say, “But only if I don’t have to meet him. If I had to meet him, I’d be rude to him and that would reflect badly on the show.”

Garry is a little bewildered, but cops it. He agrees and says if we do it he’ll make sure I’m not put in that position.

Saturday sees us working with the revolve. Simon has been here practically all night with the stage crew, timing how things will appear on it. Each specific cue must be timed to the second, or important entrances of props, set or performers will not work. It takes most of the day and brings us to the end of our last week of proper rehearsals. Next week is tech week and I can feel everyone gearing up for it. I’ve already braced myself for it, knowing that in this show it will be the mother of all tech weeks. Heaven help us.

Chapter 15

Bustration

Tech week

Worlds collide. Today I extract my excited family from the airport and absorb them into my Sydney bachelor life. I realize that although I’ve been missing them like hell, the almost overwhelming pain of their absence has slowly ebbed away in the time I’ve been up here. The heart truly is an adaptable muscle. I can hear the boys’ excited chat as they bounce up the aerobridge to the gate lounge. When they spot me in the crowd they run into my arms like a Myer’s ad for Father’s Day. The picture is complete. There’s an irreplaceable joy when a family is together. We take turns in piggyback rides on the way to the car park and I bask in the unbridled love the boys shower on me.

We play games in the car, trying to guess which apartment block is our new home in Sydney as we approach the Medina. The excitement level spins out of control as we pass our very own pool on our way to the room. The boys choose their beds and we unpack the suitcases like we’re on holiday. Annie is thrilled at the prospect of a serviced apartment and a husband to throw some weight around two increasingly rebellious boys.

This is a two day weekend for me as we’re now on a Tuesday to Sunday working week. It passes like we
are
on holiday with trips to the beach, the pool and exploring the local playgrounds. The kids only stop chattering when they’re asleep.

As Tuesday morning approaches I begin to suck up all my reserves of fortitude. I know this is going to be huge. Thankfully Annie knows all about technical rehearsals, so when I sheepishly bid farewell to her on Tuesday morning and say I’ll see her next Monday, she understands exactly what I mean.

Let me define technical rehearsals. As actors, we’ve already rehearsed how the show goes. Now, as we put it into the theatre, every technical aspect of the show must be put into place. The lighting, the costumes, the sound, the sets, all must fit seamlessly around the scenes. Each technical department creates a recipe for how to put the show on. Lights have to go up at the right times, sound has to be at the right level and so on. All of this becomes cues called by the stage manager from prompt corner, as the show is performed. It’s a grindingly slow process and deeply frustrating. Because this show is so highly technical I’ve braced myself for the worst. I’m guessing it will be about four times worse than the next worst show I’ve had to tech, which was
Hello Dolly!
We teched that show for three straight days before we even got up to the end of the first number. But
Hello Dolly!
was a show that had been done before.
Priscilla
is a brand new piece and there is no recipe for how it should go. No one knows what will work and what won’t.

I arrive at the theatre to meet my dresser, Troy who seems to have a shallow but calm grasp on what is happening. His plot for me is vague and we can’t work out which outfit I should start the show in. With everyone in authority madly attending to a million other things, we take a stab at what I should wear from the huge pile of costumes filling my dressing room.

We’re called onto stage. Simon addresses us, warning us about the hell we have in front of us. He says there are lots of things that aren’t ready or haven’t arrived yet: sets, costumes, props, so please be patient.

The scene backstage resembles an ants’ nest that has been poked with a stick. The stage management team, whose job it is to keep order, is doing its best to reign in the anarchy via constant messages over their headsets and announcements through the Tannoy (the theatre speaker system), but the bustling workers scatter in all directions, attempting to get their specific piece of the impossible workload done before the rehearsal kicks off.

I’m waiting in my dressing room wearing the wrong costume. It’s only by chance that Anthony rushes past and sees me and quickly plucks out the right one, that I start the day in the correct one.

We begin with
Down Town
. First up, the Divas fly in from the roof and sing the number suspended high above the stage. The timing of this must be done to coincide with a music cue and it takes a few goes to get it right. The girls are still getting used to the feeling of hanging so high up in the air. Now they’re being asked to sing and perform their choreography at the same time. It’s a huge ask and I get the feeling they’re only just managing.

Once that’s plotted, the ensemble begins their dance. Lights are focused on specific places on stage as they run the routine and then I enter. Once I’m on stage, the revolve brings on the dressing room lights. I’m supposed to get changed in front of them for
I’ve Never Been To Me
but the revolve doesn’t work. The song grinds to a stop. We set back to the start and try again. We get up to the moment the revolve should start and it breaks down again. There’s much scratching of heads and frustrated sighs, until someone realizes that the jostling of the dancers feet on the revolve has confused the computer which drives it and has made it crash. Until the program can be re-written to tell the computer not to do that, the dancers are instructed to keep off the revolve until it starts its cue.

We get up to my quick change into
I’ve Never Been To Me
. I have a specific amount of bars to get out of my costume and into my green dress before I have to exit and then come on to do the number. We run it, and of course I don’t even nearly make it. Part of the problem is the high heels I’ve been given. They haven’t been designed for a quick change. It’s been known all along that this is a quick change. I can’t for the life of me understand why I’ve ended up with shoes that are so hard to do up. Someone rushes up to demonstrate how easy they are to get on and fails. We try it again and again. I’m constantly assured that it will get easier but it’s crystal clear to me that the design is just wrong. I pull my first Prima Donna moment of the day and flatly say I want new shoes. Without blinking they oblige. There will be new shoes. I’m greatly relieved.

On the break, the make-up masks arrive. It’s the first time I’ve clapped eyes on them. The DEVO guys have certainly come through with the goods. They’re an amazing innovation. About the size of a large pair of sunglasses, they fit exactly onto your face and have the drag make-up already painted on them. They also have false eyelashes attached. I slip one on and I’m instantly a drag Queen. What the girls at the Imperial wouldn’t do for a set of these.

We go into
I’ve Never Been To Me
and I enter the stage with my mask, wig and emerald dress on. It feels very strange being so swathed in attire, almost like I can’t be seen underneath it all. As I do the number I’m slowly pushed onto stage on a moving platform. I struggle to keep my balance in my high heels as I mime. It’s quite terrifying. I get through it and I exit for my next change, which I know we won’t get to for ages. Ross barrels up to me gasping at how brilliant the mask looks. He says from the audience it’s impossible to tell it’s a mask.

Backstage, it’s become commonplace to see performers wandering around in corsets, bizarre wigs or wearing little more than stockings. It hardly raises an eyebrow. The crew are too busy to notice and are constantly sighing with frustration that a piece of set hasn’t arrived yet, so they can’t test how it will fly in. Strictly speaking, this makes the tech run pointless because absolutely everything should be right before we move on. But without all the ingredients at our disposal we simply have no choice.

The rest of the day is spent timing entries and exits on the revolve. Time flies past and by the end of the day we’ve teched about ten minutes of the show. Not a bad outcome really. Troy can write up what my first two outfits are and tomorrow we’ll take a guess at what my next one will be.

On Wednesday we arrive early to start on the choreography for the John Howard, Luna Park gig. It means changing the “Gumby” dance to accommodate a different stage. I’ve still only got a limited grasp on the actual choreography so I find it a complete mind-fuck to alter it. There’s little enthusiasm for the call as all our heads are in the tech of the show and this is just an annoying distraction.

When we finish, a company meeting is called. Sandra, our company manager, begins to outline all the extra-curricular work they’re about to put us through. As well as the Luna Park gig, the ensemble has a film shoot tomorrow for the video footage which is screened in
Hot Stuff
, we have a big press call on Tuesday, as well as pictures for the program and a film shoot for the T.V. ad. A collective groan fills the room. Everyone is painfully aware how slowly the tech has been moving so far, and murmurs are beginning to spread amongst the cast that we won’t be ready for our first preview next Wednesday. Now with all these other distractions thrown in it’s hard to fathom how we can possibly get it all done. Dan pipes up and asks what happens if we aren’t ready for the first preview. Without blinking or a flicker of doubt, Sandra shoots back: “We just will be”.

The tech rehearsal picks up where we left it yesterday. Before long we arrive at the much anticipated entrance of the bus. This is the most impressive piece of set I’ve ever seen. It really,
really
looks like a bus and it has so many functions it’s mind blowing. I try to put a price tag on it as I see it floating across the stage for the first time. It must be worth a million dollars. It’s equipped with GPS navigation so the computer which drives it knows exactly where it is on stage down to the last millimetre. Because, like everything else on this show, it has arrived a week late, the tech heads haven’t had any time to try it out. Put simply, they don’t know how to work it. The program which is supposed to tell it where to go on stage, the path to take to get it there and how long it has to do it has not been written yet. Therefore, every time the bus moves, the programmers have to write a complete plot for the bus and load it into the computer.