Terminal Rehearsal

This was the last rehearsal in the Powerhouse. A week ago. Working on text with a bare set. Cups of tea on stolen stools. A laptop on a table. Now I'm sitting in the Powerhouse again. Writing. No sound except Bob the porter playing his guitar to the dying whisper of a kettle. There is an overriding sense of the blank canvas in an empty stage. It is both liberating and terrifying. An air of ominous possibility pervades the Powerhouse in the time it takes the halogen lights to warm up. I could sit here in the empty space and imagine anything taking place. It would become my own private performance. Noone could ever see what I see. Any attempt to enact what I imagine would fail. Perhaps it is best left where it is. Unrendered. Unrealised. But I come here to visualise the words being spoken. Stage directions being followed. There is something about writing on the edge of the space and the silence you are trying to fill. In the margin. I find it hard to be as energised, as enthused, as confident in my abilities when there are others here or when I am at the church rehearsing with people I worry think what I've written is not good enough. Or not funny enough. Or too confusing. Or not right. If I write the show I want to write. They won't like it. If I write the show they want me to write. I won't like it. I'll be selling out. If you can sell out by writing for no money. So I'm staring at the black tabs. The mottled floor. The masking tape. In the black box space I still get a thrill from. A thrill of endless potential. Wondering what to write. Who to write for. The running man on the Emergency Exit sign is me. I remember helping my Dad paint the Fire Exit sign for the Church on Rise Park. When I was in MBD the Emergency Exit sign was a motif. Now it's mocking me. As I sit. Thinking. Waiting. Wanting to write.