SAME GIRL, DIFFERENT STAGE
There are two types of people in this world: people who have done the Time Warp…and people who are about to.
On May 9, I'll be the Time Warp guest narrator for Orange Theatre Company's production of The Rocky Horror Show - which is both deeply on-brand and mildly unhinged…but not all together unexpected.
If I'm being honest - saying yes to this was about remembering a version of myself I haven't visited in a while.
I was a theatre kid. Like - proper theatre kid.
From PACT Theatre in Erskineville, to Trinity College Speech & Drama, to primary and high school Shakespearean productions - if there was a stage, I found my way onto it.
Hell, even my 10th birthday party was Hollywood-themed - you had to come as your favourite actor or character (I went as Lois Lane, the 1997 Teri Hatcher version, FYI).
And I remember how seriously I took it.
Because I wanted to be an actress.
Not hypothetically, but with full conviction.
And then, as is often the case, the marketing-girly pipeline kicked in.
Theatre kid turns into Arts degree student > Arts degree student turns into hospitality and events roles > Events roles turn into a PR & Marketing career.
And somewhere in that (very normal, very sensible) progression - the girl who just wanted to be on stage got replaced with job titles, invoices, and being a functioning adult with a calendar.
But what I've realised this past couple of weeks is that the theatre kid never actually left, she just found a different stage.
Every time I speak on one.
Every time I host a room.
Every time I put something out into the world that has a bit of edge to it and back myself to stand behind it - there she is.
Community theatre - and groups like Orange Theatre Company - produce shows…but they also produce people.
Confident people.
Expressive people.
People who know how to take up space without apologising for it.
It's one of the first places you learn how to be intentionally seen.
You learn how to project your voice, hold eye contact and recover when you miss a line, and keep going even when your heart is beating so far out of your chest that you're certain everyone can see it.
And as it turns out…those are pretty transferable skills in my line of work.
So yes, please - please come along for the corsets, the chaos and the cult classic that is The Rocky Horror Show. But for me, this one feels a little bit like coming home, too.
This piece first appeared in Excessive Consumption - a weekly dispatch on culture, branding, politics and whatever other modern internet brain rot the algorithm has emotionally assigned me that week.
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