Tour diary: Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys

Follow Sam Brooks' journey as he takes his play Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys to the New Zealand Fringe Festival in Wellington.

THURSDAY - THE FIRST NIGHT

Today we opened.

My usual routine when a show opens is to freak out. I have been known to throw up many times out of nerves, starve myself to prevent throwing up, hold people’s hands to the point where it becomes less holding a hand and more holding somebody hostage and just freak out generally on a show’s opening night.

Today I did not freak out. Today I woke up at noon, went about my daily tasks (or frankly complete lack thereof) and didn’t really register that I had a show opening until people were actually arriving on the waterfront to see the show. I might not have freaked out because we had a preview in front of an audience a week ago who seemed to really respond to it, or I might not have freaked out because at this point I know what kind of show we have and I know the response it’s going to get.

At any rate, when the words “I love you. In a gay way” came out of Dan’s mouth, I wasn’t stressed out. I was, however, very cold. I feel like this is either a classic Aucklander move or a classic me move to come to Wellington without a jacket and thus end up shivering and utterly surprised by the fact that there’s lots of wind. It got to the point when my lovely techie Amber gave me her jacket so I wouldn’t freeze to death and I wasn’t man enough to turn down a jacket when a lady offers me one.

The rest of the hour passed like a blur for me. The show went on and there were passers-by who stopped to see what was going on with about thirty people staring at a car, but I don’t really remember it. What I remember is the feeling of lying down on the grass during the climax and looking up at the big, blue, windy sky thinking: I did a good thing.

I put on a show. I put on a show with some really amazing people. From all reports afterwards, including the koha we got, we put on a really great show too!

I wish I had something more profound to say. I wish I could say the experience had changed my life immensely or catapulted my career into another realm entirely. Who knows? It’s 3:30am and we met a millionaire and his escort who decided to buy us all drinks for hours on end. At this point I’m in no place to say anything, let alone anything profound.

Tomorrow something might be different. I might wake up and be somebody else entirely, or have a new phase in my career. Or I might not. I might just wake up and be content in the fact that I’ve done a good thing.

And at the end of the day, I think all any of us wants, whether we be creative or not, is to do a good thing. I did a good thing, and now, finally, I can sleep.

WEDNESDAY - ON THE PROMO CIRCUIT

You know you’ve had a busy day when you’re home at 2am writing a blog just a little tipsy while one of your actors cooks you pasta.

The day started out pretty slow with a family lunch, but then slowly started to get more and more hectic when me and Dan (aforementioned cooking actor) decided to go out on the town. And by “go out on the town”, I mean go out and get Frozen Fantas and wander around Te Papa wondering why the earthquake room sucks so much and declaring that the best art is when people paint other people.

After that we decided to do actual show things and drive our car to the waterfront and tech our show. This might be a Wellington thing, but I’m amazed at how unfazed people are by a car on the waterfront, let alone a car hooked up with speakers where lines “I love you in a gay way” are very, very audible to the scores of people who run past. I felt like we could’ve dropped a string of c-bombs (which frankly we almost do during the show) and nobody would’ve batted an eyelid.

After our tech, which I skipped to watch a dress rehearsal of the very fun adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on during the Fringe and because honestly the cast know the play better than I do at this point, we did some actual promotion work. This went less than swimmingly. We, and the Fringe people, figured that if people aren’t going to listen to the flawless Hayley Sproull belt out the best musical comedy this country has seen in years, then they’re not going to sit still and shut up for two (admittedly super attractive guys) pretending to be in a car.

Instead we went on our vaguely planned promotion tour, which involved going to S&Ms and getting Dan to give flyers to gay guys. This simple, slightly pandering, form of promotion went gangbusters. I’m very blessed to have a cast who are way better at selling this show than I am.

As we drank, our promotion became less planned and more focused on giving out flyers to people on the street who compliment Dan’s pants (for the record, his pants are less pants and more tights with a glittering skeleton on it).

We open tomorrow. I haven’t really felt it until now, when I’m realising I don’t want to be hungover for an opening, but it’s happening. Tomorrow we’ll find out if a show in a car on the waterfront in Wellington will actually work.

And if it doesn’t, then at least I’ve got 2am pasta to keep me company.

 

Dan Veint tells The Wireless about the play:

 

TUESDAY - INSIDE THE BUBBLE

Walking through Wellington is my favourite thing to do in the city.

I can count the number of times I’ve been to Wellington on two hands now, and I know my way around the town well enough to not get lost. I know if I find my way to Cuba St, I can find my way to Burger King and find my way to the only public toilets I have grown to trust here.

These are the things I think about when I am walking the streets of this gusty city, bleary-eyed and in dire need of some sustenance. After being roused from my chosen couch at an hour that in Auckland I’d call “abominable”, I had about an hour and a half to wander around until I could go pick up my flyers and then rouse my cast into handing them out with me. This was not to be, because they had been sent to Titirangi, which would be too far to drive even if I was in Auckland.

After this minor setback I came to accept Tuesday as a break day. Other than eventful interview shenanigans with The Wireless (hey, that’s this website), the cast and I had a very relaxing day. We brunched at Fidel’ s, we went to the supermarket and bought necessary groceries (new toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant because I am maybe not too sharp on this touring thing) and we drove our car to our actual performance space.

A special moment happened there, as everyone was huddled in the car to discuss tomorrow’s plan of action. I wasn’t paying attention when somebody was speaking, so I looked out the window at the people walking by, seemingly ignoring five people squeezed into a not-massive car on the waterfront.

I am not great at metaphors, you just wait until you hear me compare a wall to unrequited love, but this felt like a particularly apt metaphor. Five people squeezed into a little bubble with people around us entirely unaware of all the excitement, stress and work going on inside the car.

In two days this bubble is gonna explode and other people are going to be sprayed by it and it’s going to be goddamned amazing, and also belong to them a little bit. But right then, in that moment, I was in a bubble with four other amazing, talented and committed people who know what a cool thing we’ve got and for the time being, it’s ours.

That’s not really a metaphor and it’s barely a paragraph, but it’s still a nice thing to feel.

The cast and I finished off the night eating some awesome tortillas while watching this amazing YouTube series called Dead Fantasy where characters from Final Fantasy and Dead or Alive fight each other, then sharing (and singing along to) our favourite hiphopping rap musics and finishing off the night with dramatic readings from Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, then I walked the half hour back to my couch of choice.

My new favourite thing about Wellington is no longer walking through it. It’s spending time with awesome people about to do an awesome thing.

Can’t wait ‘til opening, y’all.

MONDAY - THE RIDE DOWN

My experiences with driving through this country are pretty dire for a 23-year-old.

Other than a few trips to Mt Ruapehu as a child, I’ve only done the drive down to Wellington once before this show. And when I say “done the drive down”, I mean spent 13 legitimately gleeful hours in a bus after an impulse buy online. We stopped in little fast-food filled hamlets like Tokoroa and Taihape, while driving past legitimately gorgeous sights like Lake Taupo.

Yesterday it was entirely different. When you’re in a car and able to choose where you stop off, or at least bug the only properly qualified driver of the car to stop, it becomes a much more leisurely trip. You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen a man in his mid-twenties (hi Dan) ask repeatedly to go to Candyland. (For the record, Candyland is the most depressing place and has more rules than your local jail. Avoid on future trips through the armpit of the Waikato.)

You also haven’t lived until the only straight member of your cast is serenading you with a mixture of the following: Dresden Dolls, the entire soundtrack of The Last Five Years, Patti Smith, a band called The Eels, a band that sounded like The White Stripes but probably wasn’t, some nerdcore rap which is so much more amazing than it sounds and the apparently incredibly politically incorrect Ludacris.

The drive down was always going to be the biggest test for us as a team, and it’s one we cleared with flying colours. We all had a little singalong to Patti’s Gloria (infinitely better than the original), Calum and I got surprisingly into some select cuts from The Last Five Years (he got unsurprisingly into all of the songs) and we all bonded over the 300 grams of sugar we bought for Dan from Candyland and wildly consumed. We’re a crazy, messed-up team that deserves each other, frankly.

It only hit me as we passed Gumboot Manor, a place in Taihape that makes people really angry for some reason, that I’m actually putting on a show in Wellington. This isn’t just an idea I had one time. I am literally in the set hurtling down the Kapiti Coast (I am bad at geography) ignoring my actors while listening to Gwen Stefani and running lines that I wrote on my laptop. Something that was a small kernel in my mind is now a thing that is actually happening. It’s the best part of being a writer and the most terrifying.

But from here on out it’s the easy part, right? Promote a show in a city you’re unfamiliar with and don’t know anywhere near as many people as you thought you did. Tech a show on the waterfront and pray for calm breezes and zero earthquakes. Do a show on the waterfront and pray for the same, but also for many people to show up.

Totally easy, right?

SUNDAY - READY TO GO

“Can we do it in a car?”

That seemingly innocuous question came up about eight months ago when we decided to take a deceptively simple two-hander script called Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys to the New Zealand Fringe festival. The play has exactly nothing to do with the Drew Barrymore film of the same name, however, as the title suggests, it is set in a car.

My original plan was to do this in people’s living rooms with the actors sitting in chairs while pretending to be in a car, but this was quickly vetoed because I am not a high school drama student. I threw the idea in the direction of people more technically-minded than myself and these people quickly came back with the idea to do the show in an actual car.

Now, thanks to one of our actors, we have a nondescript silver hatchback we can turn into a stage and thanks to some particularly awesome sponsors in the form of Unitec and the Wallace Arts Trust, we can actually take that car-stage down to Wellington without selling vital organs to do so.

While doing a show in a car sounds utterly ridiculous, it is actually deceptively simple. With the aid of just two lights, four speakers and some electrical equipment a nondescript silver hatchback becomes a pretty damn engaging and immersive stage.

The play is why I’ve spent the last two weeks standing in front of the car like I’m doing a bad remake of Beyonce’s Partition video, except holding a script and looking to passersby like a particularly flamboyant homeless person. It’s why I’ve stood under a bridge leaning into a car window bleating directions like some sort of horrific troll-hooker hybrid. And it’s also why I woke up at 7am this morning to hurriedly pack myself into our set to drive down to Wellington.

I’m hardly fresh meat when it comes to theatre, this will be the sixth play I’ve written and produced in just under two years, and the second I’ve directed, but this is my first in Wellington and my first as part of the NZ Fringe Festival. I can’t speak for the cast, the lovely Dan Veint and the unabashedly awesome Calum Gittins, or the crew, the genius Camp Mother Amber Molloy and the tireless workhorse Sam Mence, but I can speak for myself: I’m a little scared, a little tired and a 100 per cent excited.

So over the next four days I’ll be chronicling my experiences as a newcomer to the Fringe and as a sheltered little Aucklander putting a show on for the first time in Wellington, and not just any show but a show in a car behind Te Papa. Can we do it in a car? We can. And we will. And in the first of what will probably be many car-related puns in this series, I hope you come along for the ride with us (and also mostly straight boys).

ABOUT THE SHOW: Riding in Cars with (Mostly Straight) Boys is on from February 6-11 at 7pm in Wellington at the Waitangi Promenade behind Te Papa, and on from February 13-15 at 6pm and 7:30 in Auckland at The Basement. The show is koha and spaces can be reserved at smokelabours@gmail.com.

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