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Working in theatre means being prepared to travel. Last year my faithful Swedish suitcase and I spent six months on the road, schlepping our way from the Far North all the way down to Bluff and back again. Touring is a uniquely bizarre way of travelling — you don't get to choose where you're going, how long you go for, or who you're travelling with. It's work — but a weird kind of work, where you wake/eat/sleep alongside your colleagues and sometimes run out of clean clothes and have to borrow each other's undies.
The beautiful thing is that you forge some really silly, special bonds with those people. By our fourth month together we were like a pack of naughty siblings. This manifested in a series of increasingly outlandish dares.
My favourite memory of this is of daring a deeply extroverted actor with an amazing voice to walk into a sombre-looking fine-dining restaurant in Nelson and sing. He did not refuse. I watched in horror through the window as he gracefully swanned up the steps past the maitre d', situated himself beneath a chandelier in the centre of the room, and belted out Sia's Chandelier. When he finished, people actually applauded.
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