Backstage at Twelfth Night

Let's play, 'Guess who sits here?'

Yes, that's me - the London Olympics Team GB mug is a giveaway

Pearls and jewels - that's got to be Olivia

Our Fabian is a girl

Lots of smoothing hair wax to turn a girl into a boy - hurrah for Viola!

Not Feste but one of the courtiers - it's a red herring (or rather, a violin)

Rubbing his chain with crumbs - Malvolio

The upper-class twit who reads Giles, aka Sir Andrew Aguecheek

And yes, we had plenty of cakes and ale.

Runs and stuff

Trail Races at Lake Crackenback gave us the opportunity to run through some spectacular Snowy Mountain scenery, and relax with a fair dinkum Aussie pale ale.

Lake Crackenback

The Mandalay bus is a bit of an institution in Braddon, serving takeaway food on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. It was daytime when I was there, however, so I ate at Sweet Bones Bakery Cafe instead. It's part of the Lonsdale Street Traders and although it's organic and vegan, it's not as dry and po-faced as that sounds. The coffee is fair-trade, the cakes, muffins and brownies are moist and tasty, and the atmosphere is pop-up funky chic.

Artwork on the Mandalay bus in Braddon

A working breakfast at Sweet Bones

We recorded the sounds for the dramatic shipwreck sequence for Twelfth Night - while the women provided the shrieks and wails, the men were meant to offer manly nautical terminology and tense commands. It must be noted that some will always perform to the gallery, even while the ship is sinking...

Creating a soundscape for Twefth Night

Mulligans Flat

We had loads of grapes on our vines in the garden - enough to share with the wattlebirds, which was just as well as they would have taken them anyway!

Week 30: You are my sunshine

The sun came out this morning and it was beautiful to see. We went for a walk to make the most of it, before spending the rest of the day in a school hall in Khandallah performing two back-to-back shows of Twelfth Night.

Our 'dressing room' is a school classroom decorated with artwork and instructions.

Viola and Sebastian are practically identical - see, you can hardly tell them apart. 'An apple cleft in two is not more twin than these two creatures.' It's called suspension of belief - truely amazing what matching green tunics can do.

Feste plays the fool - in more ways than one. 'Foolery does walk about the orb like the sun, it shines everywhere.'

Olivia - 'You are too proud. But if you were the devil, you are fair.'

Malvolio is 'sick of self love' and 'most villainously' in yellow stockings.

Sir Toby Belch - 'That quaffing and drinking will undo you.'

Fabian - 'If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.'

Olivia bestowing slightly more favours on Sir Andrew Ague-cheek than usual. 'You are now sailed into the north of my lady's opinion; where you will hang like an icicle on a Dutchman's beard.'

Orsino is the true Renaissance Man - 'Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth, in voices well divulged, free, learned and valiant, and in dimension and shape of nature a gracious person.' Even if ours does support Arsenal...

Antonio stands proud - 'Only myself stood out.'

'Haply your eye shall light upon some toy you have desire to purchase; and your store, I think, is not for idle markets.'

'What's that to us? The time goes by. Away!'

And the stage manager is overseeing all- and drinking cups of tea. At least, I think that's tea...