Finally allowed to head out, I miss the comfort of home
The Arts have been closed for months but now that shows are starting up again, I have a hankering for evenings at home in my dressing gown.
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I ’ve really been missing going out to shows at night. Or have I? I asked myself this recently when I went to the Brisbane Powerhouse for the first show in its series Lights On.
It was a different experience, what with social distancing and all. Everyone was seated at little tables cabaret style and there was a lot of space between them. It was kind of business class seating. I like that.
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They put me at a small table in the back corner, which is probably where I should be put. It was close to the door and that always helps.
Halfway through a rather compelling performance featuring the talented acrobats of Circa I looked at my watch. I tend to look at my watch a lot when I am at the theatre. I looked at my watch and realised that usually, at that time, I would be at home, where I have been every night these past few months. Having had dinner I would have donned my tartan dressing gown (my version of a smoking jacket) and retired to the bedroom to recline and do a spot of apres-dinner reading of my book about the Five Confucian Classics which is, you may be surprised to hear, riveting stuff.
After half an hour or so of this I might have a couple of digestive biscuits and engage in some televisual entertainment either with my wife, or by myself if she is watching one of her European cop shows on the iPad. Then I will make a cup of tea and the three of us (me, my wife and son) will watch a classic movie. We have been going through the Hollywood canon during the pandemic and that has included, recently, Gone with The Wind and Rebel Without a Cause.
Rewind six months and I would have been out three or four nights a week as part of my duties as arts editor. But all that came to a screaming halt when the lockdown hit. Now I am going out to shows intermittently. I’m not sure how I feel about this. To soften the blow I could wear my tartan dressing gown to the theatre. Just a thought.