fringeblog: personal

Oh my GOODNESS! In four months I will be teching my new one-woman show at Chippen St Theatre!

One of the easiest decisions so far has been to put on “Personal” at a space with a serious commitment to accessibility. I’ve known the theatre’s passionate, efficient, thoughtful venue manager for a while. Barbara Chmiel got her Stage Management qualification from AFTT (now JMC Acting), studying under the great Farlie Goodwin.

Over the last couple of years she has been building up what amounts to a new music and theatre space in inner-city Chippendale, under the auspices of the Sydney Eisteddfod, which has its new home at Chippen St. Barbara’s lived experience has informed the developing refit, so that the space has a genuinely accessible toilet, as well as flat entry from the lift. It has a lobby space too, which I think is critical for the comfort of the audience and the specialness of the performance space.

Also it has a brand-new Kawai grand piano. It’s awe-inspiring. It got noticeably more fun to play after it had been in the space for a year - the action and the pedal were somehow a tiny bit gentler, so that it still has all the clarity and force of a new instrument, but feels less stringent and alarming somehow. I’m no pianist, really, but I feel like that beautiful Kawai is going to be magically playing itself by September!