Last night I went to The Theatre alone.

 

I was asked to review a play I’d written about, and the director/playwright/lead actor set aside a seat for me. It was all very fabulous, except I felt a wee nervous about it. I’d never reviewed an actual play before (mostly because I don’t count Cats as a play and also because only three people read my bitter rant, so it hardly qualifies as a review), and this play was all about Shakespeare, no less.

 

My first experience to Shakespeare was a vague awareness of the great Leo Dicaprio in the 90s. I would watch Ten Things I Hate About You as oblivious to its Shakespearean roots as I was to its dick jokes. And it wasn’t some time after I watched Cher Horwitz cream that self-righteous, shitty-cap-wearing pimple of Josh’s college girlfriend about Hamlet with her extensive Mel Gibson knowledge, that I understood what they were talking about.

 

Yep. My only experience with Shakespeare was rather through the pop culture filter that happens to colour all facets of my ungodly life.

 

So knowing I was probably going to write my review to include the line “well I remember Mel Gibson accurately” didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence that I would pen something anyone would respect. But it turns out that wasn’t the only aspect of this development that would throw me into turmoil, and I didn’t realise it until I was standing uncomfortably in the theatre foyer by my lonesome.

 

Everyone likes to think they are capable of being alone, what with all these affirmations about being independent women and not needing a man and wild ideas about birth control and such. But the truth is, sometimes it can be uncomfortable to be alone. All the single ladies is a formidable force, but being a singular single lady doesn’t leave you with much to do when you show up half an hour early for a play and don’t know any bastard.

 

I don’t often have a problem with being on my own, but that’s usually when I have something to do, like read a newspaper or eat. The only thing I could do in this situation was wait; I’d already been to the ladies room and picked out my seat. So I did what any self-respecting/self-loathing millennial would do – I started playing on my phone. I didn’t have anything to do or anyone to talk to, but I didn’t want these strangers thinking I was big old loser. If there’s anything I’ve learnt in my life as a womanfolk, it’s that the opinions of people who don’t know you and will most likely never interact with you in any way matter. And yes, everyone in the room IS looking at you and wondering what the fuck you are doing. Obviously. They have nothing else going on in their shallow, meaningless lives so clearly they’ll be wanting to direct all their attention your way.

 

So, with this in mind, it’s important to know that you can’t just “play on your phone” when you’re alone in a public place; you have to make it look like you’re doing something either salaciously social or completing important tasks.

 

Because if you’re just mindlessly scrolling on Facebook, you’re a loser. And you can’t just sit there pouring through meme after meme because you won’t look overly cool sniggering to yourself. I should know, every time I find myself loitering outside the courthouse waiting for a family or child court matter to finish I inevitably wind up looking at funny dog pictures in Instagram chuckling to myself like a brightly-dressed Disney villain who has finally hatched a fool proof plan for evil. You don’t realise you’re doing it until an impressive police prosecutor or well-dressed solicitor looks at you with a mix of confusion, amusement and contempt and you can feel the judgement searing through the back of your skull, frying your brain and basting it in the juices of shame. Your head becomes a mid-sized pot roast of indignity. It’s difficult for me to give off a professional vibe at the best of times (my liberal use of the word “dingbat” perhaps doesn’t help) but after I’ve been caught snickering to myself I may as well be wearing denim shorts and sporting a tattoo that says “family”.

 

You’ve got to be texting someone. I don’t care who, as long as they’ll text back within about 30 seconds to two minutes. Fire off a message to that douchbanana somehow got your number and tells you about how much they hate Tinder and want a girlfriend but can’t get one because girls are too stuck up these days (when the real reason they don’t lave a life partner is because they are about as exciting as a bottle of whiteout and except a girlfriend to solve all their problems) if you have to. I don’t fucking care. You need to look like you’re having a witty exchange with someone, not like you’re texting someone anxiously trying to work out where the shit there are. You don’t want people to think you’re being stood up by your dreamboat. Because no one wants strangers who they’ll never talk to and probably won’t see ever again to think they’ve been stood up. The trick here is to keep a nuetral, slightly smiley expression on your face, and put your phone face down every now and then so people can’t see if you’ve actually got a text to respond to or not. And, for the love of all things holy, don’t fake an overreaction laugh to a text – people can smell a bogus LOL a mile away.

 

The other alternative is to look like you’re actioning important business emails which you’ve only just been able to get to because you’ve been so busy with business and they’re from international business people doing business in different time zones and you simply can’t ignore them because you need to consult them on business matters. For all intensive purposes, you’re a business woman, and by god do you need your own personal assistant. To differentiate your “emailing” from “texting”, all you need to do is furrow your brow and channel your inner Angelica Pickles’ mum from The Rugrats – no one actually knew what the lady did, but no one questioned how much of an important businesswoman she was.

 

Last night I decided to combine the witty exchange and business woman technique. As I was technically there for work purposes, I felt like I could swing the business angle by texting myself notes about the play to include in my review (texting yourself is excellent practice for remembering stuff and saving all your hilarious jokes you thought up when you were alone to use when there are people around you want to impress). These texts to me included:

 

Me to me: Tswiz bad Blood remix (a note about the music)

 

Me to me: There are rappers

 

Me to me: Does the original song actually have rappers? Endeavour to find out (here’s the call to action – which what businesswomen thrive on)

 

But I also went with the witty exchange option, because I was seated be that time and decided there could be nosy people behind me reading my texts. Obviously they would be, because I know I would try to read what the grown woman in front of me wearing buns in her hair like she was godamned Scary Spice was texting if she was indeed sending a message of some kind. So I messaged the one person I knew would be doing nothing on a Saturday night: my married sister. The exchange went something like this:

 

Me to Married Sister: So I am seeing a play tonight to review for the paper and I didn’t have time to smash a few chicken goujons beforehand.

 

Me to Married Sister: I’m fanging for a nugg

 

Me to Married Sister: I really hope this doesn’t skew my thoughts on the production.

 

Me to Married Sister: This is a variable the director could not control.

 

Thankfully, about two minutes later the lights went down and I no longer needed pretend I wasn’t uncomfortable on my own because the play started. As an added bonus, looking back at those final few texts has given me an idea of how to frame my review: whether it was worth skipping dinner for. Shall I compare thee to a chicken nugget?

 

Let’s see if it gets past the editor.