Busje komt zo

Buses are a necessary part of Sydney life and inspire rage and romance in equal measure. A group of Australia's impressive award-winning and emerging playwrights have collaborated to create a unique show inspired by conversations, scenes from the bus window, overseen text messages or perhaps the person sitting across from them on the 428 bus from Circular Quay to Canterbury.

Mr. Zitnie and I had our share of public transport (which includes suffering for 10 straight hours in a ramshackle Vietnamese bus, cramping my neck in an attempt to avoid the huge smelly feet from the guy behind me – and, as a bonus, finding a flea-parade in my blanket).

In the mood for a good laugh over recognizable bus-misery, we had to go and see this show in the Sidetrack Theatre in Sydney suburb Marrickville. What is about an hour travelling from our house… by train. And it’s a good thing we totally agreed with this raving review:

Each scene finds little joys and tragedies in the commonplace; it is a meditation on the private within the communal, and variation within routine. It was worth:

• Getting terrorized by a bunch of ADHD kids and their loud and vulgar dad.
  
  
• Almost stepping into a splash of vomit looking for a vacant seat (and it wasn’t even 10 pm; sometimes you really can’t tell whether you’re in Liverpool UK or Sydney AUS).
  
  
• Facing the hostile looks of this rather scary woman, who most likely aimed for a gothic damsel look but took the ‘let’s tighten up that corset and push those hooters as far up as they will possibly go!’ a little too far: so her little – black smudged – eyes peaked just over a gigantic mountain of flesh and made her appear more like a clam than a damsel. Hopefully that made her angry; not my fascinated staring.
  
  
• The whole range of annoying, disturbing, frightening and traumatizing pinpricks.

Unfortunately, this 'necessary part of Sydney life' only inspires me to rage (and not 'romance in equal measure'). Well, no need for that either, since I am a married woman. But some positive inspiration would be a welcome change. Makes me think of something our friend Edward Spence said to me: ‘Try to see it from an anthropological perspective. You find it interesting and even amusing’.

Wise counsels like these in combination with public transport, will ensure me of inspiration for at least a year. So next time an obese, sweaty, heavily breathing and pushy hooligan squeezes in beside me: feel free to land on my lab mate, and don’t try to hold that beer-fart. That will give me something to write about!