The Catastrophist – Celebrating our Love Neuroses
You know when you sometimes look around your friendship circles and think, wow, I am really lucky to know and hang around with such a pack of gosh darned legends? This happens to me all the time, but it really struck me a few months back when my lovely friend Katie decided that she wanted to put on a one woman show.
I'll preface this with the fact, that she is bloody talented, has a good set of pipes on her and a wonderful acting ability, it's not like I announced this and then went on to put on a show for a week that mostly involved me trembling in the wings from stage fright. She is a bona fide funny lady.
When I learned what the show was actually going to be about, I fell in love even more. A show about her coming out as a catastrophist, her definition, a person who over thinks absolutely everything to the point of driving herself bonkers.
Love finding, as we all know all too well, is one of those things that we can 100% catastrophise (she made up so many great words I could barely keep up!). Why haven't we heard from someone? Will they line up a second date? Did I have too many wines and talk too much about animal videos on the internet? Dating can drive you completely mad, it can be isolating and it can often make you question yourself big time.
Katie's show is a show that everyone should have seen. For current daters, it gave you a sense of 'thank crumbs this shiz is not just happening to me' for couples it gave you a sense of 'Crumbs, I remember those days!' and for everybody it made you laugh til a little pee came out and ooh and ahh over the genuine sweetness of the whole damn thing.
A real highlight for me was Katie's song "15 pounds away from my love". A ditty about a dude that decided Katie was fantastic, but could be even more so with 15 pounds less on her VERY tiny little frame as is. It made me giggle no end about this complete bag of d*cks that she described so well in detail, back handed compliments and all and blissfully ended with her running into him at Chadstone shopping centre, where she delightedly saw he was now '50 pounds away from HER love'. Genius.
Her serenading her hot Italian masseuse a definite highlight and her stories of boys behaving badly were cleverly outlined in all gory detail for us. But perhaps my favourite part was when Katie wrapped up telling a dates gone bad story and went into this lovely little monologue about embracing the good and the bad of dating, having fun and trying to keep your heart open, breaking into Kiss Me, the ever cutesy romantic song that won us over during Dawson Creek days and still makes me giddy with glee.
It was a self-deprecating marvel at the dating world, but more importantly it was a show about being open to searching for someone special. I know there were periods there for me when dating when I felt so very down about the lack of prospects and hope for love and I would have loved to have seen this show back then to give me a giggle and also to keep trucking on.
It kind of took all those stories you share with your friends, the good and the bad and made them ever more entertaining. Sometimes when we are dating we forget to celebrate the successes and only ever gravitate towards the miserable and funny stories, Katie took the bad and made them oh so good, but also let everyone know that it's OK to be open and to have shiz experiences, but to learn how to bounce back from them.
I feel so slack writing this blog now, because the show is over and you won't all get a chance to see it. But I am hoping that by writing this it gives her a little nudge to either put on an encore that we can all see again or and maybe both, start to write the next one… subtle as a sledge hammer.
I'll be sure to spread the word far and wide when either or all this happens. In the meantime, you're a legend, Kates! Keep bringing us so much joy! xo
