Surprise Find

The rehearsal rooms at the Brisbane Arts Theatre are full of broken couches. I'm reasonably proud of the fact that at least two of them were destroyed during the first run of He Died With a Felafel in His Hand earlier this year. The poor things couldn't stand up to the amount of jumping, climbing, romping and dancing that occured on them nightly for six weeks.

Still, they retain some structural integrity - enough for us to rehearse on them as we prepare for the January revival of the show. By the way, did you know you can book your tickets online right now?

This evening, we were going through the police raid scene - which sees the Fat Cop and Chook characters threaten JB and The Decoy. At one point, Shaun - who plays JB - was in place hiding behind the couch. We've yet to assemble all of our props, so have been miming most things. But all of a sudden there was a triumphant cry, and Shaun's head emerged from behind the crapped-out lounge.

In his hand was a joint. Well, a FAKE joint, containing marshmallow leaf or whatever it was our resourceful deputy stage manager sourced to simulate marijuana in the show.

The joint was one of many "spares" taped to the back of the couch, readily available for actors to grab should they find themselves accidentally drug-free.

THE DAMN THING HAD BEEN THERE SINCE MAY.

In He Died With a Felafel in His Hand and The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco, John Birmingham references the Legendary Lost Tab of Acid - an LSD tab once hidden in a freezer, which is still raided every now and then by desperate hopefuls looking for a fix.

This was the theatrical stage-prop version of the Lost Tab of Acid - the Forgotten Fake Joint.

Honestly, I've never seen a man look happier. For all you could tell from Shaun's expression, he may as well have found a real one.

Unless they weren't using marshmallow leaf after all...