Like most people here and in England, I’m not all that bothered about your wedding. When Diana (sorry to bring her up – is the whole wearing your dead mother-in-law’s ring thing a bit weird?) got married, she seemed to want the carriage, puffy sleeve dress, flag-waving northerners and all that palava. But you seem a bit embarrassed by it all and that makes the rest of us uncomfortable. Frankly you’re a bit too ordinary. I know you’re a commoner like me, but I worked in PR with people posher than you. I get more glitz and glamour from an episode of the Real Housewives (except for the bints of New Jersey).

Plus, no matter how big and royal your wedding is, it will never top mine. Especially as you’ve chosen to spend your last night before becoming Diana at the Goring Hotel. Sorry, but we did that 12 years and 5 days ago.

When I say we, it was actually just me plus two pregnant bridesmaids in a junior suite. Erik stayed at our flat 2 miles away, thus saving us a year’s salary in hotel charges.

In fact we went a step further than you and had our whole wedding reception at the Goring AND spent our honeymoon night there. Tons better than Buckingham Palace as it’s a shorter walk to the Orange Brewery where we ended up after the wedding reception. From there it was an easy stumble back to the hotel, pausing only for Erik to pee in the bushes. Which I’m strictly not allowed to mention.

But I admire your similar taste, as the Goring is a fantastic hotel. Loads of famous people have stayed there. I read that your grandmother-in-law, the Queen Mother went there on one of her last outings before death. They say you can sometimes get the waft of gin and Werthers Originals down the third floor hallway.

Do you know about the Goring Hotel sheep? Very famous for them. Old man Goring collected stuffed sheep and put them in the guest and public rooms. In our brochure it said that Mr Goring used to go around the rooms fluffing up the sheep. I’m not sure if sheep-fluffing would be as acceptable today as it once was. Perhaps at Balmoral.

So is the Goring going to start charging ridiculous money to sleep in your room? Will scores of Japanese tourists be asking for the Kate suite? Here’s where I wish you were a bit more boozy/trashy/Fergie-like so the chambermaids could make some money from your morning-after room. Are we allowed to call them chambermaids anymore?  I’ll freely admit that my pre-wedding night with two preggo bridesmaids was pretty sedate. Hot tea and lots of peeing.

And one final tip, if you need a drink to steady your nerves, the Goring Hotel bar is excellent, lots of leather chairs and more sheep. And the best cheese straws you’ll ever have. And they’re free!

Anyway, that’s it really. Just wanted to let you know why I won’t be watching you on BBC America, starting at 3am Eastern time. And I’m attaching a few photos from our bash at the Goring,  just in case you want to see what 5 thousand quid used to buy you.

Anyway, good luck with the whole not-being-Diana thing

MG

Click on photo to see full image.

Sundays in England are of course heinous with or without church. Songs of Praise and Antiques Roadshow kick off the evening’s TV viewing even though we could have watched live lambing on BBC2. Comedic relief was provided by my mother’s commentary on the news as delivered by the Daily Telegraph. Regular outbursts of ‘disgraceful’ were followed by the occasional ‘what are they messing around at?’. Mainly directed at the Japanese.

Today being Mothering Sunday, Lenham church was fuller than usual. Must have been at least 50 people in the congregation, so about the size of the average American church clergy. Fortunately it wasn’t a communion service so I didn’t have to awkwardly lurk in the pew during the bread and wine bit. In its place was a Family service which meant an influx of ginger-haired churchy children, all girls, with home-school haircuts and party dresses with over-sized bows.

As a special treat, the Lenham primary school choir would apparently be performing a few songs. However, the vicar’s wife explained, it would only be half the choir as the other half had all gone to a birthday party. This seemed highly unlikely at 11am on Mothering Sunday and raised the question of why the remainder of the choir didn’t go as well. Were they not invited? Well, who really wants a ginger with an extreme fringe/bangs spoiling their party?

But wait a sec, there’s an extra treat. The Lenham recorder group would also be performing. There was an audible groan, though perhaps only from me. Recorders are the children’s equivalent of the bagpipes. Skill level doesn’t matter, it’s still going to sound shrill and annoying.

Indeed it did. I have no idea what the first song was due to the piercing horror of the recorder. But the second song was helpfully pre-announced as ‘God Made A Boomerang And Called It Love (and then he threw it away)’. My chin was already wobbling with an impending giggling fit and only made worse by the demo of the physical actions we were encouraged to perform. Fifty people gesturing the throwing of a boomerang in unison gave the proceedings the feel of a Nuremburg Rally. 

Apart from that, I take issue with the general premise of the song. In this context, god is either an idiot for not realising the boomerang would come back or a narcissist who was a bit too much into self love. And the fact that he made it and then threw it away suggests he wasn’t particularly happy with his efforts. Perhaps he was trying to create a Love Spear but got distracted? 

After this treat I was hoping we might continue the g’day-god theme with other Aussie classics such as ‘Stuck Up A Gum Tree With Jesus’ or ‘God Made The Wallaby So He Can’t Be All Bad’.

Instead we got a rousing chorus of ‘He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands’ with more of the hand gesturing, though this time it was less nazi and more Village People. In case the Stepford children felt underused or perhaps to take their mind off the party they hadn’t been invited to, they were given various instruments of percussion/torture. They happily played along to the beats that didn’t exist in the melody. More ill-disguised giggling as coughing.

Finally, saving the best till last, we had the saying of the peace. This is a modern invention which should only be inflicted by churches with rock bands and jumbotrons. It  involves the hideous practice of giving those around you the sign of the peace – not the Churchillian V sign but the limp shaking of the hand of those around you while mumbling ‘peace be with you’ or just ‘peace’ if you’re feeling lazy. It’s an entirely awkward process with no formal rules, though I’ll admit that shaking hands with my mother did feel oddly appropriate and reassuring that, despite her illness, some things in our relationship hadn’t changed.

London Calling is a great album to listen to when you’re in a pissed off, angry, self-destructive mood and want to go back to the days of 1979 when you first heard The Clash. Or at least would have heard, had you not been playing Fat Bottomed Girls and Bicycle Race on constant repeat.

I did own a pirated copy of London’s Calling on cassette tape when I was in college. ‘Working for the Clampdown’ is a great student song, all about the perils of capitalism and fighting the status quo — the societal norm, not the Rick Parfitt/ Frances Rossi duo. I’m sure I would have agreed, had I not recently seen Wall Street at the cinema and found ‘greed is good’ to be a bit more of a catchy soundbite. Always the trouble with the socialists, from Marx on they’ve been long-winded and media unfriendly.

But I do remember the line from the Clash that ‘anger can be power’ and it came back to me today so I had to look it up, which then led to playing the album which then led to not doing the things I was supposed to, which then forced me to lie in bed and start writing which I’ve been meaning to do for ages, which then energized me for the rest of the day. So yes, angry = power = doing stuff.

Unnecessary long way of saying that I have finally started a new script for a play that has already premiered in my head to incredible critical acclaim, thus ensuring that anything I write will not match up to this standard.

I’ve wanted to write something about aging and old people and nursing homes and death and destruction for quite some time. Less of the destruction perhaps, but it’s still going on the show poster so I can draw in a younger crowd. Having worked in a nursing home for over a year I’ve got plenty of material. I’ve experienced things that have made me laugh my arse off, made me cry, made me shudder and made me kick a brick wall, which pissed me off because it hurt like a bugger and scuffed my shoe.

So my play will be an amalgamation of all those things, maybe without the scuffing. It will certainly have teeth — unlike most of the old people, ha ha, just a sample of the incredible writing you can expect. Erik and I went to see a play at Fronterafest this year about ‘Seniors’ and it was complete wank. Full of stereotyped characters who had trouble reading things or hearing properly. Apparently hilarious to everyone but us. I have too much to say to squander an opportunity onstage like that. Not that I want to get on my soapbox either and bang on about how badly we treat the elderly. I mean we do, but the elderly can be mean old bastards sometimes too.

And talking of mean old bastards, there’s always god. I was looking up ‘Anger is Power’ on google and there was a link to some line in the bible that says ‘Who knoweth the power of thine anger; for your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you’. According to the handy translation this means:

‘the cutting down of whole generations of people – of nations – of hundreds of million of human beings – of the great, the powerful, the mighty, as well as the weak and the feeble, is an amazing exhibition of the “power” – of the might – of God’.

Well I guess that’s one way to justify  the crap in the world. Some twat pissed god off and now we all have to pay. I guess Pat Robertson is even closer to god than we knew. Looks like Haiti really did bring it on themselves. See, thanks to god I’m now getting angry again. But unlike god, I shall use it only for my own personal gain and glory.

I now await my smiting.

Almost every building here seems to have been converted from something else, in most cases an old gas station or grain store. And the gas stations that still look like gas stations can’t be entirely trusted. You have to peer inside first, just in case you’re bumbling into some modern art installation that everyone but you knows about it.

And that’s how Marfa feels to me. Like everyone knows but nobody tells. It’s a cool town but with a real ‘take or leave me’ vibe. There’s few concessions made to tourism – the restaurants, if you can find them, don’t post any business hours and when they do, there’s a good chance they’ll have been changed. ‘Open on sundays? Yeah we used to, but now it’s just the first sunday of any month starting with a J’

I blame James Dean. This is the town where Giant was filmed and the whole cast and crew stayed at the Paisano Hotel. Clearly James Dean set the tone for Marfa and instead of selling tacky souvenirs to commemorate him, the Marfians chose attitude. It wouldn’t have happened if they’d shot some dorky film like National Lampoons Vacation. Nobody would come here just to stay in the same bed as the Griswolds or drive around looking for the exact spot where the family had the hilarious encounter with the hitchhiking pig.**

After James Dean came Donald Judd, minimalist artist who pretty much seemed to own the town as his name is on virtually every building. Not being a big fan of the whole modern art scene (preferring a nice bit of IKEA circa 1990 myself) we skipped the Chinati foundation and the Prada store and found our own incongruity in a dive bar with old pinball and Atari games, that also served fantastic food.

Judd came to Marfa from New York and obviously inspired other New Yorkers to do the same. The restaurant Cochineal is listed as a must for dinner. The owners’ former restaurant in New York earned a Michelin star but Cochineal has yet to receive one, perhaps due to its unwillingness to post hours or employ staff that dare to make eye contact.

But for all this, I’m fascinated by Marfa. The architecture is amazing and we spent the morning wandering around taking photos of nearly every building we passed. The streets are incredibly wide and there’s little traffic or noise. We did laundry this afternoon in the least depressing laundrette I’ve ever been in, which is also attached to a coffee shop serving Bluebell ice-cream. I rather like the fact that we can’t quite figure the place out. I even like my inability to come up with a suitably witty rhyming word for Marfa. I may also have to watch Giant again.

Our next stop is Guadalupe State Park for a bit of camping. Our original plan was Big Bend but we’re a bit concerned about the high temperatures. When I write high temperatures, I really mean Mexican bandits. Being kidnapped and/or shot is my new fear, ranking second only to having my ear ripped off by a bear. Most likely my right one, due to it’s protrusive nature.

**That may or may not have happened in the film as I’ve never made it through the whole thing. And I know you may have that loved that movie, but it inspired ‘RV’ with Robin Williams, so shut it.

I somehow made a non-verbal agreement that would allow me to love a dog completely and unconditionally for just over 9 years, blotting out any thought of her passing. In return, on her sudden death, I would experience pain and sadness at a depth I never truly expected and which couldn’t be bypassed or speeded up. Wish I’d just agreed to trade my soul,

Quite what the devil gets from this I don’t know. I thought devils made you do bad but fun things like eat cake or do coke or call in sick while watching Bravo reruns. When did the devil become all schadenfreude-nistic? Over the last few years I’ve had entirely logical conversations with friends about the short lives of dogs. I’ve talked about the trips Erik and I would take after Storm was gone. I’ve berated Erik when he’s talked about how devastated he’d be without Storm and how it’s something we need to anticipate and plan for.

But thanks to my devilish agreement, I never really believed it would happen. Storm didn’t slow down, she didn’t show any signs of aging apart from getting the clowny white face that all Goldens get. She was a little more needy in recent months, a little more sensitive if one of us swore or cried or she sensed any tension between us. But the nights when she sat on the sofa between us as we watched TV were some of the best moments we three spent together. No matter whether I ended up with her head or her butt in my lap.

I realise that I had no true comprehension of grief. When my father died it was a shock, but also a relief. He was no longer the man he wanted to be and there were few cherished sofa memories, save for him snoring into the pillow after a hefty sunday lunch while Antiques Roadshow bleated on in the background. When any of our childhood dogs died, my parents took them on their last car ride to the vet, came home, put away the food bowls and the bedding and never said another word about them.

But I loved Storm so much. There it is, in simple language. I don’t know why it was so hard to say publicly when she was alive. It’s ok to say you love your kids, or (if you’re not British) your parents. But to say you really love your dog sounds a little weird and more in the realm of spinsters and cats. Erik and I would sometimes have those moments where we’d look at Storm and marvel that we had an animal living with us in the house. Was she a child substitute? Maybe, but not really because that would suggest I ever wanted children and most people know my feelings on that. Thank god/Faust that I didn’t make the pact where I lose a dog and gain a baby.

So was it worth it? Of course it was. I told Storm every day that I loved her, but words didn’t matter to her, actions did. Love me? Prove it – give me an ice cube/pork treat/almond. Play tug with my rope/hedgehog/bear. But all that time, from when she was a bundle of fur at 7 weeks old, that bastard was just sitting there, gleefully, saying ‘enjoy her now because when you least expect it…’

I’ve never been a fan of those sappy posts that circulate around Facebook or forwarded emails that tell some sorrowful tale of a mother/sister/friend that has cancer or some other insidious disease and urges you at the end to call a family member and tell them you love them, before it’s too late. If I can’t muster the compassion to do that on my own, then some random urging alongside a picture of a polar bear cuddling an orphaned penguin isn’t going to work. But seeing people out with their dogs today made me angry and jealous. Dogs dragged away from some great sniffing opportunity; dogs forced to keep up with their owner running on the trail in the heat. A dog left to amuse itself at the park while the owner sat in his car talking on the phone.

Kids, cats, dogs or other beloveds. We’ve all made some kind of pact. You may just not realise it yet.

It’s not a bad review, in fact it’s a pretty decent and fair one, especially in the first half. He ignores a lot of the opening night mishaps and has given me plenty to think about if I decide to restage the show. Plus he uses words like ‘brave’ and ‘delightful’ and calls it an ‘impressive solo performance’, which of course will feature heavily in any future Gallant promotions, regardless of the activity.

Most important to me, he calls it a ‘clever and affecting script’ and that pretty much sums up my original aim. I admit that I’m not a performer at heart. For me it’s always secondary to the writing process and my commitment to acting, in terms of taking classes and improving my ‘craft’, is pretty weak. If I could get audience members to pay to come and sit in the theatre and read my script while drinking wine, I happily would. But maybe that’s not entirely true. There’s a part of me that relishes being onstage and having everyone look at me and listen to me. If only the rather pathetically insecure 13 year old me had known that. Just kidding, who would I be without my angst-ridden solo shows?

Here’s the review:

Review: Don’t Stop Me Now at City Theater

Maggie Gallant knows that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who understand their favorite band as a spiritual force that communicates important things about life to those listeners who are truly prepared to hear them, and those who don’t know anything about anything.

Don’t Stop Me Now, Gallant’s one-woman show, is a tribute to the former group. And, of course, to Queen.

Delivered as both a series of soliloquies to Freddie Mercury (and occasionally Roger Taylor) and as a handful of short scenes in which Gallant portrays every character, Don’t Stop Me Now is the story of Sonya Moore, “the number one Queen fan in the universe.” We follow her through early adolescence in the mid-70′s until the 2002 opening of We Will Rock You, the London stage musical based on the band’s music.

It’s a brave performance by Gallant, who’s unafraid to leap from character to character and scene to scene, with little in the way of exposition. She jumps from bedroom to classroom to a shopping trip with her mother, expecting the audience to follow along as she does little more than move a few feet, adjust her posture, and shift an octave in her voice as she switches from Sonya, to her class bully, to her mother. It’s a rewarding experience for an audience that might have otherwise been underestimated—the play wastes little time exploring the different facets of Sonya’s adolescence.

Gallant is subtle and insightful as she explores that adolescence as well. She intuitively transitions Sonya from a 13-year-old who wishes that Freddie Mercury was her father, to a 16-year-old with a crush on Roger Taylor, keeping the focus ostensibly on Queen, but functionally on growing up. And she’s delightful as she portrays the teenage Sonya, who’s charming, lost, and fun to watch.

It’s as Sonya grows up that the play loses momentum, and, as is the inherent risk of the one person performance, once that’s gone, there’s not really any way to bring it back. As Sonya reaches college age and justifies farting through life because Freddie Mercury was a slacker until his mid-twenties, the show starts to become a drag.

It’s clear that Gallant was a lot less confident in the latter part of the show, because the scattershot storytelling approach that made the first half so much fun is abandoned in favor of “Oh, Freddie!”-style monologues where she simply narrates how much her life has become a disappointment, rather than using the characters she’d proven so adept at creating to show us. As the show drags and becomes so focused on telling, it doesn’t play into Gallant’s strengths as a performer. It becomes frustrating to watch her pass natural ending point after natural ending point (Sonya’s graduation, Queen’s Live Aid performance, Freddie Mercury’s death, etc) in pursuit of a resolution that the lack of tension in the script never leaves the audience craving.

The Summer Acts festival at City Theater is a place to try new work, and Gallant can certainly be forgiven for putting on a show that’s conceptually strong, and a powerhouse for its first 45 minutes, but that doesn’t so much end as it farts out. At an hour, Don’t Stop Me Now might effectively highlight Gallant’s clever and affecting script and impressive solo performance, driving home its point of Sonya’s one-sided relationship with the band before it becomes exhausting. As it is, it’s not a bad play—just one in need of a radio edit.

The Summer Acts festival runs through July 19th at City Theater.

“The show is so uniformly excellent, so seamlessly integrated we hardly know where to begin describing its many virtues—”

and

“an exquisitely simple and thoughtful evening of theatre, one that will send audiences away feeling smarter than when they came in.”

Under different circumstances, my show could be described in just the same way. ‘Different circumstances’ really just being shorthand for a completely different show. Perhaps a girl who is obsessed with Shakespeare and whose decisions are influenced by the lives of his characters. WWFD. What Would Falstaff do?

I then wasted a few more hours on Google, because when you’re still having trouble remembering some of your lines and cues, there’s really no finer use of your time than trying to find shows that have had crappy reviews in order to make you feel better about your own.

I found some truly mean-spirited ones that I wouldn’t credit the reviewer by reprinting here, but I did discover this from this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, which could easily have been written for me.

“It was a very Fringe-y sort of thing. Heartfelt, clearly toiled over, a one-woman show that might otherwise never get staged. But also, we must reluctantly report, still fairly rough around the edges.”

Oh I know, I’m so self-deprecating, but if I was writing a review of my own show, it would probably read something like this (but with the addition of the words ‘funny’ and ‘British’) I’ve definitely had audience members that enjoyed the show and told me so and others who left the theatre as quickly as possible to avoid any embarrassing post-show conversations.

I thank god that I have the experience of stand-up comedy to fall back on. Not really God, as he had no hand in that, unless he controls the open mic at CapCity Comedy Club, in which case the hand of God might sit in the cash register. But as a fairly average stand-up comedian, I’m used to playing to audiences of 4 or less, to jokes being greeted with silence and to post-show pity-comments. Pity comments (named after pity-fucks of course) are the ones that people make when you and they both know that you sucked, but still want to say something nice. So I’d take the walk of shame to the bar to be greeted with variations on ‘you have such a great accent’ or ‘your hair looks great, who’s your stylist?’. (Nancy Rankin, Kemestry).

The theatrical version of pity-comments seems to relate to the number of lines I’m capable of memorising. People are apparently astonished at my ability to learn an hour’s worth of lines and in the absence of any greater apparent talent, feel this is safe ground. If only my ability to memorise things at school had been so highly praised. I’m sounding ungrateful, but it’s more just my disappointment at myself and my wish that I could dazzle audiences with something other than my (less than) perfect memory.

But back to reviewers. On opening night I was going to put up a promotional board in the lobby of the City Theatre with a poster of the hideous We Will Rock You musical and quotes from the absolutely appalling reviews it received when it first opened. These included:

‘It wasn’t just bad, it was traumatising’ – The Guardian

‘Surely they could have come up with something better than this’
- The Independent

‘Far from being guaranteed to blow your mind, We Will Rock You is guaranteed to bore you rigid’ - The Telegraph

‘..shallow, stupid and totally vacuous new musical – Daily Mail

But then Erik pointed out that people might think these were quotes about my show and so we decided not to do it. He’s usually infuriatingly right about these things. But my point was that critics and audiences rarely agree and that inspite of all the crappy reviews (and my one-woman hate campaign), We Will Rock You is still going strong 7 years later.

The truth is there’s nothing bad that a reviewer could say about the show that I haven’t already told myself over the past few weeks. And I really can’t be too concerned over what other people think, unless of course they think it’s brilliant, in which case I’ll take their opinion very seriously indeed. The fact is that I’ve taken a risk, learned a lot of frustrating lessons, lost money and done something new to scare myself.

Freddie would be proud. And probably a bit mortified. But mostly proud.

Saturday night at 10pm: the first full performance of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, to an audience of 12. A few shaky moments where I didn’t have a clue what was coming next, a few where I knew it wasn’t going right but couldn’t change it, and a few ad-libbed moments that are now part of the script. Most importantly to me, I could hear the audience laughing, not necessarily in the places I thought they would, but I learned that lesson often enough in stand-up. And no-one booed my rather horrible American accent, but I think I get a pass on this after 8 years of putting up with dreadful ‘ello Guvnor, chim-chiminey’ type greetings.

Unfortunately, one of the press reviewers was sitting right up front and in my direct eyeline so I could see him rather clearly. It’s hard to see someone making notes about something you’ve done, but not know what they’re writing. Reminds me of taking my driving test and hoping the tester was scribbling so furiously because he was so incredibly impressed at my driving skills. I remain suitably pessimistic.

Sunday evening, 6pm: Fun show, a very biased, pro-Maggie audience of around 20. Just before the show, I finally found the shoebox with all my Freddie Mercury/Queen press clippings and photos and there was a certain power in reading Freddie’s HIV statement from the original Guardian newspaper report. Made a few other mistakes, including forgetting the name of the other bloke from Van Halen and dropping one of my favourite lines, which Erik reminded me of later.

Was a bit concerned over the lack of laughter, which apparently is my version of crack, but was sort of reassured by all the positive and generous comments from friends after. Audiences should be aware that unfortunately, your performer cannot hear you smile, even if it’s an all-out grin.  Erik had at one point offered to run a laugh track from the sound booth, but only to be played when he felt I really deserved it. When I used to do stand-up at the Velveeta Room, the manager Dana, would ding a bell on the bar if a line was particularly funny, or spectactularly bad. The little dings were almost more rewarding than the pay, which was just as well. Comedy rarely pays. Unlike crime.

I’m just happy to get this show started and genuinely quite proud of how quickly this has all come together. Most artists like to brag about how long it’s taken and how hard they’ve worked to bring their vision to the stage. Robert Faires, Chronicle Arts bloke, has apparently been preparing his current one man play about Henry V, for 20 years. I started working on my script for Don’t Stop Me Now in mid April 2009. Robert Faires probably wasn’t still trying to funny-up his script or wondering if he had too many light cues, in the week before he opened .

Maybe in 20 years, when the hideous We Will Rock You musical finally comes to an end  and I get to stage ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ without having to worry about infringing rights and depriving Roger and Brian of a few more quid, I’ll look back to this week with a mix of nostalgia and embarrassment. Yes of course people will still know who Queen are in 2029. If old Henry V can still be relevant when it’s hundreds of years since he died and he didn’t even bother writing any songs, then the creator of Bohemian Rhapsody and the best band ever, can’t possibly be forgotten.

Come and see the show before I completely rewrite it. Or go to Henry V, apparently it’s V. good.

Freddie Mercury had it all:- fame; fortune; adoration; a dodgy moustache.
And now you can too — here’s how:

1. Having an overbite gives you a natural Freddie Mercury advantage. If you’re already blessed with one, chuck out the braces and delight in your mild speech impediment. But careful with the BJs, you don’t want to be known as the potato peeler. Or carrot grater, onion skinner, shaft shucker, etc.

2. Black eyeliner will give you that 70s Freddie glam rock look. However, if you’re under 30 you may be mistaken for an Adam Lambert groupie. Over 30 and you’ll be taken for the sad old twat that you are.

3. Tell people you’re bisexual. Everyone will know this really just means gay but it makes you a lot more palatable to the phobics if you also claim to like vag.

4. Burst into impromptu falsetto scales when in a group of 3 or more people, no matter where you are. And never leave home without your sawn-off microphone stand with which you can perform lewd sexual gestures.

5. Go through your day with the Flash Gordon theme playing constantly in your head. You’ll get everything done faster and you may actually save the world.

6. Quote endlessly from Queen song lyrics, starting each sentence with “as Freddie would say…”. People always love that.

7. If, like Freddie, you were cursed at birth with an ethnic name (Farrouk Bulsara), go ahead and change it. Take the first name of your favorite horror film character (Freddy, Jason, Michael, Hannibal, Chucky) and one of the planets for your last name. You’ll sound so much cooler (and shaggable) as Jason Jupiter.

8. Write one of the best-selling singles of all time. And take the secret of its meaning to your grave.

9. Live a fabulous life and never give a toss about what anyone thinks about you. Especially the critics.

‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, a new play about an obsessive Freddie Mercury fan, who bases her life’s decisions on WWFD (What Would Freddie Do?). The City Theatre, 3823 Airport Blvd, Austin. Opens Saturday July 11 at 10pm

www.maggiegallant.com/wwfd for performance times and tickets.

Less than two weeks till the opening of my new show, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. I’m strangely calm. Strange in that, I’m still messing around with the script; haven’t recorded any of the sound cues; am having trouble channelling my inner American teenager and haven’t figured out an effective replacement for the Queen songs I was going to play, until EMI told me I wasn’t.

On the positive side, I have a Rubik’s cube, an avocado green rotary dial phone, a Freddie Mercury doll and a Raleigh Chopper bike. I’m also learning the choreography to Hey Mickey, for no other reason than it’s a distraction from working on my lines. Thank god I’m the director.

The show is a bit in the vein of my old nemesis, Gemma Wilcox or GW. Not literally in it, because her vein would probably be icy cold and filled with poisonous venom, but in the sense of it having multi-character scenes like her FronteraFest show. In non-wanky talk, this means that in parts of the show I play two characters in dialogue with each other and switch between them. Gemma made it look easy, I on the other hand shall prove to the audience just how difficult it really is and how much practice is required to pull it off.

If you’re a Queen fan, you should definitely come to the show. Unless you’re also a fan of the ‘We Will Rock You’ musical that’s still plaguing London. And if you don’t like Queen, at least there’s none of their damn awful songs in the show. Thanks again EMI.

Tickets and more info at www.maggiegallant.com/wwfd