The countdown is on! Two weeks til take off…

This time two weeks from now, we’ll all be sleeping like babies, bags packed and ready to get to the airport at 5.30am for our flight to the UK. Right…? Let’s hope so.

We shouldn’t need to have last minute panics. We’ve paid our bills, we sent out the production schedule to the Lady team today, collateral printing will be ordered tomorrow and our farewell gigs are already sold out! But, anything is possible when you consider that both Phoebe and I have been kept up at night worrying about Really Important Things like what shoes to take, whether or not we need to purchase a first aid kit (Phoebe insists we do), pros/cons of purchasing toiletries at home or on arrival and whether or not bribing potential audience in box office queues with cupcakes will seem charming or desperate.

Plus, I decided that two weeks out was a good time to change the script and add in a new song. We work well under pressure, ok? And once you hear Jenni and Libby make sweet musical love to Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness, you’ll know it was worth it. As an aside, Try a Little Tenderness was the closing song in the first show Phoebe and I ever worked on together, a production of Jim Cartwright’s Road at The Ponton Theatre in Bathurst in 2003! A little blackcat history for ya.

That’s it for tonight. I won’t regale you with the joys of scheduling, the fine art of writing pack lists during work meetings or the recipes I am compiling in my head for ‘healthy, wholesome food one can eat on the go’. We’ll save that for the next blog…

xxx Maeve and the blackcat team

End-of-financial year plea for donations!

Well, it’s the final week of the financial year and just four and a half weeks til we set off on our grand Edinburgh Fringe adventure. We couldn’t be reaching this amazing dream were it not for the buckets of support from all of you thus far. Thank you SO much, we can’t express how grateful we are.

This email is just a quick plea for tax deductible donations to help with our final tour expenses. We’re still listed as an eligible arts project on the Australian Cultural Fund through the Australian Business Arts Foundation, so any donations made are tax deductible.

We still have to pay outstanding marketing and accommodation bills, as well as ridiculous amounds of excess baggage costs for Lauren’s cymbals so any donation, no matter how small, will help us on our way.

You can read more about the fund here.

You can donate online here.

xxx the blackcat team

So busy we forgot to blog… On the road to Edinburgh #2

Wow, what a big 6 weeks we have ahead of us! Not long now before we set off. The Ladies behind the scenes (Phoebe and our amazing production assistants, Karly and Erin) have been busy booking accommodation, paying all our bills, booking epic bus trips (trains are for schmucks! schmucks who can afford them…), hiring microphones, weighing boxes of CDs to work out excess baggage, purchasing a drum kit (hoping we can sell it afterwards!), and debating the merits of various badge sizes so the Edinburgh streets can be filled with people proudly sporting Lady Sings it Better badges on their happy little chests! It’s a glamourous life we lead…

We’ve got some really exciting gigs coming up. First up, we can’t wait to sing with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir on June 30 at their SGLC Pops Out! concert. Apart from the obvious draw card, namely Sydney’s 21 yr old stalwart of the GLBTQI community, the choir itself, here are a few more reasons to come:

  • Maeve’s mum, Louise, is in the choir. Two Marsdens: one stage. Bring it!
  • For those of you who have been listening to our rendition of You Shook Me All Night Long for the past 3 years, you must come see our seriously pimped version, completely with choral chorus amazingness.
  • We get to sing a song by a woman! It’s a song from the choir’s repertoire and, let’s just say, it’s fabulous *cough* Whitney *cough cough*
  • It’s Jenni and Monique’s Lady debut! Fabulous!

Book tickets to SGLC Pops Out! here.

In mid-July, we’re road trippin’ to Mittagong to sing at a conference. You can’t come as it’s a private party, but we just love that we’re considered appropriate for government conferences. The public sector is all grown up and sexy now!

Finally, if you’ve even glanced at our facebook page in recent weeks, you know our exciting farewell gig sold out its Friday 20th July show in a mere 5 days. We were so excited we scheduled a Thursday gig as well; it’s about 40% sold, but you can still book tickets here, on the Factory website.

Last but not least, we ain’t to proud to beg! We could really do with a little cash injection as the end of financial year approaches… As we’ve mentioned before we are currently eligible for TAX DEDUCTIBLE donations. A small (or not-so-small) donation via ABaF’s Australian Cultural Fund will make a huge difference to our fundraising and help send us on our way. You can read more about the process here, or simply head to our ABaF profile and donate!

Thank you SO MUCH to those who have donated so far. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate the support we get from our friends and fans.

So that’s the latest from blackcat HQ… What’s been happening with you?

xxx

Help us win $5K with one click!

We’ve entered Suncorp’s 5 Grand Helping Hand, a competition to win a $5K small business grant! There’s a people’s choice category, which means you can help us win with one small click!

You don’t need to enter personal information or do anything complicated, just click ‘vote’!

$5K is 3 flights to Edinburgh! Or all of our marketing! Or half of our accommodation! You get the picture…

Here’s the link: www.suncorpbankhelpinghand.com.au/vote-for/blackcat-productions/

It only takes a moment. Please help us out!

Thank you to our first donors!

We’re thrilled to have received generous tax deductible donations from Siegrun Krauss, Dinah Cohen, Stephen Buckley, Tim Jorgensen and Elaine McCarthy.

Thank you all so much! We’re enormously grateful.

To donate to Lady Sings it Better and help send us to the Edinburgh Fringe, please visit our ABaF profile here.

Read more about the Australian Cultural Fund and our project here.

xxx the blackcat team