Not to brag, but I used to be a star. That’s right…I starred in the very first ever Melbourne-based production of Bats, the stunning musical covering the terrible years when baseball was becoming popular in America and there was a crucial aluminium shortage. What a timeless love story, and a tale for the ages! Those were some of the best years of my life, obviously, even though we ended up performing the play 3462 times and sometimes I still wake up screaming the lyrics to my solo. But it was a solo!

Those were the days, back in the theatre boom of Melbourne. Makeup courses were eagerly sought after by young girls across the whole city, because they’d do anything to get a part of the action. I became a celebrity, of course…I couldn’t even slip into an American-style diner without someone asking for my autograph, or asking me to hum a few bars of my main song. The newspapers would run stories about me and my fellow cast members, speculating on our romances and what we did in our spare time. I’m so glad people have moved on from such things nowadays, because it was really a lot of nonsense.

I think perhaps the beauty industry is still going strong, however. They keep bringing out new and improved versions of what we used to have, and then I’ve heard that makeup artists of today working on the same musical take much less time than they used to. Or maybe the methods have just gotten a bit more efficient. Bats was quite involved in the makeup department, especially since my role was that of a rich, eccentric girlfriend to one of the main players, and I had to be all made up like a cat the whole time. Sometimes I can still feel the cat makeup on my face, especially since it took about four hours to apply each time. Twice a day! And that doesn’t include washing it off. I hope beauty therapy courses nowadays are careful about only employing people with patience. That business just eats up the hours.

-Stella