Dont Quit Your Day Job Review by Phaedra Brown

This show follows twenty-something besties Grace and Ruby as they prepare for the event of the year: a share house talent show.

The show, written, produced and performed by real-life besties Grace Lewis and Ruby Ballantyne, takes place entirely in Ruby’s bedroom. The set is perfectly designed, pulled directly from every share-house bedroom you’ve ever had. Clothes, food, and toiletries are strewn across the floor, and yet exactly where you expect them to be. Late-night photo-booth photos are taped to the mirror. A bottle of tequila is in the corner. It creates a world that is instantly familiar.

The script is made up of one long tangental conversation. As the pair’s focus drifts from their goal, the talent show, they take us on the kind of detours, loops and side quests that inhabit the conversations you have with only your nearest and dearest.

Ebbs and flows of giddiness, heartfelt confessions, the ins and outs of how long one could go before having to buy new underwear. Grace and Ruby’s musings pose the question: What does winning really mean? Referring of course to the upcoming talent show, and the navigation of career, friendships, and a life well lived.

Director Willa King has wonderfully created space in the script for the performers to play off each other, and this is really the beauty of the show. Watching the tenderness and effervescent chemistry between Grace and Ruby was truly a joy. The staging is also packed with physical humour, King cleverly playing to the strength of both performers.

Lewis and Ballantyne are self proclaimed “trauma-bonded full-time dance school graduates”, and their physicality is as natural as it comes. Throughout the show we get to see an archive of dances passed, the choreography a mix of half-forgotten contemporary dance pieces and the daggiest, most delightful, bedroom dancing.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job is a snapshot of life in your twenties, of womanhood and of friendship. I felt as if I was peering in at a real evening in the life of these two performers. It was a very sweet, fun and realistic exploration of the moments in which we discover what is most important to us.

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Phaedra Brown attended Don’t Quit Your Day Job at Erskineville Town Hall on Thursday 10 September.