Gold Coast artist Ainslee’s Palmer powerhouse one-woman show, Ready or Not, premiered to audiences at HOTA in April 2024. Supported by our HOTA Housemates program - that provides short-term development space, technical support, producing advice and more to local artists to develop new work - Ainslee undertook a final development period with her collaborators straight into a 3-night season that made local audiences laugh and cry in equal measure and brought presenters from around Queensland to HOTA to view the work.

As a result, Ready or Not is heading off on a regional Queensland tour this November! Performer/creator Ainslee, and Director, Lisa Smith, are now back at HOTA to rehearse the show before it hits the road. We asked them about the journey from the April premiere to now, and what’s next.

Ainslee: The last time we spoke you were still in the process of making Ready or Not, in anticipation of its premiere at HOTA. Now that the work exists, how would you describe it?

Ready or Not has certainly evolved in the making, but I think the heart of it has stayed true throughout the process. It’s a piece of theatre that is entertaining, surprising and challenging, and it’s also a really important conversation starter. I know from my own personal experience that it can be really difficult to speak with the people in our lives about hard things we have experienced, but the audiences who came along to the pilot season really proved that not only are they willing, they are hungry for the opportunity to connect, to share and to sit with us in subject matter that can feel uncomfortable. We are also delighted by how effective the use of humor in the work was, and by the amazing things our audiences had to say after they saw it. They said things like ‘moving’, ‘important’ and ‘powerful’ over and over, and that is exactly what we hoped this work would be.

Lisa: What did you discover about the work during its pilot season at HOTA?

The pilot season at HOTA was an amazing opportunity to share the work, but also to it test out! We had great sized audiences, all of whom gave us incredible feedback on how powerful they felt the work was. They were incredibly responsive both to the story and to the way we chose to tell it. Ainslee was always interested in challenging the idea that some people’s stories are ‘too much’ and I think she absolutely proved that this is not the case! We found that the stylistic choices to deliver challenging stories with humor, gentleness and grace allows an audience to be thoroughly entertained while they are being asked to consider ideas that aren’t always comfortable. Our beautiful Gold Coast audiences loved the show, and found the messages to be profound and important, and we are so excited to take it out on tour to share it more widely in regional QLD.

Ainslee: You’re off on tour soon! How did that come about?

White Rabbit Theatre are very fortunate to be part of the DARTS network (Driving Activating Regional Theatre Sector) that is an incredible new initiative being led by the amazing JUTE Theatre in Cairns. The program is all about getting the wonderful theatre that is being made in regional QLD centers out on tour - so even more regional Queenslanders can see it! The selection process is done via peer review, and we were delighted that our DARTS colleagues in other regional cities and towns saw the value in this work and voted for it to be selected for the inaugural DARTS tour for 2024. We will have other artists who are part of DARTS hosting us in each touring location, which for us includes JUTE in Cairns, Lux Noir in Townsville, Bridges in Bundaberg and Perseverance Street in Gympie starting from Nov 14 2024.