9th April 2014 - 6:00 pm
When I first arrived at the Portland Hotel I did see Xavier Toby out in the bar, though I didn't immediately recognise him and it is only in retrospect that I can see who he was.
He was wearing a grey singlet, with a headset mic and ordering what looked like a pint of beer. (It may not have been a pint, I'm not good at judging vessels of beer as it's something I don't drink, I'm more of a cider man. But I digress).
I've only seen pictures of Xavier Toby mostly from above the shoulders, so didn't really know what the rest of him looked like.
On the cover of his book he's wearing a chequered shirt, which didn't really reveal anything.
Then when we actually were able to be seated and he came out on stage it all became clearer.
Also, a little bit of an odd perspective.
A tip, if seeing anyone in the Portland Hotel Main Room, sit one row back from the front as the stage is high-ish and the chairs are very close to the front of the stage, meaning if you're sat (as I was) in the front row you get a relatively odd perspective on the person on stage. Kinda like sitting close to the front of a movie screen.
Xavier's show is about the time he spent on a FIFO mine site.
Interesting thing, he did a call out into the audience if anyone works on one, and there was one guy, from Port Headland who worked and a couple of other people who didn't technically work on a FIFO site, but they were in mining / drilling (they were in some sort of extracting from the Earth business).
It was a somewhat different crowd to the people who I've seen in the previous shows I've been to. More...umm...less of the podcast-y sort of crowd and more beer, trackies and smoker's breath.
I had read, prior to going to his show Xavier's book Mining My Own Business, the book and show have the same name and subject. It’s the primarily the reason I bought a ticket to his show. I probably would have bought a ticket regardless because people doing stuff in far flung locations and getting comedy out of it interest me.
Even not getting comedy out of it, but finding the humour and ridiculousness in it interest me. I have many books on war zones and Antarctica and other far flung locations like that on my shelf.
His show brought more to the stories and tales in his book, not just the pictures that he had powerpoint-style on a projector, but the way he tells it. I did wonder if that's actually Dale's voice or rather an actor pretending to be Dale (Dale was Xavier's supervisor on the site). I also did wonder if that's his shirt from the mine site or just one that he bought for his show.
His show wasn't just funny, but it was insightful to the FIFO worksite and what goes on at a mine site in the middle of no where. It greatly improves the book by adding context and personal voice, more so than the book does to his experiences.
I think reading the book after the show would be a really good thing, like reading the novel a movie is based on after seeing it. Reading it before you know where things are going, what's going to happen but the magic is in the performance, in the telling of the story. Seeing and hearing it performed. But reading it after means you get all that backstory that Xavier couldn't fit into his hour of show.
When I first arrived at the Portland Hotel I did see Xavier Toby out in the bar, though I didn't immediately recognise him and it is only in retrospect that I can see who he was.
He was wearing a grey singlet, with a headset mic and ordering what looked like a pint of beer. (It may not have been a pint, I'm not good at judging vessels of beer as it's something I don't drink, I'm more of a cider man. But I digress).
I've only seen pictures of Xavier Toby mostly from above the shoulders, so didn't really know what the rest of him looked like.
On the cover of his book he's wearing a chequered shirt, which didn't really reveal anything.
Then when we actually were able to be seated and he came out on stage it all became clearer.
Also, a little bit of an odd perspective.
A tip, if seeing anyone in the Portland Hotel Main Room, sit one row back from the front as the stage is high-ish and the chairs are very close to the front of the stage, meaning if you're sat (as I was) in the front row you get a relatively odd perspective on the person on stage. Kinda like sitting close to the front of a movie screen.
Xavier's show is about the time he spent on a FIFO mine site.
Interesting thing, he did a call out into the audience if anyone works on one, and there was one guy, from Port Headland who worked and a couple of other people who didn't technically work on a FIFO site, but they were in mining / drilling (they were in some sort of extracting from the Earth business).
It was a somewhat different crowd to the people who I've seen in the previous shows I've been to. More...umm...less of the podcast-y sort of crowd and more beer, trackies and smoker's breath.
I had read, prior to going to his show Xavier's book Mining My Own Business, the book and show have the same name and subject. It’s the primarily the reason I bought a ticket to his show. I probably would have bought a ticket regardless because people doing stuff in far flung locations and getting comedy out of it interest me.
Even not getting comedy out of it, but finding the humour and ridiculousness in it interest me. I have many books on war zones and Antarctica and other far flung locations like that on my shelf.
His show brought more to the stories and tales in his book, not just the pictures that he had powerpoint-style on a projector, but the way he tells it. I did wonder if that's actually Dale's voice or rather an actor pretending to be Dale (Dale was Xavier's supervisor on the site). I also did wonder if that's his shirt from the mine site or just one that he bought for his show.
His show wasn't just funny, but it was insightful to the FIFO worksite and what goes on at a mine site in the middle of no where. It greatly improves the book by adding context and personal voice, more so than the book does to his experiences.
I think reading the book after the show would be a really good thing, like reading the novel a movie is based on after seeing it. Reading it before you know where things are going, what's going to happen but the magic is in the performance, in the telling of the story. Seeing and hearing it performed. But reading it after means you get all that backstory that Xavier couldn't fit into his hour of show.