Hathor

It isn't all glamour, glitz and bowls of peeled grapes brought to the dressing room, you know.

Here's a list of some of the dressing rooms we have used:

Beer cellar - we performed at a retirement party in a pub, and the changing area was in the beer cellar. We had to lay our costumes down on great big barrels of beer, with translucent tubes coming out and going up the pumps in the room above. We were tempted to divert the odd one: after all, Hathor herself was fond of her beer. The downside of this changing room was that people like chilled beer…we could see our breath in there!

Compost heap - at one small, local event, although we were given a decent workshop/craft room for our early dressing up, it was too far from the stage area for quick costume changes. The only place was behind the tent we were dancing in, just next to a nice, big compost heap. It was a lovely day and a fun event but it was a bit tricky not getting costumes snagged on the rose bushes as we squeezed by!

Back of a lorry - we often seem to find some kind of low-loader lorry carelessly left behind the stage at big outdoor events. These are a fairly useful alternative to long, wet grass, for laying down all your bags and kit, while you discreetly slip costume parts on over your jeans. The worst moment was when one of these lorries had to be taken away while we were still using it!

Shared tent - this was a recent improvement at a festival we have "starred" at many a time, but our changing tent was shared with a male performer (not a dancer) who finished getting ready and then invented about 200 different ways to fold up his kit so that he could stay and ogle us as we changed - eeeeuw!

Picture windows - a theatre we performed at a few years ago had full-length windows in the dressing room, on a wall facing a busy roundabout and dual carriageway, and no curtains! We cannot say if any accidents were caused!

The bar - is there a theme here? At one event in a community centre, we had to get changed in the bar, which thankfully was closed at the time! However, lots of little boys kept running in and pestering us, till Gail threatened to kiss them.

The loos! Ah, how many times? And the lovely variation...behind the Portaloos. Sigh.

Classrooms - at least twice, we've used school and college classrooms to change in. These rank among the nice places as they usually have chairs (even if they are designed for midgets) and sticky tape, scissors and other useful last-minute costume adjusters lying around!

Gold Star to Cowley Road Carnival and the Pegasus Theatre for providing dressing rooms full of food though.....

Any more? Do write and tell me about your "Star" dressing rooms and I'll include your anecdotes here.