National tour of Kay Proudlove's homegrown Dear Diary kicks off in Wollongong

Wollongong singer-songwriter Kay Proudlove felt the same when she found her collection of diaries from her years at Bulli High School between 2000-2005.

But that didn't stop her from mining them for songwriting material.

"It was awful to start with, it was a real emotional roller coaster because there was a lot of funny cringey stuff in there and it did take me a little bit to actually put it on stage," she said.

"I remember the first time I performed any of the material was at a made from Scratch Night where people are kind of encouraged to get up and do something new.

"I performed one of the songs from the show called Book of Guys [which details her most prominent high school crush] and it was the most nervous I had been in a long time, because I was worried that it wouldn't even be relatable or funny to anyone else except for me.

"But it turns out that it was very relatable and funny."

This week, she will kick off a national tour of her one-woman show Dear Diary, which is based on the songs and stories she wrote from her diaries.

She created and performed it in 2022, through the MerrigongX program at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre.

The national tour will see her return to the IPAC and then make her way through regional cities in Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and NSW.

Proudlove is looking forward to playing the show for a Wollongong audience again, as she says there will be places - and maybe even people - that the audience can recognise (although she stresses that some names have been changed).

"The show is based in Wollongong, there's mentions of local places that still exists - for Wollongong audiences it has that extra sense of familiarity," she said.

These placed include Mister Crown (which was known as Glasshouse back then), Bulli High and the Thirroul Beach Carols by Candlelight, which Proudlove says was "a momentous occasion for me growing up"

"But I do think there's a universality to the show that will translate to different areas because we all kind of have those places that we hang out as teens and those experiences," she said.

The show also includes details about her first musical performance - a Spice Girls tribute in a local park - and involves her coming to terms with the differences between how high school Kay hoped her life would turn out and what its like now.

"A lot of my early performance experience was mimicking people who I idolised and Spice Girls were a big one for me," she said.

"They were really the career trajectory that I wanted and I did everything I could to try and make that future for myself, until I realised that maybe it wasn't quite for me.

"Something that continued through my growing artistry is that you always start off mimicking others until you find your own voice, and I guess that's what this show is about."

For any current-day high school kids who watch the show in Wollongong's schools performance on April 9, she said she hopes it shows them how to "love the journey that they're on".

"If they're having a tough time at school or they feel like the experiences they're having are isolated to them, I hope they get a realisation that everyone goes through the growth that they're going through right now," she said.

"Although it's different from generation to generation, we're still learning the same things in a different, in a different environment.

"So I hope they come out of the show with a love for the journey that they're on rather than a fear of it."

The show is directed by Merrigong Theatre Company's Leland Kean, who Proudlove also worked with last year in the production of Midsummer Nights Dream that was staged at the Botanic Garden.