The Postmodern Chronicles Of Hayley

Well here I am, sitting alone in the Bradfield library, amongst the company of thousands of under-appreciated books. It’s amazing coming from a creative arts high school that prided itself on a room in the library dedicated to art books, when really the Bradfield library has not only twice the amount of books, but certainly more relevant ones!

So what is new in the world of Hayley? I have just finished an eight week training workshop in Puppetry for Film & Television at the Wesley Institute in Drummoyne. It was run by Jim Henson trained South African puppeteer Gary Friedman. Gary was a student of Jim’s in 1987 in France, in his first and only puppetry workshop he ran. The workshop I did was amazing. I was working alongside a troupe of professional improvisation comedians including Barrel of Monkey’s Jon Williams (improv and sketch comedy team), Axis of Awesome’s Jordan Raskopoulos (comedy rock group), Cale Bain & Toby Truslove (from the Twisted Melon ensemble) and actress Bree Desborough, who most of you would know as ‘Justine’ on Home & Away.
Working with seasoned industry professionals was exciting and a great learning experience, but nonetheless challenging. They were absolutely amazing, especially in the way they are so quick to think when improvising. But still, they were in the same boat as me, many not having much experience with puppetry. Before I started puppeteering, I always thought that puppets were just socks with a few buttons stuck on. Not the complex, reticulated foam furr covered mess glued together with contact adhesive that I soon found them to be. I also didn’t expect it to be so difficult to operate them on camera. Unlike looking in a mirror, the monitor you’re using for guidance is the opposite direction. We’ll just ignore the fact that I discovered the monitors have a flip-switch on them…

Things I had to take into account:

• You’ve gotta improvise a lot of the time.
• Keeping my right arm up straight.
• Use my left hand to operate BOTH arm rods.
• Lip-synching every word I adlib though my right hand - they call it the ‘Henson Punch’
• Keeping my head out of the bottom of the frame.
• Not blocking the other characters in shot.
• Maintaining my character’s eye focus (which are actually just two ping-pong balls with black dots on them).
• Making sure my character’s body doesn’t completely slip off the neck during performance.
• I’m a lot shorter than the other puppeteers, so I often had to work standing on a box. Thankfully I’ve since got myself a new pair of radical platform boots that give me 7inches more confidence!
• All this while referring only to a television monitor that completely flips every movement you make!

I’m beginning to think that ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’ was written in reference to how bloody difficult it is to operate puppets! But nonetheless, it was a dream come true to be able to learn the technique and craft that Jim Henson himself passed down to Gary Friedman.

Another thing (completely unrelated) that has caused a stirr at school is the ban on breaks during 2 hour classes. This is all thanks to a group of preliminary students that decided it’d be fun to go out and get drunk during break and come back to class. How the hell they managed to get intoxicated in less than 10 minutes, I’ll never know. Did they inject the whole bottle into their bloodstream?! So now, we have to be cooped up in a classroom doing constant work for two hours, all thanks to some sterile piss-pots that can’t hold their alcohol.
Speaking of not being able to hold your alcohol, everyone’s favourite piss-pot Alister got so drunk the other night that when he came home, he fell out of bed and woke up his parents. They came into his bedroom to see what the noise was, to find Alister, half-asleep, pissing on the carpet! This was according to his mother and father, who then threw him in the shower. I hope not literally! Although not drunk, my friend’s little brother was sleep walking one night and mistook the fridge for a urinal! A week’s worth of groceries had to be thrown out after that… I don’t think their family was too fond of acidic dressing on their fruit and vegetables. He was probably having one of those awful dreams that he was answering the call of nature… but didn’t wake up in time for that annoying moment when you realise that you almost electricuted yourself with your electric blanket! My mother used to read the obituaries in the paper, but would always complain that it never explained how the people died. Imagine being remembered as ‘the guy who electricuted himself after pissing on his electric blanket’. I now rest my case.

Not to say that my mother doesn’t have strange interests. There was a problem with the family computer last week that prevented YouTube from working properly on my mum’s log-in. After hours of maintenance (and a lot of frustrated cursing), my brother finally managed to fix it. So what does my mother do? She gets on YouTube and starts watching videos about facial deformities, giant infected boils, monsterous skin growths and of course a man with a hole through his head. She is the only person I know that can sit infront of the TV with dinner (usually something like a juicy steak) and watch real-life ER operations - uncensored! I got queazey in Year 10 science when the teacher briefly mentioned haemmophilia (or whatever that disease is where you can’t stop bleeding). Baaah I shouldn’t have mentioned it! I feel sick now… *groans*

… TIME FOR A SUBJECT CHANGE!

I recently changed the theme on The Postmodern Chronicles of Hayley. It’s quite refreshing and seasonal - don’t you think?

Peace out, brussell sprouts!