Monkeying Around

What’s that saying? Never work with children or animals? Apparently I forgot about that when I signed up to the monkey gig for the second time.

This week I’m blogging from the Irish Sea, where I am appearing as Curious George on board the ferries. I’m working alongside the ship’s children’s entertainer, who happens to be a puppeteer. (For anyone who doesn’t read the blog regularly, the due date for my thesis about puppets and actors is imminent.) Needless to say, I’ve been taking advantage and have begun bombarding him with last-minute questions.

The children, on holiday for Easter, have been generally hyper and extremely naughty, and the monkey needed some considerable attention! I was pleased to see that the fastenings I had replaced a couple of years ago were holding fast, thanks to a sewing trick my mum showed me at 8 years old (when I was making a finger puppet of a monkey - coincidence?!). But other fastenings were falling apart, so I spent most of Saturday fixing the costume in between appearances.

Skin character work is often taken on by actors. It’s good fun (depending on your personality!), and this particular job pays well, although not quite what you could expect if you were employed on an Equity contract. It’s a relief to know that I don’t have a boss constantly breathing down my neck - we are expected to use our initiative in terms of times and number of appearances. Although the job is seven days a week, there’s lots of free time in between appearances. This is great if you remembered to bring books, DVDs and a thesis to work on, but without them you would be likely to go a bit insane. I live on board, so I won’t see dry land for a few weeks. I hope I brought enough toiletries! The other downside to living on board is that there is no hope of attending auditions.

I only have two months in between this stint and the next (I’ll be doing the same job over the summer months), so I’m hoping that I might be able to get involved in another student film in that time (although this may be difficult, as I suspect most students’ deadlines will be in May). Student films are good practice, not to mention a potential addition to the show reel, which I’m hoping to put together once I have obtained copies of my previous work.

Just three weeks left at sea - if anybody is visiting Ireland on Stena Line, give me a wave!