Bamboo Bill is an adventurer. He is brave, cheerful and good to animals and people alike. He is has a crush with kids and is always good humored. Bamboo has his own transporter with animal food. Bamboo Bill collects the kids at feeding stops to tell them about the animals. Stories, anecdotes, facts, details, but foremost fun. My audition started with a script – or note: tell about swans and feed them in face of a crowd of 100.
After 3 minutes preparation time and I drove the transporter towards the selection committee. Parked the transporter in front of the committee and did my thing with a running camera.
Act 1: I started feeding the swans. “Beautiful and graciously these swans move”, I told the kids. There are different kinds of swans. Once I walked along the beaches of the Black Sea. It was around sunset. In the distance I saw kids, excited, running, playing and staring in the sky towards the sea. A flock of big black swans arrived and landed in the sea close to the children. The swans must have been three times the size of the white swans we are feeding now. The children rushed into the sea to play with the black swans upon their landing. They swam with the swans and the smaller kids boarded the swans. It was a joyful sight.
“ Bamboo Bill, what places did you visit more?”, asked the selection committee.
Act2: I was born in Suriname in South America. My name Bamboo Bill derives from there. Suriname is quite like the Netherlands. I bicycled home from school. School starts at 7:00 and closes at 13:00 because of the heat. When I reached home, everyone was in siesta. You all know what is siesta? Siesta, is a nap in the afternoon. We, kids do not like siestas. I went to the farm of “Frau Anny” , passing the forest and a meadow. Donkey “Bill” waited me in the meadow and accompanied me to the ditch, separating the farm of Frau Anny. I helped Frau Anny with gathering eggs, sweeping the yard, breaking corncobs for hen feed and splitting palm leaves for brooms. After the chores we baked a sponge cake in the charcoal stove. When the cake was done, the farmer would arrive in his pickup. We all know what a pickup is? A pickup Is a large truck, like my transporter but bigger. It had to hold dozens of enormous water melons. I showed the size of a watermelon with stretched arms and clamped one on my belly, but my arms would not fit. The farmer had sold the watermelons all the way in Paramaribo, he was sweaty, thirsty and hungry. We went to the well and I handed the farmer buckets of fresh water. A clean farmer and me went to Frau Anny to eat a delicious sponge cake. The farmer told me that I was a great help around the farm, I had earned myself a trip to the sea. I jumped in the back of the pickup and we drove to the sea. The road was called “track to sea” and it was dusty, and full of pot-holes. Some distance for the beach we stranded in a pot-hole. The farmer and his wife dug, dug and dug with their bare hands. The pickup did not move. I ran to the bamboo bushes nearby, plucked branches, leaves and took a large piece of split bamboo. The farmer used the bamboo to free the pickup and we were on our way again. From this day on, I was called “Bamboo”. From then on, when I walked through the meadows with “Bill”, “Frau Anny” would welcome us with “hello, Bamboo’nBill”.
I did not get the job. Reason? 17 competitors: real actors, young, family already working in the zoo? Who cares anyhow? What’s next?
