OPAL (They/He/She) ARTIST
@yourfriendopal
www.yourfriendopal.com
One day, I left Footscray train station and saw the biggest, most confronting pieces of art I’d ever seen. Meeting the Boom family was the start of my journey as a puppeteer. A year later, I put on my own show and invited as many of the Snuffies as I could. A few weeks after that, I got into a skully for the first time, and haven’t really been the same since.
G’day, Opal (me) is an artist, performer and facilitator. Originally from Jersey, in the Channel Islands, I’ve has been working in Australia and New Zealand since 2015.
I run a fortnightly peer-2-peer space for LGBTIQA+ people in Melbourne’s western suburbs (Queer Corner).
I was a regular at stand up comedy nights in Wellington, NZ in 2016/17 and in 2019 I wrote, directed and built my first giant puppet show Anthropocene-19 for Melbourne’s Fringe Festival with a cast/crew of friends. The show was based on interactions with the public whilst working for a youth climate justice organisation, and the lack of hope that inspired. Recently, I created and built Oozlum, the Cooked Chook, an intergalactic space chicken who should be coming out of lockdown any day now…
My practice revolves around community, being around people and exploring things together.