Am I Doing This Right? Read online

  First published in 2018

  Copyright © Tanya Hennessy 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76063 223 6

  eISBN 978 1 76063 619 7

  Internal design by Romina Panetta

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Romina Panetta

  Cover photograph: Rob Palmer Photography

  CONTENTS

  BEFORE WE START, HERE ARE 10 FACTS ABOUT ME

  PREVIOUSLY, ON TANYA HENNESSY

  A: IS FOR…

  B: IS FOR…

  C: IS FOR…

  D: IS FOR…

  E: IS FOR…

  F: IS FOR…

  G: IS FOR…

  H: IS FOR…

  I: IS FOR…

  J: IS FOR…

  K: IS FOR…

  L: IS FOR…

  M: IS FOR…

  N: IS FOR…

  O: IS FOR…

  P: IS FOR…

  Q: IS FOR…

  R: IS FOR…

  S: IS FOR…

  T: IS FOR…

  U: IS FOR…

  V: IS FOR…

  W: IS FOR…

  X: IS FOR…

  Y: IS FOR…

  Z: IS FOR…

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Hey there—I’m professional dancer/day-drinker/amateur psychic Tanya Hennessy.

  Welcome to my book.

  (I am dying…I wrote a book, it’s here…you’re reading it.)

  This mess from Newcastle, who is constantly sweaty for no reason, who rarely washes her hair and rotates between the same four tops, wrote a goddamn book.

  First up, I must admit I found this book hard to write. Because…it’s a book. It’ s not a radio break or a quick internet video. This is a book. The real deal. My words and stories are immortalised in it. For someone who overthinks dinner, the thought of that alone is terrifying.

  I have put stuff in and taken stuff out countless times. I have overthought some pieces for months and, conversely, written other pieces in two minutes. I have no ‘writing process’ and I have no real idea what I’m doing. (I think that’s normal. No one ever really does.) I’m just hoping what I’m doing is right…and I guess that’s the crux of what this book is about.

  Am I doing this right?

  I died when I got an email from Allen & Unwin, asking me to write a book. It has been a lifelong goal, so to be sitting here, writing an intro to one, is surreal.

  Even though writing a book was a major goal, I never thought I would get the opportunity to do it. I really didn’t. I never expected to amount to much—even though I always wanted to.

  Please know that I am genuinely honoured and grateful that I have been able to do this. Thank you for buying this book. It means the world to me. Sincerely.

  I’m actually crying as I write this because a) I can’t believe I did it…it’s here! and b) because I really want Subway cookies and I don’t want to put pants on and leave the house again.

  I originally had the idea of alphabetising my thoughts and experiences when I was in high school, as something to do for a stand-up show, and then again, when I was 25, as subject matter for a cabaret (originally to be titled Encyclopedia Bri-tanya: A kebabaret, a night of mixed meat and song. This night WILL happen…when I find a tzatziki sponsor). Anyway, when I was approached to write a book…I knew this was what it had to be.

  ‘So, what is this book about, Hennessy?’ I hear you ask.

  Great question—it’s partly a memoir, and it’s some jokes and observations, short anecdotes, lists, a bit of advice and a lot of swearing (sorry in advance). I wanted to create something different and something that was authentic. And that’s what I’ve written. It’s not linear, it’s not conventional; it’s not normal—but I hope you like it.

  In short, it’s sorta autobiographical but mainly it’s relatable lols.

  All the pieces are quick and easy to read. (That is, except for the first story, which goes for 7000 words, because I needed to get the book’s word count up.)

  What I’m saying is categorised by the letters of the alphabet, and if you want, you can dip in and out of it in between other, more important, things you’re probably doing, like posting Insta stories.

  I am genuinely worried about sharing this book with the world. I’ve told stories here that I have never told publicly before.

  It’s about growing up and not wanting to.

  It’s about questioning everything.

  It’s about being a woman.

  It’s about being a person.

  It’s about asking yourself hard life-related questions.

  It’s about anxiety.

  It’s about comparing yourself to others.

  It’s about social media.

  It’s about truth.

  It’s about success…but, more importantly, it’s about failure. I feel like the biggest lessons I’ve learned came from my biggest failures.

  And, man, I’ve failed a lot.

  This book will, hopefully, make you laugh and make you cry. I hope it will ultimately make you feel less alone, and maybe even inspire you.

  So, lower your expectations, strap yourself in and enjoy.

  I can’t read analogue clocks. Seriously.

  I’m nothing like my siblings. My brother and sister are both gym junkies and bodybuilders. And I like to sit. Once I was flirting with a guy (in my single days) and he saw my phone screensaver, which showed my sister and me…and he asked for her number.

  I didn’t realise what carpenters do till I was 29. I figured they laid carpet, until one day I thought: Wait, wasn’t Jesus a carpenter? They wouldn’t have had carpet when he was around. Or did they have a few Carpet Courts?

  I applied to be Miss Newcastle Showgirl in 2008 and got rejected when they found out I had lied about having 15 years of Latin dance experience.

  I sit down in the shower. I’m a shower sitter. I probably have so many diseases.

  Joel Edgerton hit on me once and I rejected him—WHYYYYYYY?

  I still sleep with my childhood teddy bear, Morris. Well…he is a ‘reinbear’, half reindeer, half bear. I got him for Christmas when I was eight. I actually asked Santa for a real reindeer. I’m still pissed off I got this hybrid bear. This isn’t what I wanted, Jan.

  I was almost a high school teacher. Seriously. I have a degree in theatre and half a Dip. Ed. in secondary teaching. I’ve thought about finishing it but I honestly don’t know if I can teach real live children when there are videos of me on the internet talking about my boob hairs.

  Many people think the best musicals are Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera but I truly believe the best musical ever is High School Musical 2.

  I used to be a stilt walker at Luna Park in Sydney. The first day I learned to walk on my stilts at Luna Park, I stumbled, and, fearing I was going to fall, grabbed someone’s head for balance. It was Russell Crowe’s head. He was not pleased.

  You know the phrase ‘When I grow up, I want to be a …’? Well, when I was a kid, I finished that sentence with the word ‘actor’. (Full disclosure: I still say ‘When I grow up, I want to be a …’, even though I am a fully formed adult. Apparently.)

  From a very young age, I wanted to be an actor. We’re talking from when I was, like, three or four years old. But even then, I think I knew, deep down, that it wouldn’t work out for me.

  Mainly because I couldn’t act.

  (I watch back scenes of me acting and, honestly, they’re offensive to the eyes and several other senses. To those who have seen them, I sincerely apologise.)

  In retrospect, I feel like one of those bad singers auditioning for Australian Idol (Vintage Reference) who has a really supportive family, so nobody has ever told them how bad they are, and they find out when they perform and the judges are like, ‘Are you kidding with this?’

  I was one of those super-annoying kids. Surprised? I was that child who would put on a show and charge their parents to watch. Why my parents and their friends actually paid, I’ll never know.

  My shows started off consisting of me singing ‘Part of Your World’ from The Little Mermaid, then escalated to full productions. Scenes, other songs, dancing, a puppet show. These would be 45-minute shows, a lot of which was improvised dance.

  They would have been a punishment to watch.

  When I got older, I upgraded my shows to include the kids in my neighbourhood, and would organise rehearsals with them. I would make programs, make tickets, coordinate the costumes. The annual Christmas show was an event, until there was an actual show stopper, when the parents of the kids in my shows told me I wasn’t making the experience fun. I was told, ‘Tanya, the kids are sad
because you’re yelling at them a lot.’ Well, if those kids had nailed the kick ball change and their upstage entrances, maybe I wouldn’t have needed to yell.

  I would have been, like, eight at this point. I just loved performing. I took it so seriously. Too seriously.

  I started drama classes at the local children’s theatre school when I was nine or 10. Apparently, my mum called them about me taking classes when I was two and they were like, ‘Nah, if she can’t talk, she can’t do drama.’ The thing was, I could talk. I talked before I walked. #gifted

  While the other kids at my primary school did sport as their extracurricular activity, I did singing and drama. I have never played a ball sport in my life. Seriously. In fact, I don’t know the rules of any sport.

  So, when I was in Year Six and preparations for the annual school musical, A KIDsummer Night’s Dream, rolled around, I was desperate for a role.

  I was one of the only kids who did drama outside of school. I was gunna nail this.

  I didn’t.

  Well, I kinda did. I was cast as fairy 34. However, every kid who wanted to be in the show could be, so I was more or less just making up the numbers.

  I wore a skin-tight yellow unitard (with wings, obviously) that was, unfortunately, see-through. My 12-year-old bee-sting boobs were horrifically visible. Thank god I couldn’t keep up with any of the choreography; this meant I was moved to the back and so only a very special few could see my nips.

  For some reason, that experience made me hungrier to be on stage. I decided that I wanted to go to a performing arts high school, so I auditioned for the Hunter School of the Performing Arts, I got in…and I went. It was the best school. I loved it.

  They let us do all kinds of crazy stuff you probably couldn’t do at a normal high school. When I was 15, I directed a play with a friend from the year above me. We did it all ourselves—raised the money to put it on, organised to get the rights, cast it, booked the theatre, did a press release. We asked a NIDA set designer to do the set for us. It was the Fucking Real Deal. In the end, we made a ton of money, but the principal told us we had to ‘reinvest it’ in the school, which was disappointing, as we wanted to ‘reinvest it’ in inflatable furniture and hair mascara.

  Then I graduated from high school, and I really don’t know how I did, given that in Year 10 I got four per cent in a maths test. Seriously.

  I went to Charles Sturt University, to do a degree in theatre (and media). The university’s in Bathurst, which was a town of 30,000 people and 5000 of them were uni students—it was wild.

  Funnily enough, at the time I was so sure I was going to be an actor that I paid people to do the projects for my media subjects. Why would I need media subjects when I was going to be an actor? A theatre actor, what’s more.

  ‘Can you do my documentary video? I’m not ever gunna need to film or edit, so I’ll just pay you to do my assignment.’

  ‘Can you do my website? There’s no way I’ll need to know how to make a website.’

  ‘Can you do my radio assessment? I’ll never work in radio, anyway. I hate it. It’s all ads.’

  Seriously, all of that happened. What an idiot. But, apart from being an ignorant dick about my media subjects, I loved uni. I did so much performing there and I honestly couldn’t believe I got to do exactly what I wanted for three years.

  Once, in an improv class, our lecturer told us to pick an animal to pretend to be for an hour. I looked at those who chose frogs (too much jumping) and flamingos (too much standing on one leg) and felt nothing but raw pity for them. I myself had chosen to be a sloth, and for the better part of 60 minutes, I slept off a midweek hangover and it was noted that I was the most committed to this exercise out of every member of the class.

  At Charles Sturt, I also played an albino pub owner, a sperm and, very convincingly, a tree. It was all so experimental and off the wall. My major work had a Freudian theme and all of us in it were basically nude. I regret inviting my parents to that one, not to mention my 10-year-old brother.

  When I finished uni, I did some drama teaching, and went overseas and did some stage-managing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I was still desperate to be an actor, even though I had zero idea of the best way to make this happen. So, when I returned to Australia, I got a job stage-managing musicals in Sydney. The shows I was a stage manager for included Tell Me on a Sunday and Little Women: The Musical.

  I’d figured I’d be close to the action, and that, by some miracle, a brilliant casting director would see me lifting a piano or a desk or whatever, point her finger and say, ‘Her! She’s the woman we need for this show!’

  This did not happen. For Little Women, I had to wait behind the curtain while the female lead sang her big note before the interval, when the lights went from bright and blinding to darkness. My job was to grab her and take her backstage before the lights came up again, because it took so long for her eyes to adjust that she couldn’t get off the stage quickly enough. The irony that I was busy getting someone off the stage when all I wanted to do was get on the stage was not lost on me.

  After that, I quit stage management, having decided to really focus on performing. So, naturally, I went for the job at Luna Park in Sydney as a clown and stilt walker. This was problematic because, honestly, I struggle walking just on the ground. I sometimes danced in the stage shows too. You know those ‘shows’ that are basically a whole lot of actors in plush character suits parading down the street dancing to Venga Boys songs and waving at children. Kind of like a pov Disneyland. Yep, I danced in those. Not well, but I did it. To this day, I believe that having been paid to dance makes me a professional dancer.

  I got an agent, who found me no work (but was hot AF). I did a NIDA short course in presenting, and I did an acting-for-camera course at Screenwise in Surry Hills. I did a lot of Co-Op/Pro-Am shows which is industry slang for unpaid but, because I have an ego and a degree, I don’t wanna say ‘unpaid’.

  I was broke as, and did more stage-managing—even though I hated it—to get by. I was reliant on Centrelink for a bit (read: for a lot) because I wasn’t booking any gigs, and Luna Park only needed me on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. There was a time when I earned so little money that I couldn’t afford to get my car registered, so would have to walk to Centrelink and get lifts to Luna Park. (Strangely enough, I always seemed to be able to afford Mars Bars.)

  I probably went to 150-plus auditions when I lived in Sydney and was trying to ‘make it’ as an actor. I heard that, statistically, for every 40 castings you go for, you get one. That statistic wasn’t true for me. As an ‘actor’, I would go to three to five castings a week. When you go to a casting, the holding room, where you wait with the other actors, is usually as small as a teenager’s bedroom, and full of people who look like you, which is confronting. Being in one is not fun at the best of times, let alone when you’re desperate. And I was desperate.

  I just wanted to book one job.

  Firstly, to prove to my parents I could do it.

  Secondly, to prove to myself I could do it.

  Thirdly, so I could afford to get my car registered. When you’ve been rejected more than 150 times, it’s hard to go into a casting room. You want the gig so badly that you stress out, and don’t get it because you’re stressed. It’s such a vicious cycle and so difficult to break.

  When will someone say yes to me? I got to the point where I didn’t believe this would ever happen, because I hadn’t heard ‘Yes’ for such a long time. When you only hear ‘Unfortunately, no’ or ‘Sorry’ for years, you can’t help but doubt yourself. I was doubting myself, my ability, my everything. Things were starting to feel so hopeless. I was close to giving up and working in a bank.

  I wanted to perform so badly, and I just needed a chance. For one person to see something in me and give me an in.

  Eventually, I booked one job as a prostitute in an opera. It was a French opera, and I was basically covered in dirt with no shoes, and wearing an ill-fitting corset. I was suspended above the stage in a giant cage for a grand total of three minutes.

  Then, in 2011, I got a job working for Disney. I was a dresser on Mary Poppins at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney at night, and, during the day, I was the warm-up comic/audience wrangler on a kids’ TV show called Pyramid. This involved playing my ukulele and telling terrible kid jokes.