The past few years have been hard years for everyone. Imagine being a 7 year or an 80-year-old lying on a hospital bed with no one to talk with. No hope whatsoever and someone comes to talk to you and takes you to a different world. Well, Sue Vanduynhoven is a ventriloquist and volunteers with the London Health Science Centre to do shows for patients in order to give them hope and happiness in the tense environment of hospitals.
According to her, children show the most interest in her shows and kids just travel to another world while interacting with the puppets and it gives them joy and a person to talk with in tense situations in hospitals. It makes them forget about their injury or illness and gives them mental relief.
Ventriloquism is an art where a performer acts with his puppets and puts his voice in it. Sue is performing this art for the last 30 years and believes it is a gift from god to her and she tries to help in whatever way possible with her art.
“I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. It turns out to be the most important thing. I’ve ever done in my life to me. It’s what I was given this craft for I really believe I was giving given this art form to do that. I go in and I work one on one with children in the hospital and their families”, says Sue.
All this seems fun but behind this fun, there is a lot of hard work. It is not an easy art and one has to give life to a non-living thing and provide them with a voice. Sue thinks it does bring her joy but at the same time it is also tiring and exhausting still, she wants to do it whenever she can.
“The puppets are Magical Creatures, right? They’re magic there are times I forget that I’m making them talk right. They’ll come out with stuff that I have no clue where it came from so you know they’re Magical Creatures so the kids will tell them things that they haven’t told anybody and at the beginning, it was a little startling for me because I had to figure out what to say them to make them feel better but and then they just talk about it for a minute but it’s an honour.” This sentence shows the joy she feels and the importance of her work.
However, things have not been easy since Covid. The volunteering in the hospital had to be stopped and everyone was locked inside the home. She misses going back and talking with the kids. She and her puppets are waiting for approval from the hospitals to start volunteering again and are more excited than before to talk with their friends again.
Here is a video of her story:
Comments