Dwight Hetzer (23 years old) from Tilburg has a part-time private job. The student appears as a drummer on stage at the live concerts of the world-famous band Coldplay in Amsterdam. the most beautiful? He does it without the drumming. “I’m pretending,” he says on the radio program Avslag Zuid. “I play the drums.”
Mystified, Dwight admits. He is not a drummer, but a puppeteer. During a Coldplay concert, the stage puppet troupe, The Weirdos, who also appeared in the music video for “Biutyful”, enter. Dwight manages one of those puppets: the drummer. Dwight is then wrapped in black. Nobody can see it, but it is there.
Which is quite a bit, because Dwight has been performing for three evenings in front of an audience of 55,000 people at Johan Cruijff ArenA. The British band will hold its fourth and final concert on Wednesday evening.
“Obviously, you can’t say ‘no’ when Elmo calls you.”
The big question then, of course, is: How did Dwight end up at that point? “Elmo called,” he explains. “And when Elmo calls you, you can’t say ‘no’ of course.” Dwight then points to the Sesame Street puppet Elmo, or rather the puppeteer who plays Elmo in Holland: Jogsheim Galenick.
“So call this job. Elmo always has the best jobs. When Elmo calls you, suddenly you’re scoring a cat food commercial with Robbie Williams, or you’re playing at a festival.” And this time, too, Elmo didn’t disappoint.
Does this mean that Dwight is now traveling with Coldplay? “No, unfortunately. I got this assignment because the band wants to be environmentally conscious during this tour,” Dwight explains. “They don’t want to travel to everyone, but they want to work with local artists. So I’m doing the show in Amsterdam, but in Sweden there will be a Swedish puppeteer.”
“It’s quite a huge production. You always meet new people when you’re walking around here.”
The moment on stage itself, Dwight says, “isn’t too bad.” “On stage, you’re actually working. After all, it’s work. But during the day it’s really strange to see. It’s a huge production. You always meet new people when you’re walking around here.”
He has not yet spoken to the band members. “But Coldplay music will always be a part of that experience for me. You know all those songs, of course. You always hear them on the radio. But I haven’t talked to them yet, no. Tonight, after-party, I haven’t talked to them,” Dwight laughs.
The music video for The Weirdos:
Waiting for privacy settings…
