CIRCUS: THE WEIRDEST PUPPET SHOW YOU’VE EVR SEEN
Photo by Helene Cyr
ERIESVARIETYSERIESVARIE TYSERIESVARIETYSERIES ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Epidermis Circus, a spicy puppet cabaret, hosted by a sassy grandma who keeps trying to steal the show. This beautifully twisted variety show is performed by Ingrid Hansen, who also puppeteers for Jim Henson Company’s Fraggle Rock. Watch behind-the-scenes as Hansen performs a live puppet film, animating cheeky vignettes in the palm of her hand and projecting them onto a huge screen. “Both live and magnified on screen, in cunningly angled cameras and mirrors, we see Hansen create characters from her own hands, fingers, tongue, in a saucy and jostling vaudeville of ‘stars’. NUTTY, INGENIOUS, MESMERIZING.”12th Night.
Tiny stories emerge that celebrate the hilarious impossibility of being alive and having a body: these fragile bags of meat and bone, carry us from place to place and allow us to laugh and snort and feel. SNAFU’s work has been compared to Wes Anderson and David Lynch, yet “hilarious, absurd and profoundly human,” (the Star Phoenix Newspaper.)
Photo by Helene Cyr
ABOUT THE SHOW
Produced by SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles
Co-Created & Directed by Britt Small
Co-Created & Performed by Ingrid Hansen
Co-Produced by, and with creative contributions from, Kathleen Greenfield
Costume Design by JIMBO The Drag Clown (James Insell)
Interstitial Film Editing by Pedro M. Siqueira, PedrinXCo.
Additional puppetry coaching & jokes from Mike Petersen, Rod Peter Jr, Anand Rajaram & Victor Dolhai
ASL Interpretation by Katie Anderson
Epidermis Circus was created with support from the Capital Regional District Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Early development of Epidermis Circus was also supported by the National Arts Centre’s #CanadaPerforms initiative, and the OAC’s Theatre Creators Reserve as recommended by the Puppetmongers.
MEET INGRID HANSEN
Photo by Helene Cyr
Raised by gregarious Danish immigrants, Ingrid Hansen is a tree climber whose purse is always full of snacks. Ingrid puppeteers on television for Sesame and Henson. She plays Heart, a lovable orange monster on Helpsters, Sesame Workshop’s Emmy-AwardWinning series for AppleTV+. She also puppeteers and voices characters on Henson’s new Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock series. For the TreehouseTV/Amazon show Miss Persona, Ingrid puppeteers Melissa the Dog, and also choreographed and directed on several music videos, including getting choreograph ballet for Letterkenny comedian K. Trevor Wilson. (Both as magical in person as you would expect.) She also puppeteered and voiced Gertie the Gopher for four seasons of Tiga Talk (APTN), and appeared on Princess Sparkly Butt and The Hot Dog Kid (Teletoon).
With SNAFU, Ingrid has co-authored and co-produced 21 live shows including Epidermis Circus, Little Orange Man, Kitt & Jane, Interstellar Elder, Table Top Tales, Snack Music and The Merkin Sisters. SNAFU’s work has been presented by the National Arts Centre, The SummerWorks Festival, The Great Canadian Theatre Centre, The Centaur Theatre, the International Festival of Animated Objects, and festivals across North America.
For the past decade, Ingrid has built an ongoing collaboration with the prisoners at William Head on Stage, the only prison theatre company in Canada that performs for the public. She teaches workshops from kinder to adult.
BRITT SMALL | DIRECTOR & CO-CREATOR
Britt was born in The Pas and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba before playing hockey for McGill University in Montreal and ultimately settling on Vancouver Island where she earned her MFA in Directing at the University of Victoria. She is the co-founder and co-director of Atomic Vaudeville Theatre Company and has over 20 years experience as a director, producer, performer, curator, storyteller and teacher.
Britt has performed as Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Harpo Marx in Animal Crackers and created her own solo show Realboy for the UNO Fest. She has directed Janet Munsil’s Circus Fire and The Ugly Duchess, Jacob Richmond’s Qualities of Zero, Ride the Cyclone and Legoland, The Fantasticks and True West for Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream for GVSF, God’s Lake and Castle in the Sky for Castlereigh Theatre, Epidermis Circus for SNAFU, My Chernobyl for Gateway Theatre and The Belfry and local Victoria cult hits The Rocky Horror Show, and Hedwig for AV. Britt also works as a dramaturg and book editor and teaches acting, play building, clown, comedy, movement and improvisation for VADA and the CCPA.
COMING UP AT EVERGREEN
CREATIVE TEAM
KATHLEEN GREENFIELD | CO-PRODUCER
Kathleen (they/she) lives, collaborates and creates new work on the territories of the WSÁNEĆ, Lkwungen & Wyomilth people.
Kathleen’s interests and experience are in site-specific outdoor performance, shadow and object puppetry, clown and reviving old stories. Kathleen has a BFA in Theatre from the University of Victoria and studied at the Banff Puppet Theatre Intensive in 2012.
In 2013, Kathleen joined SNAFU Dance Theatre as Co-Artistic Director and has directed the premiere and workshop productions of many new works including Calling Home: Stories from Military Families (SNAFU, Belfry Incubator), Little Orange Man , Kitt & Jane and Interstellar Elder (SNAFU), and I Have Seen Beautiful Jim Key (Intrepid Theatre). In 2015, Kathleen co-directed the smash-hit-remount of Lieutenant Nun, a site-specific spectacle where the audience moves through an old battlement, pageant style. Recently, Kathleen led a team of junk artists, clowns and puppeteers to create New Earth Bandits, a choose-your-own-adventure spectacle, in the same park.
Kathleen has worked with William Head on Stage Prison Theatre as a facilitator, workshop leader, assistant director, projection designer, writer and performer since 2013. Kathleen directed and devised Sleeping Giants (2016) and The Emerald City Project (2019) and the Dark Traveller Podcast (2020). In addition to her work with SNAFU and WHoS, Kathleen has recently joined the Leadership team of Atomic Vaudeville.
JIMBO THE DRAG CLOWN (JAMES INSELL) | COSTUME DESIGNER
Jimbo is a fabulous drag queen and whimsical clown, innovative designer, jawdropping-performer, and all around free spirit. Winner of Ru Pauls’ Drag Race All Stars and Founder of the House of Jimbo, Jimbo is a Victoria-based artist who has designed for film and television and on stage for Victoria’s Atomic Vaudeville (Ride the Cyclone, Rocky Horror, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.)
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