Epidermis Circus’s wonderfully warped world grew out of hands-on play
Victoria’s Britt Small and Ingrid Hansen improvised with a box full of found objects and crafts to create hit puppet-vaudeville hybrid that’s coming to Kay Meek Arts Centre
Baby Tyler in Epidermis Circus. Photo by Bill Pope
SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles brings Epidermis Circus to the Kay Meek Arts Centre on April 10 and 11 at 7:30 pm
BABY TYLER WAS BORN in theatre artist Britt Small’s studio in Victoria’s Chinatown. That’s the spot where she and puppeteer extraordinaire Ingrid Hansen improvised for hours with boxes full of old toys and craft supplies to create the hit offbeat puppet show Epidermis Circus.
When Hansen pulled out a baby-doll’s head with a mischievous perma-side-eye, it was immediately obvious that a weird and wonderful new character had been born.
“No matter how it’s looking at you, you feel like he’s a little stinker, like he’s going to kind of be up to no good, but so cute too,” Epidermis Circus director and cocreator Small tells Stir over the phone. “There was just something about him. I just immediately fell in love with him. And Ingrid got so good at puppeteering him—just all the details that she does with her fingers and her hands. It’s quite wild, and I found myself mesmerized in rehearsals. I was like, ‘I could watch this for hours!’”
Baby Tyler—who consists of a babydoll head plunked on Hansen’s hand—became an instant star. Viewers have delighted at the sight of him sidling sassily up to a bubble bath—both blown up on a big projection screen and in real life, as operated by a black-suited Hansen working her magic at a small table onstage.
SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles’s inspirationally twisted production has been described as everything from “Shari Lewis possessed by David Lynch” to “a spicy puppet cabaret”. It’s the brainchild of Small, a cofounder of Victoria’s Atomic Vaudeville theatre company and clowning expert who has directed such offbeat hits as Ride the Cyclone, and Hansen, who has worked as a puppeteer for the likes of the Jim Henson Company’s Fraggle Rock.
While Baby Tyler is the star of this cheeky circus-vaudeville variety show, there is much more in store. Hansen and Small’s unfettered, DIY hands-on play also conjured countless other whacked-out, found-object vignettes. Another moment that stands out in the creative process was when Hansen accidentally figured out how to stuff a mountain of cotton balls in her mouth—a trick that has another big, surreal payoff in Epidermis Circus.
Ingrid Hansen in Epidermis Circus. Photo by Hélène Cyr
Photo by Hélène Cyr
“We realized how many she could put in her mouth—like an incredible amount—because they just almost disappear when you put them in there, and then when she opened her mouth, the cotton just puffed up immediately,” Small recounts. “So it looks like a clown car where a million clowns come out of a tiny little pod. And it was just such an interesting image. And a bit disturbing.”
And so it is that the two longtime collaborators and friends are able to tap their own silliness in their Victoria lab. The “disturbing” part is when they know it’s good.
“Whenever I’m teaching clowning, I say, ‘If you feel like the audience is going, “Oh no, no, no…”, then you should definitely do it!” Small enthuses, adding of the creation process: “I love coming in with a spirit of curiosity and of kind of not knowing—which kind of goes back to one of the clown mantras, which is, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, and that’s okay.’”
One of the keys to the show, which is hitting the Kay Meek Arts Centre as part of a tour, is that audiences get to see the miniature acts of warped whimsey in closeup, on the big screen, but also get to see the behind-the-scenes artistry of Hansen at work on the stage. That creates a richer experience, Small explains.
“It’s very easy to get into a different head space when you’re watching the screen: it’s a bit more of an almost meditative space, and you kind of relax into it,” she says. “Whereas, if things are live on stage and there’s bodies there, you’re more awake, in a sense, and you’re breathing with the living performer. I think your own body is woken up a little bit more.
“I love seeing very small things and the very delicate work that gets done with the hands too,” she adds. “When you think about traditional women’s work, like braiding and knitting, a lot of things are done very specifically with the hands in very complex ways. And I’ve always loved watching that. And then seeing that kind of detail in miniature blown up, there’s something really beautiful about it.”
In short, the experience is utterly unique. It’s weird, hilarious, and like tiny Tyler, strangely impossible to look away from. And in its own way, this production that shares Hansen and Small’s crazily creative playtime in the studio—coughed-up cotton balls, plastic farm animals, possibly dinky trucks, and all—may unexpectedly make the world a more bearable place in these tormented times.
“It’s imaginary—we can try things that we wouldn’t try in the real world,” Small reflects. “I think it really behooves us to be able to play and experiment, and sometimes come up with really beautiful, amazing ideas. And that’s probably something we could really use in the world right now: some really good, new, creative ideas, right? To be with each other and move through this world. And, yeah, maybe sometimes some of that’s going to feel a bit gross. But I think all those things are kind of good for us, in a way.” 
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