Body parts meet bawdy animation in Epidermis Circus, a live drive-in theatre puppet performance
The Pi Provocateurs presentation of SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles isn’t the kind of puppet show you’ll see on Saturday-morning TV
Epidermis Circus is not your everyday puppet show. Photo by Jam Hamidi
Pi Theatre’s Pi Provocateurs series presents Epidermis Circus by SNAFU with openers Hank Pine (of Hank and Lilly) and Britt Small on June 25 and 26 at 10 pm at 685 Great Northern Way Blvd.
MENTION THE WORD “puppetry” and people might think of wool socks with googly eyes or kids re-creating fairy tales on mini ad-hoc stages in their living rooms. Perhaps it’s finger puppets that spring to mind or maybe it’s the mastery of the Muppets. Whatever it evokes, puppetry is an art form that Victoria’s Ingrid Hansen has been specializing in for years. She’s co-artistic director of SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles, with Kathleen Greenfield, and the troupe’s upcoming Vancouver production could well be unlike any other puppet show you’ve ever seen before, on many levels.
Epidermis Circus is a contemporary drive-in theatre puppet performance taking place on the big screen in a parking lot on the Great Northern Way Digital Media and Emily Carr Campus in East Vancouver. Live audio reaches people’s car stereos through an FM radio transmitter, and tickets are limited to just 30 cars per show. Hansen describes it as a “puppet cabaret”.
Co-created by Hansen and Atomic Vaudeville’s Britt Small, who also directs, the 65-minute romp features “body puppetry”, or, if you prefer, puppetry of the “fragile meat-bag of the human form”.
“It’s a celebration of bodies—all the wonderful things about our bodies and all the disgusting things about our bodies,” Hansen tells Stir in a phone interview. “With body puppetry, you can animate anything—your hands, your feet, your shoulder, your face… You can animate creatures and characters out of any of your body parts.”
Hansen trained as a dancer then an actor before stumbling upon an audition for a show that required puppeteers. Even though she didn’t have any experience, she landed the gig and became hooked. She was able to learn from Canadian Tim Gosley, one of the world’s leading puppetry artists, who worked on many Muppets productions.
“Puppetry is a combination of dance, acting, stage magic, and witchcraft,” Hansen says. “It’s fun being a chameleon; you can transform into any kind of creature.”
SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles held a drive-in in Victoria this past January, when the format was one of the few types of events that were allowed to proceed in the province amid pandemic health restrictions. It proved to be just what people were craving; the show sold out in “record time”, Hansen says, and viewers couldn’t help but honk their horns and flash their headlights throughout it.
“It’s a really neat in-between space,” she says. “You’re out at an event but you’re in your private vehicle; you bring your living room to the event. You could be wearing your pyjamas or making out in the backseat. It’s intimate and you’re in your own little bubble.
“It’s rare that people produce live drive-in shows; it’s a moment in the pandemic,” she says. “it’s a necessary thing right now. I think that it’s probably never again or right now.”
Body parts meet bawdy animation in Epidermis Circus. Photo of Ingrid Hansen by Jam Hamidi.
Richard Wolfe, artistic and producing director of Pi Theatre, says that, because he programmed Epidermis Circus when no one could say for sure whether people would be able to gather outdoors at the end of June, SNAFU's live drive-in experience seemed to be the perfect bridge back to some sort of normal— “if you could call SNAFU's work ‘normal’, which really, you can’t”, he tells Stir.
Pi Provocateurs is a presentation series that features bold artists from B.C. and all across Canada performing in non-traditional or underutilized spaces; the point is to make artistic experiences more accessible by removing them from highly institutionalized settings. Past Pi Provocateurs shows have included Lady Parts by After Party Theatre, 4 1/2 (Ig)noble Truths by Zietpunktheatre of Toronto; this season featured the live-in-real-time digital version of Macbeth Muet by La Fille Du Laitier of Montreal, another standout puppet show.
“As much as I enjoyed Macbeth Muet and all the other digital work we’ve been exploring this year, I feel now was the time to start transitioning back towards the kind of connectivity that includes the body in space,” Wolfe says. “I’ve been following drive-ins a little bit throughout the pandemic. They’ve been used around North America as a way of keeping people socially distant while still bringing them together, albeit in their cars.
“Personally, I’ve always loved drive-ins, I guess because they have a sentimental and nostalgic attraction for me,” he says. “I remember being thrown in the backseat of the car by my parents and heading out as the sun was going down to see three movies in a row at the drive-in. Of course, I would be lucky to make it through one and a half, but nonetheless, it was great. I enjoyed the countdown on the big screen between movies; I always anticipated the smell of the deep fryer in the concession shack, and I loved that little speaker hanging from the window of the car.”
This stripped down version of a drive-in is of the “underground urban kind”, Wolfe says, describing it as freaky and fun, quirky and surreal. Because of the pandemic, there’s no concession, but people are encouraged to bring their own popcorn and snacks.
“On a slightly more esoteric level, I thought there was something about puppetry of the skin that was extraordinarily fitting in this time,” Wolfe says. “It brings home how tied we are to our own biology and how absurd that biology is in the end.”
Epidermis Circus opens with a performance by Small and Hank Pine (of Hank and Lilly), the two teaming up for hip hop with a twist as JabTwo.
Oh, and another word on the puppetry. On television, Hansen also puppeteers for Sesame Workshop’s show Helpsters and TreehouseTV’s Miss Persona. Epidermis Circus, however, is not a show for children, Hansen says, “unless they have really cool parents”.
For more information, see Pi Theatre.
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