There is a caravan of creeps headed to Vancouver for this Friday, April 28, when the Rio Theatre hosts the globally recognized Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow.
Joining the sadistic circus performers for the Pacific Northwest leg of their never-ending tour are Vancouver 'creeps' Burns The Dragon and ‘Little Miss’ Tristan Risk. Meanwhile, shock-misfit Bloody Betty will be featured for all of the stops.
We caught up with performers Damien Kenny and Bloody Betty to go further inside the Squidling sideshow.
Westender: What do the Squidling Brothers do?
Damien Kenny: The Squidling Brothers are Jellyboy The Clown, Fibi Eyewalker, Matterz Squidling and me. Joining us on the upcoming tour is (Bloody) Betty and the two Caravan of Creeps, Tristan Risk and Burns The Dragon. We then head south with a bunch of shows in the port towns of Bellingham, Sacramento, San Juan, and San Francisco.
The Squidling Brothers are all very experienced and all very good at what we do. We all have specific areas [of expertise]. Jellyboy and Fibi are both sword swallowers.
Bloody Betty: And they're a couple.
DK: Though they both live in New York now; Jellyboy is from Philadelphia and Fibi is originally from Israel. Jellyboy is the ‘Clown of Science and Danger.’ He has a Tesla Coil that he built that he puts on stage during his acts. He swallows fluorescent tubes and then leans into the (electric) field to reveal the glow, or the tubes burst into flames.
I perform 'The Human Pin Cushion' by inserting a skewer through my forearms and my hands. I put swords through my face, while Matterz is the “Impenetrable Music Man.”
Most Squidling Brothers acts are all silent-mind and choreographed. There are characters and a story arc all tied together. Burns the Dragon is of the same mind. Tristan does snake dances and has an animatronic vagina with teeth in it.
BB: It's more burlesque, with theatrical elements.
WE: How long has the sideshow been together?
DK: The Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow has been around since 2008. We are at work with most of the [known in the sideshow community] people in North America, and even in Europe now. Jellyboy, Matterz and Fibi are currently in Japan for the Sadistic Circus. They will all be here to perform for Friday’s show.
The Squidling Brothers host a room [The Auditorium] at the Theatre Bizarre every year in Detroit.
The alt-theatre scene in New York seems to love all of our stuff. Jellyboy, Fibi and I perform a very exciting show regularly in NYC at a club called The Box, which is basically extreme theatre. Both New York and Dubai have that key casino [The Box], at which The Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow has performed on multiple occasions. We’ve performed everywhere from Vegas to Coney Island.
There are going to be things about a Squidling Brothers show that people have never seen before. And acts like sword swallowing, which they may have seen someone do before – [they] will have never seen it done the way we do it. Jellyboy and Fibi do some great couples acts with mental floss and a huge pair of scissors that they swallow in tandem. It's very artistic and not about horror. It’s amusing as well.
WE: How do you think our local talent is going to stack up with the constantly touring Squidling Brothers?
DK: People around here [in Vancouver] mainly know Bloody Betty, Burns The Dragon and Little Miss Risk. The Squidlings…
WE: ...are about to be known.
DK: ...are about to be. Together we bring a very high standard of a show.
BB: And we're all different and twisted in our varying ways.
DK: The four shows we will have here in Vancouver and New Westminster will all be different. We won't do all of our acts in any one show.
BB: If you come to one show you can still come to another and be surprised.
DK: It's the kind of thing where if you see the show at the Rio, you can come see it again at a Lanalou's, which is so much more intimate.
BB: Lana Lou's will be the more fucked up and uncomfortable show.
DK: There is a psychedelic nature to the experience of the whole show. There is a richness to the story, with characters and backgrounds that continue. I have a co-star who is a four-foot doll that I made and she plays into the story of my act.
WE: What does the distinction between sideshow and freak show mean to you?
DK: Before I joined the Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow, I wouldn't call myself a sideshow at all – more of a performance artist. There is a traditional way that you do things as part of a sideshow, things that you say, names for things, etc. There are certain acts that have existed for a long time, like 'Pincushion' and 'Human Blockhead.' With those acts, there is a particular presentation that you will [consistently] see. There is a guy here in Vancouver named Neely Dee who has a very traditional presentation of 'sideshow.' His methods are good and his skills are good. But he has a flamboyant barker kind of, come in and taste my snake oil, I promise ... Where they kind of feed you a mystery or a pledge and they reel you in with [it]. Sometimes there is nothing at the end of that hook, but it's entertaining, so you don't care.
The Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow are a bit different from the traditional Jim Rose (Circus Sideshow) or Hellzapoppin way of presenting things. For example, if there can be a transgender sort of angle going on, that's good. If there can be huge puppets involved, that's ideal. Jellyboy and Matterz produced a retelling of The Wizard of Oz called The Wizard of Odd, with a transgender Dorothy and a Strongman playing the Lion.
We have a quarterly show in Philadelphia called Carnivolution. The last one around Christmastime … Jellyboy played a bellhop while we were all in rooms in a hotel, and Jellyboy would have to work his way around the hotel.
WE: Like, [the movie] Four Rooms?
DK: Kind of, yeah. You can explain the act and then do it so that everyone can see it, that's all well and good. But to me, why not choreograph it into a dance? Why not start out with a doll and a backstory about you and the doll?
BB: It also adds an element of beauty to the creepy shit that he does.
DK: The Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow is much like Bloody Betty's performances: you can have them described to you, see photos of them and even watch a video, yet none of that is even half of what the experience is when witnessed live.
It's good, so just see it. I can't necessarily describe it to you, but it's good.
• The Squidling Brothers Circus Sideshow performs at the Rio Theatre on April 28. Doors at 7pm, show at 8.
