Deep Sea Explorations

Few performers would admit to woeful under-preparedness and plagiarism, but Trygve Wakenshaw isn’t one of them.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention; especially when you devise a show live on stage armed only with a skinny, preternaturally elastic body and a costume that vaguely resembles a squid. He can get away with minor digressions because he’s a truly rare performer, able to take small things and turn them in to something unexpected and hilarious.  

Wakenshaw is bringing two shows to Brisbane Festival: the wildly popular Squidboy and Kraken. Asked whether there’s a deep sea theme running through his work, Wakenshaw is dismissive. “Nope. I mean, Squidboy came out of having that costume.”

Wakenshaw started his career in New Zealand, but the voracious autodidact left his home to study at clowning institution Ecole Philippe Gaulier, throwing him into an existential crisis. “I thought I just [needed] to make something,” he says, “And that something was Squidboy.” The first incarnation of Squidboy was [simply] getting to know the costume, but last year in Edinburgh, he says, “it just exploded and sold out… and this year I made Kraken and that’s gone gangbusters as well.”

Now that Squidboy has garnered effusive praise, Wakenshaw says that performing is terrifying. “Rather than the audience [not knowing what they’re seeing] they come in going, ‘Alright, I heard the show was funny. Come on funny guy, be funny.’ If I think, ‘It’s time to impress them’ then no one’s having any fun. If it’s just nonsense it works.”

“It’s better than any other show... Because I’m one of the finest performers touring the Australian circuit at the moment.”

After Squidboy, Wakenshaw found himself in Norway under instructions to make something brilliant. Which he didn’t. “Sadness and trauma came out of Norway,” he says – he was unable to write anything. “After four weeks I had two ideas; one of those stayed in my show.”

True to form Wakenshaw says he simply got on stage and stayed there, screwing around until the technician started waving a light at him to tell him he’d made it through the hour. “I just thought, ‘I’ll pretend like I’ve spent four weeks making this really great show.’” To no small amount of guilt for someone who turned up on stage with one idea, Wakenshaw laments, “I won the Underbelly award… making a show that I knew nothing about.”

So can Wakenshaw actaully explain what the shows are about? “Sort of. It’s a little bit hard. Squidboy is about imagination; it’s about a fisherman having an identity crisis.” He stops himself, “No, that’s not quite right. It’s kind of a battle of egos between a fisherman and a Squidboy… That sounds awful as well.”

Wakenshaw pauses again before delivering his pitch. “It’s better than any other show... Because I’m one of the finest performers touring the Australian circuit at the moment.” It’s a joke, but it’s also true.