Cult One-Squid Comedy Show Goes to Perth

New Zealand-born clown Trygve Wakenshaw, who trained at prestigious French clown school École Philippe Gaulier, is performing his one-man show Squidboy at Perth’s Fringe World festival’s Summer Nights season from 10 through 22 February.

Winner of the Best Performance at Auckland Fringe 2013, the surreal one-man show sees him don a charming costume and use his bendy limbs, miming and clowning skills to embody the carefree cephalopod.

“It’s mostly just an hour of me being ridiculous in a squid costume with a very loose narrative of a fisherman’s identity crisis,” Wakenshaw says. “I was really interested in imagination and seeing how much I could play with the audience’s imagination.”

Squidboy also enjoyed a sell-out season at Edinburgh Fringe, where it was nominated for a Total Fringe Award and hailed “the cult show of the Fringe” by the website Fringe Review.

Originally from Havelock North, Wakenshaw lives in London.

Original article by Jacqui Bahr, The West Australian, January 8, 2014.