Vee Smith and Sadiq Ali, two Edinburgh locals, are bringing their kid-friendly circus show The Unlikely Friendship of Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl to the Fringe this year, supported by the Made in Scotland showcase. It’s a beautiful duet themed around transformation – finding and celebrating our “inner monsters”. And for them, the show wasn’t even meant for children initially.
“We just wanted to make something true to our style – a quality piece of work – that was for children, but ultimately, is just a really good show,” says Smith. When they performed the show for local primary schools, they were impressed by the kids’ emotional literacy. “They definitely emotionally understood the themes of the show. They just don’t have the adult vocabulary to explain it, like dramaturgically or theatrically, but they get it.”
Meanwhile, from across the Atlantic, São Paolo-based circus company Parlapatões (‘Chatterboxes’) – as part of a broader Brazilian showcase – are staging The Mequetrefo. Hugo Possolo, a founding member of the troupe, and Camila Turim, the show’s producer, echo Smith and Ali’s sentiments:
“The most important thing is to respect a child,” says Turim. “They are intelligent, and they are learning from everything, without prejudice.”
The show – heavily inspired by Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry – has already been staged for over 10 years, and all over South America, everywhere from dense urban centres to remote Amazonian communities. So it not only transcends ages, but also “speaks to different levels of cultural backgrounds”.
Both of these shows are, perhaps tellingly, non-verbal productions, relying on a physical vocabulary to enact their stories and themes. The Mequetrefo takes us through a single day, with four clowns (named, appropriately, ‘Dias’) discovering the beauty and comedy in everyday things. Unlikely Friendship…, on the other hand, is a personal piece that is as much about transformation as it is about the styles and backgrounds of its creators.
“The two characters’ transformations essentially embody, on Vee’s side, a kelpie, which is a mythological Scottish creature,” Ali explains, “and I embody a phoenix, which has roots in my Arabic culture and Egyptian side.”
Smith and Ali find that this contrast is where the magic happens (“drama is all about conflict,” says Smith). Ali was drawn to a phoenix because “it’s a creature of fire and speed and flight and community,” comparing it to Smith’s kelpie character who is “a creature of quiet and slow and depth,” resulting in “two completely different elements that shouldn’t be able to exist together.”
Such “wordless visual magic” (Smith) is apparent in The Mequetrefo, too. There the magic “comes from something really simple, like a can, becoming other things,” says Turim. “[The Dias] work with two ladders and two cans. And those objects, they are transformed into every mode of transport: a bus, a car, a boat, a train. And at the end they go to space.”
Turim and Possolo explain that “kids can understand why adults work so much and play so little, but also think about everyday things that we do on our journey through the day.” They say that it is a particularly Brazilian thing to “have to, by necessity, do a lot with very few things.
“That’s why [the clowns] are called ‘Days’ [Dias],” Turim continues, “because it’s about a day in a life. And we can live our entire life in a day.”
With Unlikely Friendship…, Ali and Smith are similarly entranced with finding this magic. “All of folklore is about transformation,” says Smith, “and circus, at its heart, makes all the rules of physical space liminal and liquid. Because you’re transcending all of the physical laws that most people need to abide by. You’re able to walk up a vertical landscape, you’re able to transcend gravity.”
Or, in Ali’s words, “creating the extraordinary with two ordinary human bodies.” Because isn’t that what circus – or any artistic discipline – is all about?
The Unlikely Friendship of Feather Boy and Tentacle Girl, Assembly Roxy, 4-17 Aug (not 6, 13), 11.25am
The Mequetrefo, Underbelly, Bristo Square, 30 Jul-10 Aug, 11.20am