We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Britt Small a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Britt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

The work our theatre company (Atomic Vaudeville) creates can be difficult to describe as it pulls from various mediums of theatre, vaudeville, drag, clown, music, dance, puppetry, sketch comedy, and the avant guard to create an original work. The way we create is collaborative, artist-driven, empathic and improvisational, which results in unconventional structure and a kind of layered meaning. When I founded the company 20 years ago with Jacob Richmond, I was disillusioned with a lot of the theatre that was being platformed and celebrated. It felt dusty and irrelevant and out of touch. I questioned whether it was the art form itself that was caging the expression or if there was another way. When our shows became popular, especially with younger audiences, many in the theatre community diminished the work as ‘not real theatre.’ My experience though was quite the opposite, I had never felt more alive in the messy, aggressive and absurd work that we were doing. The insight was that I should trust my gut and the real time audience feedback we were receiving which was joy and connection.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was surprised to find myself enrolled in theatre school at the University of Victoria in BC after growing up in Winnipeg and studying science and playing hockey in Montreal for a year. UVIC had a directing specialization as an undergrad which was attractive to me as I had begun directing in high school but never really looked at theatre as a career path. It was the time of Kurt Cobain and the Riot Grrrl movement and Adbuster Magazine. I was looking to art as a form of resistance to dominant culture, patriarchal and capitalist systems, and did a lot of experimental and pretentious work. After my degree I worked with small emerging underground companies and got to know the community. I contemplated getting a teaching degree but a few harrowing experiences working with high school students changed that idea and so I pursued a Master’s Degree in Directing. I had also been performing musically, taking dance classes and pursuing training rooted in physical theatre practice. I met Jacob Richmond, a playwright around the same time I was doing a Clown Intensive with Michael Kennard. Jacob had produced irreverent cabarets in Montreal and I was looking for an outlet to explore my clowning and so together we produced a cabaret at a local converted Legion with a small army of local performers and Atomic Vaudeville was formed. It became apparent immediately that there was a great desire from both performers and audiences for this kind of outlet. Over 20 years we have produced almost 100 different episodes mostly in Victoria but also in Toronto, Whitehorse, Seattle, Vancouver and Edmonton. We call these shows the Vaudeville Series (the word coming from the french voix de ville or voice from the city which I love). The shows have been described as combining the ensemble nature of SNL, with the self-reference and showmanship of the Muppet Show as assembled by the mind of David Lynch. Along with this series we have also produced queer musicals like Rocky Horror and Hedwig and created our own original work including Ride the Cyclone, which won the Dora Award for Best Canadian Touring production is now produced internationally. We have worked with more than 400 artists, many of them achieving great success as creator/performers. We also teach Clowning, Physical Theatre and Creation.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I am driven by a great need to connect and interact. I want radical interdependence and renewed focus on the power of the circle. We are in an interesting moment where it feels almost fetishistic to be in public with one another, all these soft bodies together. After the lockdowns and our increased involvement with on-line culture and living, I can feel a tension when we gather and I want that tension. I don’t want to be dulled and alienated from my physical body on a metaphysical level. It’s what I feel in my body when I share physical and temporal space with a community. I love the ‘We’ feeling. What we consider to be ‘Western Theatre’ developed alongside the Church, who at times viewed theatre as devil worship. But theatre has no God. It is what is created in that moment. A new story woven from patches and shared. That’s how I romanticize it anyway and what I like to make. I love the feeling of catharsis shared, especially if we’re deft enough to thread together pathos, exhilaration and a good fart joke.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

First I think we need to be thinking deeper about what art’s meaning and value are within our communities. It is statistically true that communities and cities with thriving artistic expression and participation in activities of togetherness produce healthier, happier people. Shared creative experience travels like a wave. I like to think of the arts as nerve centres that can reveal a truth that is apprehended by the mind, felt in the body and shared across identities. These truths can guide our compassion and focus our attention on the corrosive systems that diminish our joy and our fullness. Economically, the money is primarily going to people, not products. And largely our practice is minimal waste. So yeah, societies can participate, fund and encourage but primarily I think we need a new conversation about why it matters.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.atomicvaudeville.com
• Instagram: @atomicvaudeville
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atomicvaudevilleproductions
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@atomicvaudevilleBC
• Other: https://www.patreon.com/Atomic_Vaudeville

Image Credits

Personal headshot:
photography Pedro Siqueira

Company shots:
photography Helene Cyr