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“I like the intense shock reaction. A lot of people don’t realise, but then my chest gets redder and redder,” she giggles, “They don’t want to see it but they don’t know it’s coming.”
The staples are painful - “…but I do clean the wounds” - and the underbelly of circus life has fascinated her from the early stages of her career.
Drewery was 19, doing contemporary dance and working full time as a waitress in Christchurch when the director of the local circus school told her there were spots available to pursue circus as a professional career. A few weeks later she had quit her job and signed up to do a circus diploma, where she learnt tightrope, trampolining, acrobatics, trapeze, juggling and unicycle. She later picked hoola hoop and clowning as her expertise areas and when she graduated she pursued other circus skills. Sideshow tricks were always her favourite.
She can now slide screwdrivers and skewers down her nose and hammer nails into her head.
“I studied the history of circus, all the old sideshow tricks and learnt about the real carnies, the ones who hustled people to come into the tents and play games, or the dodgy old men from the forests who bit the heads off chickens,” she explains, “People look at the extravagant and forget about the darkness that travelled with the pretty side of the circus.”
She recently bit the head off a chicken in Monster Burlesque at the Paramount in Wellington, where she has been living for six years now. She drew a meat cleaver from her underwear and jerked along the stage playing with the chicken, a possessed girl in a nightgown.
Drewery will be haunting audiences at the Capital E Halloween event in Civic Square – it’s a night she always gets a lot of work. Last year she was a little broken dolly in a stage show inside, but this time around she’s out amongst the punters as The Duchess from Alice in Wonderland.
“She’s stern and kooky. I’ll be odd; I want to take on an unstable tone. I’m walking around with the Queen of Hearts and as two stroppy women there’ll be altercations,” she explains, “It’ll be scary.”
Before she’s back in town she’s celebrating Halloween up in Auckland in an adult performance at the Fetish Ball. She plays a “submissive”, dressed up in a red silk kimono and blindfolded while she performs an aerial chains act. It’s about life, she says, “We live in these situations we feel strangled by and tied down but we like the drama and confinement. It’s about twisting and tangling myself up in a chain which is heavy and painful but I can’t bear to let go.”
Performers need to be less conscious of looking pretty on stage, says Drewery.
“Burlesque is big at the moment. Girls want to be seen looking sexy but it’s better to be able to pull your body into grotesque shapes and make contorted expressions, with no fear of looking less than normal.”
The Big Halloween, Civic Square, 4-8pm, October 31.
Jennifer Niven
Halloween haunts
- Bloody Broadway 2: Resurrection, The Front Room, 8pm, October 26-28, and 2pm/8pm, October 29.
- Melting Face Halloween Party, Bodega, October 29.
- Evil Halloween, Sandwiches, October 29.
- The Big Halloween, Civic Square, 4-8pm, October 31.
- Spine-tingling Stories, Storytellers Café, Toi Poneke, 7.30pm, November 1.
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