Review: (Montreal) Little Orange Man (WildSide)

(photo by Al Smith)

Remembering When...
by Aleksandra Koplik

Remember when you were a kid? How sense of coordination and controlling your walking speed never really came to mind? How every little question or curious thought was processed through your imagination, and came out in what at the time seemed like the perfectly logical conclusion? What glorious and forgotten days: when any uneaten vegetable or food could be used as a prop for play time and every toy could tell a story. Kathleen Greenfield and Ingrid Hansen 's Little Orange Man is an escape to childhood through the eyes of Kitt (played by Hansen), a little Danish girl who is directing a dream experiment with the help of volunteers from Craigslist (the audience). As a child diagnosed with ADD, this smart handful is having trouble making friends and she really misses her grandfather, who recently fell into a coma. This story is about Kitt trying to communicate with him through her dreams.

The Question... Ingrid Hansen on Little Orange Man (WildSide)

The High-Octane Danish Girl

by Estelle Rosen

Raised by Danish immigrants in Kelowna, BC and fuelled by a love for talking with strangers, Ingrid Hansen is fascinated with ways of creating temporary communities out of groups of strangers. She has toured Little Orange Man across Canada, designed for the Dora-Award Winning musical Ride the Cyclone, and was a lead puppeteer for the children’s television series Tiga Talk! on APTN. Ms Hansen also does ongoing work with the inmate-run prison theatre company William Head on Stage in Victoria, BC. She loves to teach students of all backgrounds, especially beginners, and has taught theatre workshops for children, adults, actors, dancers, puppeteers, and prison inmates.

CHARPO: The last time we were in touch was about SNAFU Dance Theatre production of Fractured Fables, a play written and performed by prison inmates. At first glance, Little Orange Man (LOM) seems a departure. Yet perhaps not. LOM involves an outcast fighting dark battles, both incorporate fables and puppets. Are there any connections or is this coincidence?

HANSEN: I suppose the main similarity between the two projects is that when we started, we really had no idea what the end result would be. When working on Little Orange Man, at times we threw out huge chunks of material -- entire show’s worth of material -- or evolved the story into something completely different. It’s now the story of Kitt, a high-octane Danish girl whose greatest delight comes from re-enacting her grandfather’s grisly folk tales to young neighbourhood children. Kitt fires up homemade technology to extract and re-enact the audience’s dreams. Through the weird songs, fast-paced humour and shadow puppetry we have the story of an outcast child who entrusts a group of strangers to help fight her darkest battle. 

Review: Little Orange Man (in Montreal and Toronto this week)

Imagination Station
In the mind of a twelve-year-old.
by Keely Kwok

What do you get when you cross Anne of Green Gables and a crate full of energy drinks? Why the young Danish girl Kitt of course! 

Kitt, performed by Ingrid Hansen in Little Orange Man, is a twelve-year-old girl who’s delighted to discover the audience has answered her ad on Craig’s List and have agreed to dream with her. But! Before dreaming, Kitt has A LOT to tell you. From the territories of the playground, to songs about ADD, to a “terrapist” Quebecois puppet hippo, there are so many hysterical elements to this performance.