Theatre / Creepy Boys
Canadian clown duo the Creepy Boys present the multi-award-winning ‘SLUGS’
As Canadian queer performance clown duo the Creepy Boys, S. E. Grummett and Sam Kruger make work that they describe as “joyful, deliciously funny, big-hearted, queer comedy and theatre for the intrigued”.
Their Lustram Award-winning first show Creepy Boys made its Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2023, before touring the following year.
It was an absurdist horror comedy in which they played identical “spooky occult twins” (who referred to themselves only as ‘Creepy Boys’), celebrating their 13th birthday in the year 2004.
Arriving for the first of three nights at The Wardrobe Theatre on February 24, their follow-up SLUGS is no less anarchic, defined variously as “a techno-punk concert, a play, a clown show”, and “a basement puppet nightmare all rolled into one”.
Audiences are invited to join Kruger and Grummett for: “a technicolour acid trip where you’ll meet puppet Joni Mitchell, a two-person horse and every body part we have”.
“It’s about nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing”, they insist.
But as a response to the alarming state of the world, SLUGS is an attempt at escapism that ends up being really rather profound.
It was developed in collaboration with a group of acclaimed artists and creatives: playwright Caleigh Crow, character comic Deanna Fleysher, musical comic Shirley Gnome, and puppetry maestro Zach Dorn.
Grummett and Kruger told Bristol24/7 how SLUGS was born, and what it feels like for performer and audience member alike.
How did SLUGS originate, for you? Can you boil your shows down to an idea, or a question, that inspires what follows?
“SLUGS has had such a long road. We first dreamed it up in 2019 and didn’t really know what it was but knew it would be our follow-up to Creepy Boys. Maybe it was our band, our comedy band, our electropunk comedy puppet band – and maybe it was a show that contained everything we loved but had no place for.
“As we started touring more to these big festivals like the Edinburgh Fringe, we found ourselves frustrated with what we saw as a tension between comedy as escape from the heavy issues of the age, and a constant expectation set upon us to capitalise our traumas and identities in everything we make.
“We had the desire to have an hour to be queer and trans and mindless and free, but the simultaneous fear that such a want is irresponsible. All of which led to a question one late night: ‘What if we made a show about nothing?’ A true and perfect nothing of a show. What if we made it the most nothing show possible? Could we? Should we? What could go wrong! SLUGS is us trying to figure that out.”
When it comes to developing the aesthetic and the staging, how do you decide on the tone you want to instil?
“A friend of ours once told us this story about Miami Vice. Supposedly, the show runner would often take new episode directors around Miami before they started filming to help them understand the tone of the show. They would drive around the city and every so often the show runner would point to things and say ‘that’s Vice’ or ‘that’s not Vice’.
“We talk a lot about how the show’s tone and aesthetic form slowly over time, where we come across textures, songs, scenes in films, etc, that are ‘Vice’ though we can’t exactly say what ‘Vice’ is. ‘Two idiots do cunty techno’ feels ‘Vice’ or rather ‘SLUGS’, which we tried to combine with our long-running attraction to a DIY, punk aesthetic.
“That DIY-ness owes a lot to our feeling that theatre/comedy/performance should embrace live-ness as much as possible. We feel the more you can sense that the work is being made in the moment, with very common materials, the more an audience can appreciate what’s happening. That’s why so much of SLUGS is made of newspaper, plastic blowup chairs, and dollar store finds. The hope is for SLUGS to always feel like it is being made in front of you, out of whatever these two maniacs had laying around their basement.”
How does it feel to perform this show?
“Stressful! Exhausting! Sweaty! The journey of these versions of ourselves is one of panic, and desperation to give you the perfect nothing show which – as the people going through it every night – is a little intense, but ultimately a lot of fun. Our costumes are various layers of plastic which are about as conducive to high energy singing and dancing as you might expect. Plus, Sam’s dressed in a feather diaper for the whole show.”
Do you have hopes or expectations for how your audience will respond in the room, and how they might be feeling as they leave?
“Joy! Laughter! A reprieve from despair! It has been an increasingly pessimistic few years and finding the energy and drive to keep going is hard. It’s brutal. It’s been on our minds quite a lot.”
You visited Bristol once before with Creepy Boys, in 2024. What was your experience of playing The Wardrobe Theatre?
“We had such a great time our last time at Wardrobe – it was definitely one of the best shows of that tour! It is such a unique theatre which has hosted so many killer shows over so many years. We are genuinely so excited to be coming back. Bristol’s such a punky city and we think SLUGS and our plastic blowup chair-shirts will fit right in.”
Creepy Boys: SLUGS (age recommendation 18+) is at The Wardrobe Theatre on February 24-26 at 7.30pm. Check www.thewardrobetheatre.com for tickets, and follow @thecreepyboys for updates and future events.
All photos: courtesy of Sam Kruger and S. E. Grummett
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