CV
Biography
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Raised by gregarious Danish parents, Ingrid loves talking to strangers. Ingrid Hansen trained first as a dancer, then as an actor, until she turned to the dark side and became a puppeteer, landing a job as a lead puppeteer on the children's television series Tiga Talk on APTN. She performed as a lead puppeteer and voice actor on the children's television series Tiga Talk on APTN for four seasons and forty episodes. Ingrid trained in puppetry with former Sesame Street puppeteer Tim Gosley, Fraggle Rock puppeteer Mike Petersen, and with Old Trout puppeteer Peter Balkwill at the Banff National Arts Centre. After earning her BFA in Theatre Performance and Design at the University of Victoria, she sought out specialized training in Clown with Sue Morrison. In New York she trained in Viewpoints and Suzuki with the SITI Company.
In 2006 Ingrid co-founded SNAFU Dance Theatre and began creating new theatre, dance theatre, and puppet theatre. Her favourite performances are in found spaces, and along with creating work in ‘respectable’ theatres, Ingrid has created shows in fields, washrooms, warehouses, public parks, bike trails, schools and prisons. SNAFU has performed at events curated by The Belfry Theatre, the SummerWorks Festival, the Next Stage Festival, The Great Canadian Theatre Centre, The Centaur Theatre, The University of Victoria, The University of British Columbia, and the PUSH Festival. Ingrid also worked as a designer on the Dora-Award-Winning Ride the Cyclone with Atomic Vaudeville and performed in many Atomic Vaudeville Cabarets. She has toured her object and shadow puppetry shows Little Orange Man and Kitt & Jane: an interactive survival guide to the Near-Post-Apocalyptic Future and Snack Music to theatres and festivals in Montreal, Ottawa, Wakefield, Gabriola, Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Kelowna, Victoria, and Vancouver. Kitt & Jane was awarded the Playwrights Theatre Centre New Play Prize. Ingrid loves to teach students of all backgrounds, and has taught theatre workshops for children, adults, actors, dancers, puppeteers, and prison inmates. For the past six years, Ingrid has built an ongoing collaboration with the inmates at the prison theatre company William Head on Stage, which operates inside a federal prison near Victoria, BC. The inmates hired Ingrid to work on five different productions over the years as director, designer, or performer, where she is known as “the 100 lb giggling torturer.” She recently co-directed The Prison Puppet Project with Peter Balkwill and the inmates at a federal prison in British Columbia. She aspires to one day own a dog. |
"I was blown away by Little Orange Man so when I learned that Ingrid was offering a masterclass in Toronto I just had to fly across the country to participate. I was not disappointed. If Ionesco knew how to stage chairs, Ingrid had us wrangle them! But I particularly liked how we explored dramatizing aspects of ourselves through objects, how we developed story sequences and worked with feedback from the group to enhance them. I had expected getting to animate objects, but I really appreciated working on story development, both individually and with others. Plus, Ingrid is such an inspiring ball of energy and enthusiasm. No wonder she can raise the dead, um, objects..." - Kris Fleerackers, student at the Humber College Puppetry Masterclass