Studer Community Institute

20 Penny Circus brings sideshow acts and magic together on Saturday

March 27, 2015
/ Mike Ensley
/ community-dashboard

Clown vs. clown. That’s a big part of the 20 Penny Circus’ act. When they perform Saturday night at Vinyl Music Hall in what they call “entertainment for people with questionable taste,” Tyler Sutter and Carl Skenes will go at it – each trying to upstage the other – and often antagonistically punishing each other, up to and including a game of Russian Roulette with nail guns. Offstage, however, their relationship is much more friendly. [sidebar]20 Penny Circus Saturday, March 28, 2015 8:00 pm Vinyl Music Hall Pensacola, FL $5.00 - $30.00 Tickets available at Ticketfly.com[/sidebar] Sutter and Skenes met for the first time in 2009 while both were working as performers at Universal Studios and through a shared love of magic, something clicked. “The first day I worked at Universal, I met Carl,” said Sutter. “We both noticed that we shared a similar style and within a year, we were working together.” While the two shared a love of magic, they came from different backgrounds. Sutter first discovered his love of performing in high school and decided then to become a magician. He worked in a haunted house attraction, entertaining and creeping out patrons with his tricks and spent five years doing magic at Universal Studios performing for more than one million park visitors. Skenes was born into a family of performers. His father is an accomplished magician, balloon artist and stunt performer. Skenes was a dancer from the age of seven, having performed at Disney World and was featured on national television several times. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7GbiNtIUt0[/embed] Skenes was also much more into the “seedier” side of magic and performance – the sideshow. “Carl was really into the art of that type of performance,” Sutter said. “He knew about mind reading and the stunts like walking on broken glass. I didn’t before I met him.” The pair took things from each other’s solo acts and combined them into a new, cohesive performance. “There were definitely kinks we had to work out, but at the end of a year, we had a very solid show,” Sutter said. The pair also benefited from a resurgence in interest in magic and sideshow acts. The two performance crafts had been relegated to a low art status, but came back to prominence, thanks to a pair of well-known practioners. “Penn and Teller have had several shows on TV that have dealt with magic and sideshow,” Sutter said. “It’s gone mainstream now. It’s not just people eating fire in their backyards or cheesy magic like your Uncle Vince you used to do.” Like Penn and Teller, 20 Penny Circus also revolves around a common theme to give their performance a context: comedy. “The funny, antagonistic character dynamic has been with us from the beginning,” Sutter said. “We hear that we remind people of “Spy vs. Spy” (from Mad Magazine) a lot.” “During the show, it’s kind of slanted how much I beat up Carl over the course of the performance,” Sutter said. “It all ends with him kicking my ass, which gets a huge reaction from the audience.” Audience members can expect to see a lot of magic and sideshow staples – literally in some cases – on Saturday night. There will be escapes from straight jackets and ropes, lifting of heavy objects with various bodily piercings, walking on broken glass and more. “I’m going to demonstrate piercing myself with needles,” Sutter says, laughing. “You’ll basically see two clowns trying to kill themselves.”

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20 Penny Circus brings sideshow acts and magic together on Saturday

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