It’s not uncommon for audiences to underestimate Tanya Gagné when she waddles onto the stage in a white chicken-feathered burlesque costume and a chicken mask.
Moments later, she’s balancing in a handstand while hula-hooping with her feet before taking to the air for a series of aerial acrobatics, quickly changing people’s minds. Chickens, it turns out, can fly, at least when Gagné is playing her fearless alter ego, Goldie Hen.
Hen serves as the star of “Birds of Play,” a nature-defying comedy cabaret circus show at Seattle Public Theater through Saturday. Over its 65-minute runtime, the production, which SPT also presented last year, showcases the years of mastery Gagné has spent honing her craft since the 1980s — and includes plenty of literal hooting and hollering.
“I lead with joy,” Gagné said. “That’s what I want to bring to people. I want to surprise them.”
Directed by Gagné, the production features former collaborator, aerialist and Guinness World Records holder Leila Noone, ballerina Bella Schlieker and local drag performer Manny Manstands in an unpredictable blend of circus, comedy and cabaret.
According to Gagné, she always had a feeling she was meant to do big things. But long before performing on some of the world’s biggest stages, Gagné’s first audience was her family in a barn in rural New England.
At age 5, she entertained relatives with tap dancing, earning the nickname “Bird” because she was always “fluttering about,” said Gagné.
“I was the freak of the family, but I think everybody enjoyed that,” she said.
At 9 years old, she saw her first circus performance. Although she was captivated, pursuing circus wasn’t easy. At the time, the only dedicated circus schools were in Canada and Europe, so she channeled that fascination into gymnastics and climbing trees instead.
Her love of performing eventually pushed her out of the nest. In the 1980s, she enrolled at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts before transferring to the University of Oregon to study theater and dance.
“I realized pretty early on that I was really obsessed with circus and trapeze especially, and I wanted to be in the air and be upside down,” Gagné said.
But it wasn’t until she was 19, while housesitting during the early 1990s for The Flying Karamazov Brothers, a juggling and comedy troupe, that circus truly came into focus. One of the brother’s wives trained her to trapeze, teaching her inside a barn in Port Townsend.
In her 20s, Gagné moved back to New York, where she worked aboard tall ships and learned about rigging. That experience solidified her love for the heights.
Eventually, she returned to land and began training under Irina Gold, a former Olympic gymnast who was working with the Big Apple Circus.
After studying flying trapeze in France and England, Gagné returned to the United States to train at the then newly opened San Francisco School of Circus Arts, where she spent three summers developing new skills.
“I studied doubles trapeze, acrobatics, hoop diving, handstands, juggling, you name it,” Gagné said.
She opened her own aerial trapeze school, The Trapeze Loft, in Brooklyn in 1999, but ultimately closed it in 2018 to focus on her own performing career and spend more time on the West Coast.
In 2000, she co-founded The Wau Wau Sisters with performance partner Adrienne Truscott, creating a weekly show in New York. Their career grew from there, with appearances on “The Sharon Osbourne Show,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and a role in the film “Shortbus.”
But for Gagné, one of her career’s defining moments came when she created her own show at the Sydney Opera House in 2011.
Last year saw Gagné’s Hen alter ego hit national TV, when she auditioned — but didn’t make the cut — for Season 20 of “America’s Got Talent.”
“I’ve built a life where I was able to see the world,” Gagné said. “It’s been extraordinary.”
Today, Gagné divides her time between Seattle, where she performs during the summer, and Las Vegas, where she spends the winter.
Gagné’s extraordinary life has also come with uncertainty. Despite the freedom of creating her own path, Gagné said a career in the arts often comes with financial insecurity, housing instability and uncertainty about the future, especially as she gets older.
“It takes a lot of will,” Gagné said. “It takes a lot of discomfort to create a life like this. I mean, I am often very uncomfortable.”
Still, Gagné remains focused on bringing joy to the public, as is evident with “Birds of Play.” But the production is also a reflection of the life she has built through circus and performing, one defined by movement, reinvention and refusing to stay grounded.
“I’m a showgirl, and showgirls are like birds,” Gagné said. “Like migratory beings, we travel all over the world. We know no borders. Birds don’t know no walls.”
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