For most people when they talk about eating fire, they mean they are going to eat something spicy.
Not so for Carisa Hendrix. When she says she is going to eat fire, she literally means it.
Hendrix, a world renowned sideshow artist and fire eater, who will be coming to Barrhead on Saturday, Feb. 28, as part of a Barrhead and District Preschool fundraiser, said from an early age she knew she wanted to be a performer.
As a young girl growing up in a small northern Saskatchewan (Prince Albert) town, Hendrix said she didn’t have the opportunity to experience what children living in bigger centres did.
When Hendrix was in Grade 6, her family moved to Calgary and that all changed.
It was in Calgary, where Hendrix first saw the type of art performances which would become the basis for her career.
“Calgary has a huge arts community,” she said. “I remember being able to go to the circus, seeing magicians and sideshow performers and just being amazed. I became obsessed with it all.”
Unfortunately for Hendrix, even though she knew that she wanted to be part of the world of magic, fire eating and other types of sideshow performances, she really didn’t know how to go about it.
“There are no schools or universities that teach you how to eat fire, walk on glass, or perform magic,” she said, adding that to be near that world she started volunteering for Calgary area theatres.
“I was really lucky. Through volunteering, I met a lot of very talented performers and I just started asking them a lot of questions, begging them to show me how they did their act,” Hendrix said.
At the same time she started to study everything she could get her hands on about acting, dance, comedy, circus, prop manipulation, vaudeville, burlesque, modeling, and magic.
“That’s the thing about being the type of performer I am,” she said. “It is pretty much all self taught.”
In addition to being curious and ambitious, the other thing Hendrix said she had to overcome was her fear. Not her fear of fire, swords or any of the other stunts Hendrix performs on a daily basis, but of failure.
“You have to realize that you are going to fail. That’s the only way you can get good at something is by doing it and learning from your mistakes,” she said, adding at the same time it helps to have someone who is supportive and believes in what you are doing.
For Hendrix that person was the stage manager for Calgary’s ScreamFest.
“I did that show for five or six straight years,” Hendrix said. “Without her support I don’t think I would be where I am today.”
Of course, when a person is a sideshow performer it doesn’t hurt to have a high pain tolerance. In April 2012, Hendrix travelled to Italy in an attempt to break the Guinness world record for torch teething.
Torch teething is a type of fire eating where a person holds a lit torch between their teeth without using their hands. Hendrix said a fire eater will normally hold a torch between their teeth for about 10 seconds. The old Guinness Book world record was a minute and 32 seconds. Hendrix said she was hoping to be able to break the record by about five seconds, but was amazed when she found out she had beat the old mark by 29 seconds.
Beating the world record holder didn’t come without consequences. As part of the attempt, Hendrix burned both her lower and upper lips and suffered nerve damage to her teeth.
For the most part, Hendrix said her wounds from that incident have healed, but on occasion her teeth are still sensitive to cold.
She said her worst injury came early in her career when she was performing a new trick for the first time on stage.
“I am always trying combine all my loves, magic, sideshows and circus, into one art form,” Hendrix said, “So I designed this trick where I would produce fire from my hands.”
At first Hendrix said everything was going as planned, with fireballs seemingly shooting out of her palms, but when she tried to pull a fireball out of her mouth something went wrong.
“There was a bit of build up of fuel on my hands and when I reached up to pull a fire ball out of my mouth I snagged my lip and set my face on fire,” Hendrix said. “It was really scary, but the audience thought it was part of the show.”
After her performance, Hendrix inspected her face backstage and thought she had dodged a bullet.
“My upper lip was a bit red, so I thought I just had a first degree burn, no big deal,” she said, adding when she applied pressure to her lip with her finger all of the skin on her lip wrinkled up to one side. “I was terrified. It was like a layer of wet tissue paper and it was very, very painful.”
However, in true showbiz fashion, Hendrix performed the same trick a week later.
“It was Halloween week and I had booked shows, so I put a bandage on my lip and incorporated it into a zombie costume.”
As for what the audience can expect in Barrhead, she said will be performing a variation of her fire show with the help of Noah Weighel and Sarah Knight.
“I have worked with Noah and Sarah before and they are just amazing,” she said.
“Between the three of us we be showing the full range of fire manipulation.”
