Pickle Family Circus Goes to the ‘Movies’ : Theater: California’s home-grown, acclaimed troupe brings its new show, an audience- participation burlesque odyssey through a film studio, to the Southland.

The remarkable success of esoteric, theatrical Cirque du Soleil has changed the image of big top entertainment, but the Canadian company is not the only circus to challenge convention, nor even the oldest.

California’s home-grown, widely acclaimed Pickle Family Circus, whose latest comic romp, “Jump Cuts, the Circus Goes to the Movies,” comes to Southland locations beginning Jan. 7 at Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza’s Probst Theater, follows a decidedly different drummer. It has since 1974, when it was founded by members of the offbeat San Francisco Mime Troupe and others.

Using no animals, its then innovative concept was to tell stories using music, comedy, dance and traditional circus arts. Among its alumni are such master clowns as Bill Irwin and Geoff Hoyle.

Renamed the New Pickle Family Circus with the recent advent of its new artistic director, Northern California choreographer Tandy Beal--who was the movement model for Tim Burton’s “The Nightmare Before Christmas” characters--the troupe is no longer an outdoor big top show.

It now unpacks its bag of tricks at such major U.S. venues as the Kennedy Center in Washington and Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, and tours Japan and Canada.

The company’s new show is an audience-participation burlesque odyssey through a movie studio, where clowns and acrobats wreak havoc and reels of film come to life.

“A group of marvelously silly tourists go to Monumental Film Studios and get left overnight in the studio,” Beal explained from her Santa Cruz office.

“A film spirit arrives on stilts in a fabulous costume--a projector head and iridescent filmstrips hanging from his body. He allows the clowns to jump into [the movies] so that they suddenly find themselves in a black-and-white western, and then, bingo!, they’re in a detective story,” and a Technicolor musical.

Her company is “a true braiding of circus, theater, dance, music and strong visual design,” Beal said. “We’re also very warm and friendly and human. You can bring a child of 2 or you can bring your grandparents; you can even bring your teenager and everybody has a good time.”

Asian-style daredevil balancing acts and acrobatics are another strength, thanks to Chinese acrobatics master Lu Yi, former trainer of the Nanjing Acrobatics Troupe.

“He has taken our performers and brought in Chinese acrobatics and rooted them in American soil,” Beal said. “He’s teaching them how to do things they never thought they could do.”

Another strength, she added, is the circus’ jazz band and the original music composed by Jeffrey Gaeto. “The music becomes the thread for the whole show in a way. It’s a wonderful energy.

“What I aim for in the show,” she said, “is two hours of laughter and wonder.”

* The New Pickle Family Circus, Probst Theatre, Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Jan. 7 at 7 p.m., $19-$24 per adult; $9-$15 per child. (805) 650-5900, (805) 583-8700; Robert Moore Theatre, Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa, Jan. 18 (a one-hour shortened version), 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. $5-$7, (714) 432-5880; Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton, Jan. 19, 8 p.m., $12.50-$17.50, (714) 773-3371; Lancaster Performing Arts Center, 750 W. Lancaster Blvd., Jan. 21, 7 p.m., $12-$16, (805) 723-5951.