Bored once again today, so back to answer more questions :)
What’s your favourite part of the job? Do you get stage fright?
The audience. There’s no “theater etiquette” in burlesque. There’s hooting and hollering and whistling and laughing and all sorts of calling out. It amazing and as a bonafide attention wh0r3, it feeds my whole exactly how I need it to.
And at this point no, I feel very confident and comfortable doing burlesque. On the rare occasion I do traditional theater I get extremely nervous though.
Did you try any other stage arts, or did you fall into Burlesque from the start?
Sorry if you’ve answered this a thousand times, but as someone who very much understands loving the crowd interaction(community theatre, we were a lot less stuffy, especially during things like Rocky Horror), it makes me curious.
I’ve been a dancer since I was like 5 years old, and started doing more traditional theater when I was like 13. Went to college for theater and still occasionally to this day will audition for a little community theater performance or something. But since I started doing burlesque that has pretty much been my primary passion.
it feeds my whole exactly how I need it to
I see you’ve got the tongue-in-cheek naughty humor down pat lol
LOL I typed ego but my phone knows my brain too well I guess
As someone who’s never been to a show, walk me through what the show entails. Is it just a bunch of ladies in frilly skirts doing the can-can?
You got a big part of it.
A burlesque show is a variety show with an emphasis on comedy and risqué or at least somewhat risqué performance styles. Basically various performers will come out and perform everything from songs to dances to comedy to magic to acrobatics and pretty much everything inbetween. It’s all presented in a very tongue-in-cheek manner and the humor is usually naughty by nature. It can be sort of more modern humor but there is also in a lot of burlesques a dedication to the tone and aesthetics of the 1920s and 1930s. And the most iconic image associated with burlesque is female performers, like myself, coming out in tiny outfits and dancing while gradually losing clothing. Again, all in a very tongue-in-cheek way. But it’s pretty much the most fun live show you can go see and an even more fun show to perform in.
How much do you spend on the costuming for an act? How long does it take to create it? Is there a certain point when you know it’s done or do you make tweaks for a long time?
Sometimes you can get by spending as little as $150 for a full costume with some thrifty ingenuity. Other times you can end up spending $400 or more for specific things like vintage pieces. It just depends. And everything is used many times for many performances so it should be worth its price in the long run.
It can take anywhere from a few days to several weeks if you’re working specifically on that piece for any amount of time. Sometimes you throw it on the back burner and only finish it after months. Again it just depends.
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record it just depends when you know it’s finished. Sometimes you just feel oh that’s ready to go. Sometimes you’re in something you’ve worn for a year and think I could add this and change this. There’s no correct answer.
What’s the strangest burlesque performance you’ve done?
What’s a stranger one that you’ve thought about doing?
I sadly did an awful cringe inducing game of thrones themes show as the show was ending that was awful and embarrassing 😂
Did it drive you mad trying to perfect it?
Yes, it always does haha. But worth it once you get it in front of a crowd