Friends,
If you missed our first sold-out burlesque show you won't want to miss this all new show!
The Sissy Butch Bros. bring you One Bad-Ass Burlesque Show
All new striptease, comedy, song, drag, dance, fire, and magic.
The band Apartment will play live burlesque music.
Performers from Chicago, Seattle and Detroit.
Emcee: Jessica Halem
We promise it will be smart, sexy and funny - worth coming out in the cold weather.
Next Friday November 22 @ 9pm @ Subterranean Cabaret and Lounge
2011 W. North Avenue
$15 fundraiser
Hope to see you there!
More info at
sissybutchbrothers.com Our Generous Sponsors: ChixMix Productions, DykeDiva.com and Early to Bed
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For Immediate Release
November 8, 2002
Burlesque's Back in Chicago by Popular Demand
Sexy. Smart. Funny. Everything You’ve Always Wanted in a Girl Show.
Following on the heels of their hugely successful and sold-out first burlesque show, The Sissy Butch Bros. are bringing burlesque back to Chicago audiences at a fundraiser for their independent documentary "Gurlesque." From the clumsy stripper to the wrestling gorilla in garters to Gypsy Rose to Shirley Temptress, performers at the last show entertained an audience of 550 people, filling the venue with palpable pleasure. This upcoming show, "One Bad-Ass Burlesque Show" to be held at Subterranean Cabaret and Lounge, 2011 W. North Ave. on Friday November 22nd, will feature all new acts with performers from Chicago, Seattle and Detroit. The audience will be treated to all new striptease, comedy, song, drag, dance, fire, and magic. In addition, the band Apartment will play live burlesque music.
Subterranean Cabaret and Lounge, which was formerly a casino and brothel in the 1920s, will provide the perfect atmosphere for a burlesque revival. Echoing promoters from the early part of the 20th century, organizers promise the show will be “a lavish spectacle of sight, sound, motion and color,” that will “intoxicate your senses with ribaldrous innuendo, salacious music and sexy gurls.”
Located in the middle of the Mojave Desert, the Exotic World Museum, its caretakers and visitors are a central focus of "Gurlesque." The museum, founded by former burlesque dancer Jennie Lee and run by the former "Marilyn Monroe of burlesque," Dixie Evans, is America's only institution solely dedicated to preserving the history of burlesque. Over a period of several years, this documentary will focus on the performers and fans that gather each year both at the museum (for the 46-50th annual reunions of burlesque dancers) as well as at Tease-O-Rama (an annual burlesque extravaganza of performances and workshops). Drawing on interviews of veteran and new performers, ages 20 to 80, archival footage of burlesque and historical accounts of the striptease, the documentary will peel away both sensationalism and the bias against burlesque to tell a tale about an irreverent and powerful entertainment form that continues to raise important questions about women, their sexuality and their public power in American culture. The film will investigate America's love/hate affair with burlesque and why so many in recent generations are dedicated to keeping it alive.
Burlesque is an entertainment form that was originally performed by men who used comedy to poke fun at conventional hierarchies and to critique those in authority who misused or abused their power, such as legislators. In the United States, in 1869, women transformed burlesque into a new entertainment form by taking the stage and using comedy to especially play with gendered and sexual hierarchies and conventions. Both dangerous and pleasurable, early female burlesque placed women and their sexuality at the center of theater, purposefully and insistently taking up public space. Women burlesque performers, unlike ballet dancers of the day, created meaning through winks, laughter, and wit. They held influence over audiences, addressing them with defiance, walking alone on stage with confidence, placing their female bodies in public and insisting that people pay attention to them. Women solicited laughter and desire by playing with meaning, critiquing legislators, and like traditional burlesque, making a mockery of hierarchies of the day. Early burlesque performers invoked female sexuality through language, innuendo, puns, double entendres, intonation and male drag, arousing a frenzy of desire and then eventually, censure.
Anti-burlesque campaigns have been launched periodically since 1870 when women first appeared as feature performers. One crusade during the Great Depression culminated in the outlawing of burlesque by New York City’s Mayor LaGuardia. And yet, new generations of performers and fans are insistent that burlesque remain a vital and relevant part of American culture and history. Because early burlesque centered on the red-hot issues of the day, women, their sexuality and gender hierarchies, and because those issues remain significant today, burlesque lives on. Despite wave after wave of repression, burlesque continues to arouse new generations of performers and audiences who play with the meanings of women’s sexuality and power in public.
This two-hour documentary moves beyond an examination of burlesque as a novel entertainment form to an investigation of what burlesque and its continued, although intermittent, popularity can reveal about gender, sexuality and display in American culture over the long 20th century.
Footage from the last show and digital still images of the museum, Dixie Evans, Lydia Thompson (the first female burlesque performer in the United States), production stills, and performances from the last show are available upon request.
Contact Info:
Tara Vaughan Tremmel
Gurlesque Producer & Director
Doctoral Candidate, History Department, University of Chicago
773.505.6580,
t-tremmel@uchicago.edu,
www.sissybutchbrothers.com
