thePULSESmart, sexy, fun performance celebrating femme identity and queer femininity
Where: The Lucky Dog Music Hall
When: Saturday August 14, doors at 2pm, show at 3pm
With dance, spoken word, burlesque, drag, and performance art from award-winning artists, The Femme Show is the country’s only touring show exploring all aspects of femme identity. This is queer art for queer people, with a variety of diverse perspectives on queer femininity that can be thoughtful, sad, funny, sexy, and fun.
In October of 2007, the first-ever Femme Show sold out and received rave reviews from audience members who called it “wild, raw, transparent, and unique,” and “a fantastic, funny, powerful show.” Since then, The Femme Show has been seen at True Colors, the country’s largest LGBTQI youth conference (Storrs, CT); Snug Underground Theater Festival (Staten Island, NY), Emerson College (Boston), Machine (Boston) Queer Spirit Camp (Greenwich, NY), Common Threads Youth Empowerment Retreat (Stony Point, NY), the LoF/T (Baltimore, MD) the Rotunda (Philadelphia, PA) and the St. Lawrence (Portland, ME).
According to Metroline, Connecticut’s LGBT paper, The Femme Show was one of the top 5 most attended workshops at True Colors in 2008. Cast members have recently been seen at the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in New York City, the Tranny Road Show, Body Heat, the Femme2008 Conference in Chicago, and the Eugene O’Neill Cabaret Conference, with Amanda Palmer at the Boston Pops, and more.
In addition to live performances, The Femme Show is pleased to offer artist talk backs and workshops about gender, and sexuality, as well as hands-on master classes in a variety of performance genres. The Femme Show is fun and entertaining for LGBTQ student groups, but is also relevant to disciplines including women’s studies, queer studies, film, theater, and performance studies.
Featured pieces include:
• A misunderstood femme tries to get what she needs from her partner in “Dancer’s Nightmare.”
• Are you High Maintenance? Take the quiz! “High Maintenance” is a peek into one femme’s relationship questions and answers.
• Johnny Blazes’ monologue “Passage” explores notions of “passing” in the transgender and queer communities, using voice, music and movement to express the discord of being a female-bodied transgendered person who expresses hirself femininely.
• The etiquette mavens of the Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Sapphic Social Mores invite the audience to join them in exploring the pleasures of modern-day popular culture.
• “Freaks and Fortunes” by Adelaide Windsome is an internal dialogue about the fears and rationale of passing from the perspective of a trans woman, told through beautiful puppets.
• “Split Personality” is a hilarious dance solo performed wearing a pointe shoe on one foot and a Doc Marten on the other.
• Hot Commodity: In this sassy burlesque, a femme just wants to have fun, but her sexuality is being co-opted everywhere she turns.
And just added:
*Johnny Blazes transfixing “Transcension” solo performance about trans identity
*Mallory Hanora physical performance “Carrying” about gender and depression
*Maggie Cee hot burlesque “Femme Walks into a bar”
*Mylene St. Pierre “How This Fat Femme F*cks”
Plus additional dance, drag, and burlesque!
Says Mallory Hanora, one of the Femme Show’s featured performers, “We’re trying something a little different and throwing a matinee show. The Femme Show is the country’s ONLY touring revue of performances about queer femme gender and sexuality. The show features drag, burlesque, dance, spoken word, storytelling, and performance art by award winning artists. Our work is sometimes brazen, sometimes introspective, sometimes hilarious, but always powerful. We’ve performed all over the East Coast in theaters, bars, clubs, gallery spaces, even a really big vintage store. We’re really looking forward to the Worcester show since we’ve never played there before.”
For more on the show, the performers, and the rave reviews Femme Show has been getting, head to www.thefemmeshow.com.
