Imaginary Worlds - Nerdlesque

Episode Date: June 12, 2019

Burlesque has merged with geek culture to form nerdlesque – where characters from familiar fantasy franchises strip down to pasties and g-strings. Nerdlesque is also a form of storytelling, similar to fanfiction or cosplay in the way it encompasses a diverse range of fans, and re-imagines the power dynamics of the original stories. We talk with nerdlesque performers Fem Appeal and Nasty Canasta, and we get a back stage tour of The Empire Strips Back with Russall Beattie, Lisa Toyer and Kael Murray. FYI: This episode contains adult content with adult language. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. Hey, it stinks down here. Why do armpits get all of the attention? We're down here all day with no odor protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now.

This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today.

You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. I recently got a backstage tour at a Broadway theater. It was eight hours before showtime, and the show was a live Star Wars extravaganza. Oh my God, that's a life-size R2-D2. So he's fully custom. That is Russell Beattie who created this production. He was showing me all the props, which also included a giant puppet of Jabba the Hutt. And the costumes were impressive too. Yeah, you'll see there's a ton of costumes in here. Boba Fett. I recognize

all these costumes, except Boba Fett usually doesn't have windows for cleavage. Yes, you heard him right. He did say windows for cleavage. Oh, did I mention that this is a burlesque parody of Star Wars called The Empire Strips Back? I probably should have mentioned that up top. Although before I remove any more layers to the story, I should reiterate that this episode will be dealing with adult themes using adult language. The Empire Strips Back began in Sydney in 2011.

They've been on a world tour, taking them to the UK, the US, and Canada. And this tour ended in New York City on May 4th, which is Star Wars Day, as in May the 4th be with you. So what did the fans think that night, seeing their favorite Star Wars characters stripped down to pasties and g-strings? I love it. It's very, I don't know how to describe it. It's a nerd's wet dream.

It literally is a nerd's wet dream. I couldn't put it any better. We're loving it. It's like the best show of all time. No, we really think that we just love the dancing and the choreography, everything. It's amazing. Some of the dancers stripped to music from Star Wars,

but mostly they danced to contemporary songs and embodied the spirit of those characters. For instance, Boba Fett showed off her cleavage to Welcome to the Jungle. Princess Leia's hologram was choreographed to Lana Del Rey's Young and Beautiful, while that remote-controlled R2-D2 made it rain by shooting $1 bills out of a slot. And Han Solo stripped a smooth criminal by Michael Jackson with some help from Chewbacca. By the way, Han Solo was played by a male dancer.

In case you didn't know, there are a lot of men who do burlesque. One of my favorite acts was C-3PO, who looked like a very elegant female version of C-3PO. And while C-3PO was dancing on a platform, Jawas came on stage and removed her gold plates piece by piece. They were literally stripping her for parts. Kale Murray was performing inside that C-3PO costume. The actual creation of that, you know,

was three hours of standing to get my whole body cast to have the actual costume moulded to a replica of my body. And then to just add a few more variables to make it a little bit more fun. I'm in nice big platform heels. I'm on a rotating platform. And, again, if I'm in darkness, I cannot see anything

because there's little lights that reflect into my eyes and it's almost like pinhole vision. There's a little bit of light on the floor I can see, but really it's trusting that the crew is there. They help me onto the stage. They help me onto the platform. We do a quick test. Yeah, very limited movement as well.

And there's something like 30 pieces in that costume and they're held together by high-powered magnets and because it's so tight on her body, she's had a big meal that day, she's going to get pinched. Yeah. Anytime they wear a mask or a helmet in the show, which is a lot in this show, they're basically performing blind under the lights. Yeah, so the audience are unaware of that. And that's part of our job. We have to take it,

you know, we make something look hard, look easy, and things will look easy, make it look hard. Russell's company has other fantasy related burlesque shows like Game of Thrones, Ghostbusters, and a Batman show that's set in the 1930s. They also created high-concept memorabilia, which they sell at the shows. And for the Empire Strips Back, they created an issue of what's basically Playboy set in the world of Star Wars. And it is surprisingly accurate to a 1970s Playboy with fake ads, letters to the editor, and naughty Star Wars cartoons.

Burlesque, it's a mirror to what's ever happening. If you want to, you know, be satirical, it's a mirror to what's happening in society. And, you know, geek culture has taken over the world. So burlesque kind of, if it wants to stay current, kind of has to be a part of that. Burlesque kind of, if it wants to stay current, kind of has to be part of that. In fact, there is a subset of burlesque called nerdlesque. And nerdlesque is where all the action is. So how did burlesque get to this point? Going from feather fan dances and small nightclubs to selling at a Broadway theater full of Star Wars fans.

And what do traditional burlesque performers think about geek culture invading their subculture? That is just in a moment. So burlesque made a big comeback about 20 years ago. It was part of the third wave of feminism, where women were reclaiming derogatory terms and cultural ways in which they had been exploited, from cheesecake pinup art to burlesque. Again, here's Kale Murray. And I love that aspect of burlesque, going, this is me, this is my body, I choose to play these characters

and I can do it to whoever, you know, in front of whomever I choose. And I think that's a really empowering and a really beautiful thing. Personally, I have experienced way less sexual harassment being in a burlesque production company or doing any, you know, sexy shows than I ever have in retail and hospitality in my time. 100%. Interesting. My producers, Stephanie and I also met up with two local nerd-lesque performers here in New York who go by the names Femme Appeal and Nasty Canasta. So should I refer to you as first names as Femme and Nasty?

Yes. Yes. Okay, good. I wasn't sure we were writing emails. I've never written emails saying, hi, Nasty. Hi, Nasty, I know. Honestly, if I had known 15 years ago that that was going to be the name that the world knew me by, I might not have picked it.

Okay. Femme and Nasty were some of the first burlesque performers to do nerdlesque, although back in the early 2000s it wasn't called nerdlesque. For Femme, it was just the most sincere way she could express herself. I'm a big, like, movie buff, so I would go to all these movies,

science fiction and horror, and then I'd see the movie, Belayed, It, and I'm like, I'm going to make that a number. So that was what informed what I did on stage because everyone else was doing their own thing and it was a variation on classic or neo. And me, I was just like, what can i do to tell my stories and it had to be weird it had to be a monster it had to involve masks or um mustaches i love mustaches oh my god i love you in a mustache though as sci-fi fantasy franchises became bigger and bigger femme and nasty started

noticing more nerd leslesque shows. And Femme has another theory why nerd-lesque became so popular. I think as far as bringing an audience to nerd-lesque, that's an easier pill to swallow than regular burlesque. For many people, yeah. When you're thinking about burlesque as it is, they know that the person's going to get naked. And a lot of people have this notion that there's something wrong with me that I'm sitting here right now watching this happen.

And so if you temper that with humor and maybe something that they're passionate about, like, you know, whatever it is, Star Wars, people are like, oh, my God, I know who that is. And, like, I think people will have a better time with that than they would with traditional burlesque. It's an easy entree, you're right. Although burlesque performers have discovered that they need to tread carefully when going into well-established fandoms.

This is Lisa Toyer, who's a choreographer on The Empire Strips Back. When Russell first suggested doing a Star Wars show, I thought we were going to be slaughtered because I know how insane the Star Wars fans are. And I thought if we mess with their characters, they're just going to kill us. But they absolutely loved it. There's a kind of duty of care and responsibility when you take on someone's fandom. We don't want to be seen as people, a bunch of burlesque people putting on a Star Wars show. We want to be seen as Star Wars putting on a burlesque show. And they've shown a deep knowledge of Star Wars. For instance, there are these alien characters called Twi'leks.

They have these long tubes coming out of their heads. Often they have green or blue skin. One of them was fed to the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. They're not that well known among casual Star Wars fans. But Lisa choreographed a really poignant dance between two Twi'leks in Jabba's palace. Kale finds that moment in the show really quite moving.

They're slaves. They're also sex workers. So it's quite sad and quite beautiful to create an act that actually carries that idea across as something beautiful and kind of sad. It's really tricky to do, but very cleverly done with the right choreography. Lisa explored a similar terrain when she choreographed a slave Leia dance. It was really important to me that Leia, even though she was a slave, remained in control the whole time. So there's a lot of other characters within that scene

and she comes around and plays with them. But one of my things was nobody was to touch her. Jabba does touch her but nobody else was to touch her. Jabba does touch her, but nobody else was to touch her. And there's consequences for that. Yeah. And, yeah, we try and subvert that as much as we can. But also we don't, like with that costume, you're so iconic. So it's one of those things she actually doesn't strip at all.

She's already in it and she ends in it. And the thing what it is, it's all about her movement and taking control. That's the kind of what the act's about. But the hardest character for them to get right was Darth Vader. I used to play Darth Vader in the show. That's something that, you know, the power that you can have with that character is so immense.

And there have been a few versions that we've done that haven't really sort of had that power. We've had to work on that a little bit. And once you get it right, people are just so, like, they're with you. They're totally with you from start to finish. And, yeah, it's intense. Actually, hold on, because you could be more specific. I'm really curious, what were some of the things you did

that were not working? And then what are some of the changes that you made where you're like, yes, this feels right? Essentially essentially there's a few things like one nailing the costume originally when lisa was vader we had a latex vader costume which looks amazing uh catsuit but horrible to strip in absolutely horrible and also we didn't want to show vader skin at any point we didn't want to show any skin we didn't want to take anything away from being that strong image of vader now how do you do a burlesque show without showing any skin you know as far as what people expect but we we worked around that ways but then like we've been through a few different costumes and

i think we've finally landed on something we're really happy with it only after nine years of doing it but it's also about having like little things like you need to have a strong body because you can't use your face to convey any of this you know it's all in the mask. I mean I knew who the character was and I knew what I wanted the character to be I just had to make sure that every movement had had power and charge in it. I heard something very similar from Nasty Canasta and Femme Appeal. They said a nerd-less performer has to capture the essence of a character, or even the essence of a movie, just through movement. There is a newer performer. His name is Twinkie Boots.

Oh, God, he's great. And when I first saw him, it was in the Philadelphia Burlesque Festival. And I don't know how this has never happened before, but he has a matrix act. I've never seen a matrix act. And we were all talking about it like, of course, he's doing a matrix act. He can move his body body he's an amazing physical performer yeah and we were talking about i don't want to see a matrix act that doesn't use all the the movement because then you're doing a disservice to the character and and the whole film and that's the problem i have with some things you look like the character You're not doing anything that the character does.

Well, and it's, you know, not everybody's trained. I'm not a dancer. I can, you know, I taught myself how to walk in heels, but I probably wouldn't tackle the Matrix because I feel like that's something, you know, obviously we're like, as far as I know, none of us are superheroes. So, you know, you could be like, I could do Superman even though I can't actually fly. But I wouldn't touch the Matrix because I feel like that's something you do have to. You either have to have that movement in you or it has to be about your inability to do that, perhaps. Right. They also have to strike a balance between honoring those characters and putting their own spin on them.

In fact, a lot of performers have described nerd-lesque as the ultimate self-insert because they're inserting themselves into those worlds in a way that's different from fan fiction or cosplay. For years and years and years, I had a Lieutenant Uhura act. I had this Captain Kirk cutout, and I did horrible things to him because I was referencing three different episodes from the original series, The Trouble with Tribbles, The Naked Time, and Plato's Stepchildren. So when I took the kiss, that whole like, oh my God, it's the first interracial televised kiss and i was like

kiss i'm gonna blow him how about that um and then years later it's like star trek star trek star trek and of course if you're a person of color you did lieutenant uhura and i'd be like hey i've been doing this for how long? Five years or so. Like, why are you? And then, you know, I started to relax because I didn't write the character. I don't own it. I don't own the music most of the time. You learn to relax and just hope that your work will stand above.

Are there certain sort of sci-fi fantasy franchises or storylines that are very, very ripe for nerd-less? Star Wars, Star Trek, Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones. I don't even watch it. There's a thousand Game of Thrones shows happening right now. Like, right this very minute, there's 15 Game of Thrones burlesque shows happening

right now. You saw those same ones over and over again, but now that people are just kind of going with i mean god i saw somebody do it an act as the tesseract like okay that's kind of cool right can you take a more specific like what are some acts that you saw where they took characters or did something with something you're familiar with that especially you not just as an audience member but as a fellow performer just thought wow I never would have thought of that. So the one, the act that has been, I can't stop talking about this act because it was just performed at the Nerdlesque Festival.

It's Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. So it's basically Harry alone on his birthday and makes a wish and then Draco pops out of a cake and they get it on. The two performers, it's Draco Muffboy and Chastity Twist. And they are both from Vancouver because the Canadians hand us our nerd butts on a platter. They are incredible. It's adorable. It's very cute. And at the outset, you're like, oh, Harry Potter, it's adorable.

And Chastity actually is a dead ringer. It's kind of weird. And then it just gets like there's whipped cream and wands. Oh, yeah, no, there is. Wands go places. It's just, I mean, I watched an entire audience. There's 200 people like lose their shit over this. It was amazing.

Is NerdLess particularly good for Slash? Oh, yes. Oh, amazing. Is nerd less particularly good for slash? Oh yes. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually really wonderful because I think there's a, there's a point at which I think like, you know,

we kind of want to slash everything now and you're like, okay, that's fine. But at the same time you do get to see it. I don't know. You're like, what if, you know,

like, all right, I, I, I really want to see Harry and Draco get it on. Like, okay. Just to clarify here, the sexual acts they're describing are all pantomimed. And also, if you're not familiar with the term slash,

it comes from fan fiction. Slash is when you hook up two characters that are not an item in the official canon. And it's called slash because when you punctuate a story like that in fan fiction, up two characters that are not an item in the official canon and it's called slash because when you punctuate a story like that in fan fiction you would say harry slash draco now russell beattie's company loves to play with slash pairings as they cover all these different fantasy franchises but they won't do harry potter at all i don't think we can sexualize children

um characters and we stay away from doing anything like that. The closest I've come to doing a kind of children's thing is Wizard of Oz, but we turned that on its head. We based it on a 1960s London fashion label called Bieber and we made Dorothy a young mod girl in her early 20s and things like that. But, yeah, I draw the line at sexualizing children's characters. Yeah, because it's an interesting question because Star Wars is something that initially we all come across as children.

And yet, obviously, there are plenty of adults who love it too. So yeah, I was wondering if that was ever something you thought about at all. Yes and no. These days, it's everywhere. For us to not, you know, do a parody of the world's biggest pop culture entity owned by the world's biggest production company, it's kind of like what do you do it about? But Nasty Canasta feels the same way about doing Harry Potter.

They're not kids. Like I'm 42. Like, clearly me in a Hogwarts outfit doesn't mean that I'm eight years old. Like, I am a adult-bodied human, and I don't really care. This brings up an interesting point in terms of how the general public interacts with Nerdlesk. I mean, I've noticed in conversation with people when I tell them about this episode, some of them look pretty uncomfortable at the thought of these characters from wholesome fantasy franchises stripping on stage.

And honestly, until I saw a live Nerdlesk show, I was a little squeamish about it too. And I was surprised how intentionally funny the shows are. I mean, by the end, the muscles in my face were actually sore from laughing so hard. And I think the humor allows the audience to let down their guard. The only negative feedback I've had of this whole tour is people who haven't seen the show. Like they see the idea and they're like, is weird no thanks and then i go just come and see the show if you don't like it i'll give you your money back the show goes beyond that realm of of that even to the point where we have people who have never seen burlesque who have never seen star wars and they still come and they still have an

incredible time that audience response at the end when you do get to go out and talk to the people and you realise how touched they are by what you've done with those characters is something that you don't get in the regular burlesque world. Although Kale has gotten negative feedback from people in the regular burlesque world. I performed a regular corset and feather style show and I had a performer come up to me and say, oh, you do burlesque.

I was like, I've been doing burlesque for six years, you know, with The Empire Strips Back. She goes, it's not really burlesque though, is it? Femme and Nasty have noticed the opposite problem. Burlesque performers doing nerdlesque, even if they're not geeks at heart. Nerdlesque became this hot thing and then everyone was like, I'm gonna do this thing. I need a Harley Quinn act. And it's like, do you? Do you need that? Like, you didn't have it before. Why make it now? And please do it justice. Otherwise, you're just a mercenary and nobody wants to see you. It's like that idea, you have to have a fan dance

and you have to have a nerdlesque act. I'm like, I don't have a fan dance. You don't have to have a nerdlesque act. And there are other ways that nerdlesque stands out. Sort of your burlesque floor show supper club wants, you know, young appearing, fit, female-bodied, female-presenting women in pretty costumes dancing. They don't want femme appeal as Dobby. And the other thing I think, too, is so when I first started, I can't remember how many of us there were.

Like, none. But it wasn't I would be the only in a show. Yep. The thing that's the trends that have changed are we have different identifying people. So it's not it's non-binary. But we also have POCs and all Latin burlesque and all this burlesque. And that wasn't the case years ago. I think in general it's just one of the few art forms, commercial art forms. It is commercial.

We do shows. People pay to see them. That is not straight white men dictating everything. Especially this particular fan culture. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So where does nerd-less go from here? It depends on whether you think we're in a bubble that's about to burst from too many superheroes and too much fantasy mythology, or if you think this is just the new normal.

And if sci-fi fantasy genres continue to dominate pop culture, how much can nerd-lesque really be a part of that? We are already a niche market. And the idea that I'm like, oh, you know, why are you scared of bodies? But people are, you know, every social media is cracking down on every part of a body that isn't an elbow. I think Nerdlesque is still a little more, this is a very loaded way of saying this, possibly a little more honestly presented because it is a little more, but I love this story. I love this thing.

I love this character and I just want to do this thing. And because it is more open to different humans creating and consuming it, that possibly gives it a little longer lifespan. But I don't know how long any of this has left, honestly. I feel like with Nerdless, though, the sky is the limit because you can really take anything and that can be your jam. To me, honestly, I've started after 15 years of this, I find myself more attracted to or more sort of intellectually turned on by nerd-esque acts that are not character specific or not property specific. So I did a whole show a couple of times.

We did a few repeats that was just heroes versus villains. And it was just your own hero, your own villain, your own like make up a superhero. villains and it was just your own hero, your own villain, your own, like make up a superhero. I sort of encouraged people, newer performers, come up with their own stories too and their own characters. I think that's the next step really. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Russell Beattie, Kale Murray, Lisa Toyer, Femme Appeal, and Nasty Canasta. I put a slideshow of some of their work on the Imaginary Worlds Instagram page, or as much as social media will allow.

My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted emolinski and Imagine Worlds pod. And the show's website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.