Performing for Largely Hetero Audiences

First of all, Happy Thanksgiving to all!

I wanted to write a bit about my experience with performing for crowds comprised mostly of straight men, as I've had a lot of unique and strong feels about it. Mostly excitement, but sometimes terror. I'd like to take you through that emotional process and where it all originates.

Women's burlesque performance is generally more well received for new audiences, due in large part to the socially-reinforced way women's sexuality is available for public consumption. Women are expected to be looked at and appreciated, regardless of the gender makeup of the audience. Both men and women will watch in adoration at female striptease, as it is acceptable to do so. I'm here to write about what happens when a male burlesque performer presents to a crowd of new, straight-ish people, because the reactions are often much, much different than the reactions that naturalized, familiar burlesque audiences display.

Such as leaning-accented casual indifference.

I was a bit on edge for a recent gig with Brandy Wine and Polly Surely of Rogue Burlesque, as it was the type of setting where burlesque didn't quite seem to fit the programming. As I alluded to in a previous post, this was a high-energy party where DJ's from around the country were gathering to drink and dance. We went down into the basement, which was its own party-hearty room, complete with dim lighting, beer spilled on the floor, poor sight lines, and every formality spared. I'd say it was an audience with an 80/20 man-to-woman ratio.

Needless to say, very few folks in the crowd were acquainted with burlesque. After our host for the night started explaining burlesque etiquette, you could absolutely hear the sarcastic chuckling. While I knew they were probably picturing a club-esque strip show, I doubted they were ready to factor me into their expectations. As I mentioned way back in the second paragraph, the onlookers were pretty amenable to seeing Brandy and Polly perform. When I stepped onto the floor though, there was an audible groan from many of the males in the room. I would estimate that about 1/3 of them immediately turned around and walked out.

In that moment, I saw a clear picture of what scares straight men about male burlesque. When I teach my class for new male burlesquers, I like to gradually introduce clothing reveals and let people opt out of ones they aren't (yet) comfortable with. To their credit, the guys in the class are usually willing to jump right in and do all of them, which is fantastic. I'm guessing that the mental re-configuring that happens when a group of men who have never met before begin to accept that they're about to be nearly naked in front of one other, they move past the head-space that my audience at this gig was stuck in. In essence, they were frightened.

Usually, the screaming is internal.

Since performers tend to draw energy from the audience they go on for, I can tell you that when this happens, it's often demoralizing. To that end, it manifests itself in a few different ways: In struggling to cope with the fact that they might have to watch another man strip, these men will usually show signs of physical discomfort--heads down, arms folded, groaning and audible commentary. James and the Giant Pasty of Boylesque T.O. (based in Canada) told me that at one show, a group of men in a bar lashed out and called him a faggot, which is the ultimate show of insecurity through aggression.

There was a point early on in my performance career where a reaction like this would have ruined me. Thankfully, I've had enough practice with the "show must go on" frame of mind that I'm usually able to compensate for situations like this. As a general rule, I focus my broader moves on the people who are having a great time, and I focus my specific audience work on the individuals who look the most uncomfortable.

Or in a pinch, anyone who is currently shrieking in terror. 

During my act, one man in the front of the audience buried his face in one hand in disbelief, as if one errant gaze upon my glittery pecs would turn him to stone (see what I did there?). I walked up to that one guy in the crowd, put my face about half a foot from his, waited for him to notice, and then gave a wave and a curtsy. He laughed just a little bit, and it got such a rise out of the crowd around him. I find that if you go for the hardest nut to crack, your success in getting the audience to join in the fun will have a ripple effect, and can often noticeably change the mood of the room.

Following from that, I'd like to talk to you about what happens after a performance like this. Due in large part to fragile masculinity (#masculinitysofragile if you're so inclined), straight men tend to conflate male burlesque performance with homosexuality or flirting. While it's not always a negative thing that some men will give feedback after watching a male burlesque performance, it can absolutely be derived from a place of awkwardness or insecurity. Picture any of these after a performance;

"I'm not gay, but....that was a good show/you were funny/I've thought about kissing a man/etc."
"Do you get a lot of gays/women/men hitting on you after you perform?"
"I saw more of you than I wanted to see, but you were pretty cool to watch."
"You were good, but you should work out more." (Lucky, thanks for sharing that last one)

"Look bro, I'm not gay or nuthin', but, uh....good
 job, there....dawg. Did I mention that I
 reeeeealy like the ladies?"

Some of you reading this will recognize these experiences as your own. But while icky on the surface, they can be a good starting point for having a strong, valuable discussion with a new fan about burlesque, body norms, and expectations around performers from the same/opposite sex.

I've learned that for every 20 dudes in an audience I perform for, one or two will come chat with me afterwards and will be completely awesome to talk with. After this gig, there were 3 guys that came to talk to Polly, Brandy, and myself, and wanted to reiterate that they had the best time at the show. While they were each initially confused about how to react, all of them individually had the wherewithal to figure out what they appreciated about the performance, what questions they wanted to ask, and the enthusiasm about discovering us and our scene afterwards. It was awesome.

For me, having just a couple people telling me what a great time they had makes it 1000% worth it. Bringing new people to future shows helps bring burlesque more and more into the mainstream, which benefits us all. I also love when other men feel inspired enough from burlesque to want to try performing themselves, as it's a major disruption to the power structures that influence masculine negativity (and bolsters our solidarity with our female counterparts).

And that's pretty rad.

The worst burlesque act I've ever done

While I always try to be positive about what I write, I thought it would be interesting to single out the worst burlesque act I ever did as a way to reflect. I wanted to write down everything I learned, and to remind myself about some basic fundamentals of act-writing all of which I completely overlooked that one embarrassing time. Then, I figure I can glance it over while I'm in the creative process the next time I'm wrestling with writer's block, and re-learn how to not suck. Seriously, it was a bad frigging act.

The gist of it was that I had created this Russian soldier who I think was supposed to be guarding the border of Siberia. I had a full, long coat, and one of those fuzzy Russian hats, and really just had a ton of gimmicks that I carried out, all while set to some up-tempo techno song pulled straight out of the discount bin that someone else picked out for me. I think what happened was I just executed a long list of offensive stereotypes in costume, and while I had plenty of enthusiasm behind the individual movements within, the act overall made everyone pointlessly uncomfortable.

I'm on the right. That is indeed shame on my face.

The act ended up getting cut out of the last two nights of a four-night engagement, and looking back, I'm truly glad that happened. In the act, I pantomimed heavy drinking as a way to propel the story along, I played Russian Roulette in my underwear, and finished the act getting caught with my pants down (literally) as invading forces ruined my moment of vulnerability while alarms and gunshots went off in the background. Because I didn't really have any sort of previous inspiration for creating this monstrosity, I took any and every idea offered and cobbled all of them together into a performance which really didn't feel polished or rehearsed. And I think I was going for funny when none of it was.

That, and a litany of other mistakes.

1 - I relied heavily on props and gimmicks.
As an early burlesquer, I learned that creating an act required there to be a reason for getting naked. This is not necessarily a requirement, as removing the reason creates a different kind of act, known as a "straight strip." Since my only other solo act until that point had been me in a sandwich board collecting signatures, I was determined to do something comedic and theatrical, but all I kept thinking was "what other items can I introduce to fill in the time?" This was a huge pitfall, as it would have been a much better act if I had simply allowed myself to do a sexy, simple, striptease.

2 - I let other people decide key parts of the routine.
I needed help creating this act, and I reached out to anyone who would help me. While not normally a bad thing to ask for help, I was entirely uninspired--I would have been better off declining to perform than to put up something I didn't feel was my own. A fellow performer picked out my song, a woman I was dating chose the theme, and suggestions about my costume came from all over. Since other performers are inspired by different things, there's no way of telling whether or not someone else could have taken this kind of act in a better direction. I'm betting anybody else could have, as I didn't even have the confidence to sell it.

3 - I didn't workshop it effectively, and I didn't allow it to be critiqued.
I ran the act for a few people, and they mostly reported confusion. This was certainly a red flag, and they had told me to omit a handful of things which didn't make sense. I cut out the part where I took a shoe off and banged it on the ground angrily at nobody in particular, and a segment featuring me doing I-don't-remember-what to a set of nesting dolls. I'm actually glad I cut those bits out, because the rest of the stuff I didn't do (such as pick a better song, cut over-utilized dance moves, and remember that it was supposed to be a striptease), and it was kind of like cutting moldy pieces off of a fruit that really should have been thrown out.

Seriously, I would have made better use of my stage time if I had just repeatedly punched myself in the face for 4 1/2 minutes.

...or had someone else do it.

But I'm glad I did the act. If it weren't for me hearing the reluctant applause, the feedback from the producers, and the decision to ultimately cut the act from the rest of the run, I wouldn't have gone back to the drawing board with such determination. I decided later that week that I needed to make an honest decision--I needed to figure out if burlesque was something I really wanted to continue with.

At the end of it, I decided that I was going to keep performing--but under a few conditions. First of all, I wanted to create acts that were truly mine, scenes that I could be inspired by. Secondly, I wanted to cut out anything superfluous that didn't fit with the acts I wanted to create. Last, I wanted to make sure I rehearsed as much as I could reasonably rehearse, and in front of a variety of fellow performers for the critiques they could offer me.

Also, I decided that I never wanted to get on a stage impaired.

No matter how spectacular the bender turns out.

Looking back through my first year of performance in burlesque, I realized that I had been coasting. I was passively making the decision to get on stage, and although it still scared the hell out of me each time, I had discarded that feeling time and time again because I was too uncertain of myself to have the courage to embrace it.

At a show the Sirs and I had done with Rogue Burlesque three or four years back, the adrenaline I had was cancelling out the alcohol I'd been drinking. So I drank past the point I should have. I got on stage for the finale, an although I believe it went well overall, I went straight to blackout when the show was over. I don't remember anything past being on stage, and a group viewing of the film the week after the show was pretty embarrassing. My fellow performers were nervously telling me in a half-serious tone that I needed to not be drinking when performing, and I knew they were right. So I never did again.

I took myself through the creative process from the pen-and-paper stage all the way to the nervous jitters before the next show, all the while following through on my new method. I brought that new solo act to the stage, one which allowed me to pay strict attention to the fundamentals of striptease. I kept it painfully simple, focused on what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. That act was called "Dapper Dale," and as of today, it's the most requested act in my repertoire.

"Dapper Dale"

When I debuted that act, I met another performer in the crowd who I hadn't had the chance to meet before. Belle Guns told me that was the first male burlesque straight strip she'd ever seen, and that she absolutely loved how sexy and dignified it was. She and I are still friends, and I look up to her as a performer and as a fellow blogger--I credit her and The Rambling Onesie as the biggest influence for me creating my own burlesque blog. I think you should check it out.

The big takeaway from all this for me was that I needed to experience the failure of what I created in order to eventually realize what it was I wanted from burlesque performance. I wanted to figure out what worked and what didn't and why. I still see myself as being on that journey, and I feel like I'm only getting better at creating enjoyable content for the people that buy tickets and support this crazy dream.

I've also learned to feel great about hearing critiques. You definitely don't get better without people telling you what just ain't working, and I'm very thankful for that.

Belle Guns and I.