Burlesque Rocks

A two part story – my adventure into producing a Christmas cabaret for a month…

Regulars of the blog will know I am working on my memoir, my life in burlesque and cabaret. I use this blog to explore my thoughts and feelings towards burlesque, and sometimes I’ll share stories I’m working on. The other week while writing the memoir I hit upon a tricky time in my life in 2012. It was an interesting year for me. Things started out so well, then it all took a turn. In a way, 2012 mapped out the roller coaster of All Things Luscious.

So what happened? I hear you ask. Well, I guess the best place to start is to go back to August 2012. We were in the pub, The Drayton Arms to be exact, hiding behind the bar because we were having a lock-in on a Monday night. My friend Gemma and I had been producing a monthly cabaret show at the pub called ‘A Little Bag of Cabaret’. Gemma had begun hosting my student graduation shows the year before and was now hosting my regular monthly show ‘A Little Cabaret’ at The Cavendish Arms, on the last Thursday of the month. Gemma, or Layton as I affectionately call her, had talked me into producing another monthly cabaret night at The Drayton Arms in Kensington (posh) on a Monday night. We were sitting on the floor with Leigh, the bar manager of the pub, and a bottle of Tuaca (Gemma’s favourite) when Leigh had had an idea…

“I’ve been thinking; the cabaret is great; you guys are great. Would you be interested in doing a month-long cabaret for Christmas?”
Without skipping a beat, he continued his sales pitch.
“Essentially, we sell out all the time for Christmas parties, we could include the cabaret as part of a package, it would be easy money for you guys.”

He was saying all the right things. I had been looking for a way out of my awful day job for a while. Maybe this could set me up and give me a bit of time to find a part-time job. Was it the alcohol? Or was it my desperation to get out of my day job? Who knows. But I was listening to the sales pitch and was nodding along, ignoring my instincts, which didn’t feel fully confident in Leigh’s plans. I rationalised that he knew his clientele better than I did so if he thinks it could work then of course it will. In hindsight, a week-long show would have been more realistic, especially as I was still producing my monthly show ‘A Little Cabaret,’ teaching burlesque, performing in and producing one-off shows with a burlesque collective – the Jell-O girls – working full time, and producing this monthly Monday night cabaret.

When we launched our monthly show ‘A Little Bag of Cabaret’ at the Drayton Arms in June 2012, it was the bank holiday for the Queen’s diamond jubilee (we did a whole theme) and we got off to a great start. But after that we struggled to find a local audience; summer probably wasn’t the best time to launch a new show. We had one regular, an old guy, who always sat right at the back in the corner even when there were only two or three in the audience (yes, that’s how bad it was). He was always very polite, and he paid to come to the show, so maybe he didn’t like the attention and that’s why he was at the back, but, hey at least we had a regular.

Looking back now on the ‘Christmas pitch’ conversation with Leigh, I realise it was after a rare, good show. We had the bar staff in the audience that night so they could help sell the show to regulars at the bar. I’d also run a burlesque workshop with them in the afternoon as a team building exercise. I was in a desperate place to drop one of things I was doing and the one thing I really wanted to drop was my full-time job, but none of the extra curricula jobs were making enough money. I was caught in the cycle, you know the one, where you think the only way to succeed is to keep working, keep plugging away at it. Yes, it’s true to keep plugging at it – but you need to take time, or take a step back and breathe, in order to fine tune your method, especially if things aren’t going well. Instead of what I was doing, which was adding more work to the pile.

The day after the lock-in, I had a hangover from hell and a very miserable Tuesday at work. I sent Gemma a message asking what she thought about the Christmas plan. She was unsure and very limited on time. Along with hosting and having a full-time job, Gemma was an actor (still is) and working the comedy circuit too. Because of our busy lives, we scheduled a catch up on Skype (yep, that’s how long ago this was), and after a bit of coaxing, she was in. I set the ball rolling with an email to Leigh. Then, out of the blue, I received an email from Tim.

Tim was the guy who introduced us to Leigh, and after that he kind of disappeared, and then suddenly with the talk of a show run and money to be made he was back in. I remember feeling a bit annoyed about it all, but maybe a third person could kick Gemma and I into gear. We weren’t bad at organising things; we were both busy and part of the “Just in Time Crew”. We got to it at the last minute, but that wasn’t flying with ticket sales for any of the cabaret shows I was producing at the time. So maybe a third person would bring everything together.

We met up with Tim and he really did help us to get started. By the time I left the full-time job in October 2012, we had marketing materials prepped, a ticket sales link and a set in the making. I was still working on the act rota, but things were taking shape.

In early November, we were in full swing of prep for the Christmas show and were excited to test out our new set at our last monthly show. I had friends from up north coming to see the show and I was excited for them to see what I do.

Tim and I had arrived early to set up the lights for the show. The door to the theatre was flung open with a loud bang followed by:
“Ooof”

Gemma fell through the door, her curly hair was frazzled, and her face was puffed and red like a beetroot. Being a host, she rarely had to carry much to gigs, usually just a make-up bag. She collapsed on the floor, the effort of getting her suitcase up the stairs had been too much. Trying my best to be a caring friend I made my way across the stage to give her a hand. It turned out she wasn’t exaggerating; the suitcase was heavy.

“You brought that back from Birmingham yourself?” I asked, amazed.
Gemma pulled herself up, puffed out her chest, outstretched her arms, and with a grin that ran ear to ear, she announced.
“Yes. Yes I did!”
I think she was fishing for a round of applause, but I was too excited to see the backdrop her mom had made to give her one. Plus, I was busy opening the suitcase…

“Oooohhh”. We began pulling out the gold lamé backdrop, and it kept on coming. How it had fitted in the suitcase I did not know! Its glittering glow brought a smile to our faces,
“Wow, this is massive! It’s going to look amazing. Your mom is a genius” I gushed.

The crushed velvet tabs came out next, a vibrant and luxurious red, the perfect contrast to the gold lamé. They were beautiful and just what we had envisioned.

With a budget of around £200 we’d created our very own proscenium arch & backdrop. Well, Gemma’s mom had. This was going to be a proper show, not making do with what was at the venue. (There had been a couple of shows where we had to do the cabaret around the set of another show.) We were in love with our set. The gold lamé backdrop created a spacious backstage area, and we discovered a weird bonus: the lamé acted as a two-way mirror; we could see the audience, but they couldn’t see us. We were actually doing it, and things felt like they were finally coming together. We’d been struggling to sell tickets for the monthly show and out of nowhere, we had a near sellout show for our last one before Christmas. It was very exciting.

There’s no denying the backdrop made us feel more professional. We’d hardly sold a single ticket to the Christmas show, but selling out that early November cabaret gave us hope, that it was going to be alright. I told myself, ‘People just book last minute; it will be fine’. An extra boost to our confidence came in the form of Laurence Owen.

He had been a last-minute addition to the lineup. He was cool and unassuming; there was something about him I instantly liked. By this point, I’d been working in and out of theatre since 2000 and I’d met a variety of characters, but through burlesque and cabaret I was learning the type of person I liked to work with. There was something about the team I was growing, we were neither part of the cool kids nor completely apart from them. We loved to create, but we weren’t in your face. We were introverts with an extrovert streak; Laurence was all of this. When I received his email with his video, I hit play with apprehension. As I watched it, the quality wasn’t great, but I loved it, there was something about him that made me think I need this guy in the show. Gemma and Tim both raised their eyebrows when I put him last on the line-up. And well, they were both stunned into silence by his performance.

He sang bluesy songs with attitude, songs you couldn’t help singing along too, even if they were about whores (see video below). Laurence knocked it out of the park; the audience lapped him up. I remember sitting in the audience, whooping and cheering and feeling. ‘Yes, this is it! This is what I’ve been aiming for, and I need to hang on to this guy before he blasts off into the stratosphere!’

I’d been losing hope for the Christmas cabaret run prior to the November show. My friends from up north, who had watched the show, loved it in their way. It wasn’t fully for them, but they enjoyed the spirit of it, and that was enough for me. Laurence had received a standing ovation, the lineup had worked seamlessly together; the staging looked awesome, and after months of prep things were looking up.

After the show we had another Monday night lock-in, but this time it was around the fire. I turned to Gemma and said,
“Layton! This is going to be awesome!”
“Yes, Flynn, Yes, it is.”

How wrong we were.

Join me next month for the second part of our Christmas show adventure with tales of Japanese tourists and Gemma’s giant box.

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