Burlesque Rocks

The harsh light from the overhead fluorescents felt very judgemental as Tim, Gemma and I sat in the upstairs dressing room. No cast or crew were there; we’d cancelled the show before they had started their journeys to the venue. I couldn’t tell if it was my mind that was buzzing or the lights. There was a timid knock on the door. Leigh entered and left us some drinks and burgers, then sloped out of the dressing room.

Tim, engrossed in his laptop, finally lifted his head after what felt like hours but was probably just minutes. He looked at us and spoke:

“Ok if we carry on at the rate we are going, we are going to lose around three thousand pounds. I’ve taken into account the tickets we’ve sold so far, and if we don’t pay you guys for performing in the show,”

“I can’t afford to lose over a grand right now,” Gemma stated affirmatively.

I was mostly silent, drained and holding back the tears. It felt like I had poured everything into this, and what I was getting was a big slap in the face instead of the reward that comes with hard work. Eventually I mumbled, “Same”

Tim also agreed. We had to pay everyone for the shows they had done so far or hadn’t, as we’d had to cancel quite a few, and we wanted to uphold our agreements with them. But what to do about the rest of the month? It wasn’t looking good.

The writing was on the wall; our first show was a bit of a disaster. We had around 10 pre-bookings and a few audience club bookings. (Audience Club was a crowd filler site; you gave them an allocation of tickets and they’d try to fill the seats – great, we had an audience, but not so great — they were free tickets, so no money for us). But there had been a miracle last minute booking; it was a group booking from one of the local hotels, so we thought, ‘Awesome, the flyering worked!’ Then we learned it was a Japanese group.

“It’s ok, my housemate went to Japan, and he has taught me how to say hello!”
Gemma’s optimism and beaming smile went a small way toward convincing me the show would be great.

“Kon’nichiwa!” Gemma screamed at the top of her voice for what felt like the 100th time. My head was in my hands backstage. There was a polite titter from the audience. Only one member of the Japanese group spoke English. The interval was coming up, and a line-up of burlesque and magic was not going down well with our Japanese audience. We had a mostly singing line up arranged for the following night, which they would have enjoyed more. The frustrating thing about organising line-ups is you’re at the whim of a performer’s availability, and funnily enough I found that most of the acts could do weekends but not week nights. I guess it was no surprise that by the end of the first half our tourist group left.

The show carried on regardless. In hindsight, we should have cancelled that first week altogether, but we soldiered on. Things picked up on the Saturday night, but not by much. We put that first show down to experience, but the ticket sales weren’t looking good.

We knew the first week was going to be tough, but we thought we’d be able to pull it round by the following week. No such luck; ticket sales were still abysmal. So that’s how we came to be sitting in the upstairs dressing room having a crisis meeting after cancelling a third show on the trot. My worst nightmare was about to be realised.

“I think we’re going to have to ask people if they will work for free.” Tim said, the words hanging in the air until it sank in. After a while we nodded to each other, and looked at the remaining shows that had bookings. With heavy hearts we decided to focus on those and cancel the rest.

Tim took over tech with Leigh’s consent, and we sent out the email to ask who could/would work for free. It felt like a double failure. I was so close to being a proper producer who could pay their acts and not rely on people working for free, but there we were.

The following day the replies came in, and it was a mix, with a few surprises in who agreed to continue. Laurence Owen, Lyndsey Sharman, Rosie Kohl, Vesper Fontaine, Joe Stone, Trixi Tassels, and Anthony Dewson all agreed. I was over the moon with the response from the people who said they would stay on. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were. Leigh agreed to pay for a round of drinks for the performers after the show, which we all took advantage of.

For a long time I looked back on this whole escapade with sadness, regret and frustration. It was only eight years later that I saw the funny side. I had a lot of shame over having to ask people to work for free, and the absolute shambles of marketing. I look back and think about how we could have done things differently. But to be honest, we probably wouldn’t have done anything differently. We were where we were at that point in time. What we really needed was for someone else to come in and tell us what to do.

Now, the more I think about it, the more I remember the fun times. At one of our early show meetings, we wanted to make the show extra Christmassy with a giant present set on stage for the stage kitten to hide in. We had two stage kittens on rotation, but the main one was Harvey H Hendricks aka Ben. From my first show, Ben had embraced the role of Harvey H. Hendricks, a butler fired by the royals, who now collected the discarded burlesque costumes at cabaret shows across London. Gemma and Harvey were becoming a bit of a double act, co-hosting my show ‘A Little Cabaret’ and the student showcase nights.

The plan was for Harvey to hide in the present just before we let in the audience, and shortly after Gemma had whisked on to stage she would reveal what was in her box. Then Harvey would jump out and surprise the audience and do a bit of a striptease skit with Gemma to warm them up for a burlesque act. This was all well and good in theory.

One night we had a large party booking; it was one of the shows we kept after our crisis meeting. We were chilling backstage behind the gold lamé as the audience rolled in;

“Ha! Ben just replied to my friend request.” Lyndsey was grinning at her phone. Our minds were blown at the fact Ben was crouching in his box, scrolling through Facebook.

“I didn’t realise he took his phone in with him. Makes sense though. Gemma has been milking it on stage recently.” I replied and continued to concentrate on fixing my eyelash with the little light we had.

Lyndsey looked up in what I assumed was glee; “I’m going to send him a message.”

I replied, “Well, we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do to stay amused while we wait. Thinking of which we should be starting the show soon.”

The wait dragged on. Eventually, Gemma came backstage to give us an update,
“So, that group booking — they’re only just paying up downstairs.” Gemma held up her hands; she had anticipated my inner stage manager frustration. “I know it means we’ll go up around 8:10pm, but I reckon that will be fine.”

“Ok, but don’t forget about Ben, he’s been in there since 7:45pm. Introduce your big box straight away” I gave Gemma one of my warning looks to make sure she knew I was serious.

“Yeah, totally!” Layton’s famous last words.

Lyndsey piped up, “I’ll message Ben to let him know we’re going to start late.”

When the audience were finally seated and we were ready to go, it was 15 minutes after our scheduled start time. Ben had been in the box for nearly half an hour by that point. Gemma began her show pre-amble. Unfortunately for Ben, the audience were in great spirits and, Gemma was having a whale of a time chatting and welcoming them to the show. Stuck back stage, there was little I could do to signal to Gemma that she really needed to stop rambling on and get Ben out of the box.

“What time is it?” I hissed to one of the other performers

“8:30,” someone replied.

“Seriously?!”

Gemma was still flirting with the guy in the front row. I was willing her from backstage: ‘Go to the box!’

“So, does anyone want to see what’s in my big box!”

She started a drum roll throughout the audience and brought them to a roaring climax. Then, very… very… slowly, the first of the flaps opened, then another. Someone in the audience started the drum roll again as a very stiff Harvey H. Hendricks slowly emerged from the box.

“Madam, can you help me? I can’t move my legs!” To emphasise his words he tried to lift one leg to the top of the box.

A ripple of laughter spread through the audience, then, unprompted, clapping and cheers of encouragement rang out as Gemma supported Ben in his climb to get out of the box.

Smooth. We were professionals after all.

Like a pro, he carried on and did the demo striptease. As I finally walked on to stage, I was thinking, ‘Drinks are on Gemma tonight!’

The show got into a bit of a rhythm after that incident. I loved the pre-show camaraderie; one of my fondest memories of the show was being hungover and getting ready for the show in the theatre before we had to hide backstage. We rarely used the dressing rooms in the theatre, preferring to take over the cabaret style seating with our make-up bags and mini light up mirrors. Laurence was plucking away at his guitar, singing. I was putting on my make-up. Vesper Fontaine, our singer for the show, was harmonising with Laurence. Rosie Kohl, our belly dancer, was stretching on stage, and Tim was playing with the lights. It was all lovely and calm.

I was sweeping my face with powder and decided, “Can’t we just not do the show tonight and stay like this?”

Laurence continued to play and mused; “Yeah, this is nice. I forget how this is like Edinburgh for you guys.”

I put down my blusher brush. “How do you mean?”

“Well, for me, it’s just another gig I pop in and out of. You guys, you’re here all the time.”

I took a minute to absorb what he had said before I replied, “That is true, I’ve taken to flyering at the tube station before the show too.” I nod to myself and continue. “Plus we’re also losing money hand over fist. Totally like the Edinburgh Fringe. On the bright side, we’ve got at least twenty in the audience tonight!”

As if on cue, Gemma entered. “Better get on and do the show then.” Our cosy pre-show bubble burst. Back to finishing what we were doing and clearing the stage ready to let the audience into our world.

Like I say it was those bits that made the show worthwhile. The camaraderie and the joy of being with a group of people who were at the start of their creative cabaret journeys. We did not know where our careers would take us. All we knew at that point in time was that we wanted to create and be in as many shows as possible.

2012 was the year I learned that doing too much doesn’t get you to your destination. What it does bring is burnout. At the time I wasn’t happy about what we had to do to rescue the show, and for years I thought we could have handled the lack of bookings better. But we actually made the right call. None of us could afford to carry on with the show the way it was running, and in the end we went from looking at around 3K of debt to breaking even. It was a relief to finish the run. and an achievement that we did it. Not that I realised it at the time. It took eight years to laugh about it, and it has taken thirteen years to realise that yes, it was in fact, a huge achievement.

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