It May Be Time for a Burlesque Break (Patreon)

Last night was easily the worst gig of my life. I've worked in venues where the dressing room didn't have a mirror (annoying, but manageable) or the dressing room straight up didn't have a light. That was pretty damn bad. I did not think, when getting the details of a job, I would ever need to ask "Does the dressing room have four walls, a ceiling, and a floor?" That's right, we were changing outside, in the dark, in late October, with NO PRIOR WARNING.

I'm no diva but the more I think about it, the more I think that this was utterly unacceptable and showed a galling lack of respect on the part of the producer. I put a lot of time, work and money into my costumes, I don't want to put them on the ground as I blindly paw through my bag, while half naked, in 50 degree weather. There was also no stage, or performance space at all. Again, I was not warned about this, so I brought acts that were not suited to, well, a small restaurant. The audience was drunk, rude, and belligerent. There was a lovely moment where an old man threw up behind the other burlesquer as she was performing.

To top it off, the venue was a 22 minute walk from the nearest bus. Not subway station, BUS. I knew that the commute was long so I'd insisted on a $50 travel stipend to get me home at the end of the night, which was pretty damned generous considering lyft told me that the fair would be 40-60. I forgot to account for the fact that it was halloweekend. I could not have anticipated that this place was so far out that lyft didn't even operate in the area, OR that the local taxi companies were charging $40 for the SEVEN MINUTE DRIVE to the nearest subway (which would then take another hour or so to get me home) When I asked the producer who drove the performers to the venue from the subway if he could just drive us back his response was "Sure, if you can find someone sober enough to drive you." He and the other producers ignored us from then on. THIS IS NOT THE WAY YOU FUCKING TREAT PEOPLE.

I was on the verge of just collapsing on the street in tears and I think Johnny was about to set the place on fire when one of the musicians playing that night, saw us as he was pulling out of the parking lot and asked if we needed a ride. He got us into brooklyn and we took a cab the rest of the way. And even though that kind man gave the night a much better ending than it was heading toward, I spent the next hour sobbing and wondering what the fuck I've been doing with my life.

I've been doing burlesque for 11 years and the only people who wanted to book me this Halloween weekend was this utter disaster of a show. Clearly I have been doing something wrong and, honestly, I don't know how to stop it.

So I'm going to take a break from performing for a while. I have a few gigs booked in the next few months; Prague, Christmas on Infinite Earths, and a two week run of an immersive theatre/burlesque show. But I'm not booking anything else for a while. Definitely not in November, maybe not till 2017.

Don't worry though, I'm still going to be posting here as much as I can. You'll get to see cool stuff from my trip to Prague, drawings, writing and I think I've figured out how to make time lapse video of me making costumes and such. I've been saving up my patreon money so I can get some quality videos of my favorite acts and pitch them to venues that aren't familiar with my work.
And maybe I'll make a rider with extravagant demands like an indoor dressing room, and a venue that doesn't require an escape plan.