Interview With Big Apple Burlesque
by Cary
Classic Burlesque has become a huge phenomena lately, what about it first captured your interest?
HONEY: Burlesque was the only thing I didn't have to audition for! Plus the feathers, sequins, makeup and shoes. Playing dress up is even more fun when you're an adult.
RUBY: I agree. For me it's the glorious costumes, the glamour and tease and the wonderful performers.
SNUFFY: For me, it was Craigslist. But once I started working in the burlesque community, I realized how comfortable I was with so many of the aspects and the people. I grew up in a neurotic, sheltered environment and was really only exposed to popular entertainment from my grandparents' generation. So making the connection with that style of both dress and music and is kind of a natural thing for me. To find a community of artists who reference this in a lot of ways has been wonderful for me. That and the fact that so much of neo-burlesque I think is related to and could arguably be considered performance art, which is what I studied in school anyway. So, for me it's great.
BRASSY: Yeah, it is performance art at its best, I think. The celebration of creativity and women. Women (and men) of all kinds being celebrated for who they are. But definitely the women. As a singer, I've always loved classic vaudeville music. I can't think of anything better than belting out a song and having these glorious gams behind me on stage. It's heaven.
How did Big Apple Burlesque come together?
SNUFFY: We'd all been performing in some capacity in the burlesque community for a while, although all of us were kind of green at the time. We'd had the opportunity to work together in a couple of other shows and we realized that we had common interests. So we decided at some point to kind of form our own group, and we literally had no real resources or network or anything. Only ideas. And one of our first goals as a group was to perform in the NYBF, so we got together, shot some promotional material, which I think is still on-line, and we actually ended up opening the entire festival, which to us was kind of like a dream come true. And we've been fortunate enough to return each year as well.
Around that same time is also when we started performing our own shows, but for a couple of years the majority of them had been basically illegal shows in warehouses or apartments, wherever we could create our own space. They were a lot of fun, but they certainly didn't really get us any press.
RUBY: I wanted to expand our wild imaginations when we formed our troupe officially, and I think we've accomplished that pretty well.
BRASSY: You have to take into account also that we were doing musicals with LIVE bands, Snuffy.
SNUFFY: Yeah, I know. That question was coming up, though.
Who are the members of BAB and what are their specialties?
BROADWAY BRASSY: I'm the Mistress of Soul. My specialties are making ladies' knees go weak with my killer pipes.
HONEY BIRDETTE: I'm the Smartie with A Lotta Heartie...(laughs)...I don't know. I'm a dancer and co-writer of material. Sometimes I have really good ideas. How's that for special?
RUBY VALENTINE: I'm the Alabaster Beauty. I specialize in the good old bumping and grinding and the classic striptease. I have a growing fetish for Latex fashions and I think that will be something that will be showing up more in a lot of my acts.
SNUFFY PATTERSON: I guess I'm kind of the resident weirdo, sort of the emcee and singer along with Brassy. Of course, I also help write the scripts and arrange the music, so...currently, we are the four core members of BAB and we've been here since the beginning. We're the ones with the vested financial and creative interests in the shows. When we started out there were actually seven cast members, but over the course of time, some of us have simply gone down other paths. They're still with us in friendship and spirit, though. And we're always working with talented guest stars and musicians who become close comrades, as well.
BRASSY: I gotta say though that no Big Apple Burlesque show would really be the same without the musicians. Brian Newman is with us all the time and he's been an amazing guy to work with over the last few years. He's a great trumpet player and jazz singer and he's been a great friend, too.
What kind of performance do you put on?
SNUFFY: While all of us perform individually to some extent outside of Big Apple Burlesque, when you go to see a Big Apple Burlesque show, you know it's going to be essentially reflective of a Broadway Musical. We call it a Burlesque Musical. It's really just what it sounds like. There's a storyline, which we write ourselves, and there's acting, singing and dancing with a live orchestra, only the dances usually consist of someone or multiple someone's getting down to pasties by the end of the act, but not always. We try to layer the content, so there's a lot going on in the shows, and apart from us, there are usually at least three or four other burlesque performers in the shows as well. For myself as a writer and actor/singer, I really love seeing all of the acts come together in ways that tell a cohesive story. I want to see what burlesque can be and also what theatre can be...but I'm speaking for myself in that regard. I enjoy the mixing of various forms of media, traditional and non-traditional, and seeing where burlesque can fit into that, I think it works because burlesque is by its very nature a fairly adaptive form of entertainment. I mean it's comprehensive of so many things.
BRASSY: We wanted to do shows in venues with LIVE music and Burlesque that tells stories. Why do you always have to be so wordy, Snuffy?
What kind of events do you perform at?
BRASSY: The NYBF, and other burlesque festivals, large theaters, Bachelor Parties, Weddings, Club Openings, Dinner theaters...
RUBY: We've done all sorts of events. Old fashioned speakeasies in Bushwick lofts, all night parties, regular shows around NYC and across the country.
HONEY: LGBT Beach Resorts...
What's it like performing all over and experiencing the different scenes?
RUBY: It's always a pleasure to meet with burlesque artists from all over the world. The burlesque community has performers in nearly every part of the world, and everywhere I go it's always a very loving community in which I've felt accepted in towns and shows no matter where I am. One of my favorite events is the Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend a/k/a Miss Exotic World. It's the annual event to go where you can meet the actual legendary alumni of burlesque, performers who were working back in the 1950's and 60's. So that's an amazing thing for me to meet them and hear the stories they have to share.
Where is your favorite place to perform?
BRASSY: Well, right now it's the dinner theatre/nightclub Corio in Soho. It's where we're doing our weekly musical shows on Wednesdays at 8:00PM. It's a great space for it, and the management has been quite good to us. People can expect to see us there often.
There's so many amazing venues in New York, but unfortunately many of them have been closing recently, which is sad, but not unheard of considering the economy and well, that's NY. However, the one thing you look forward to religiously is the New York Burlesque Festival, which happens annually.
We also host an annual summer event in Rehoboth Beach, DE, which has a huge LGBT population and which is frankly, a tremendous amount of fun for us to produce.
HONEY: My favorite place to perform is the bedroom.
Has anything crazy happened during one of the shows?
SNUFFY: I don't know about during the shows, but I can think of a lot of crazy things that happen afterwards. Running naked through the streets, (ALLEGEDLY) breaking hotel hot tubs, the flood at that one speakeasy, jumping into ponds with our clothes on, and that's not really even that crazy compared to what usually happens, so...I reserve the right to keep quiet on this one. It looks like everyone else is too. I guess if you're in NY, you should just hang out with us at an all night party sometime and see...
See more of Big Apple Burlesque at:
www.bigappleburlesque.com
| 
