mary-masked

My Burlesque Life

Published: February 27th 2018, 5:12:41 pm

This is the newspaper costume I make when I need a last minute act. Last week the producer of the Tori Amos/90s chick rock show asked if I could do a second act, when I was already at my parents house. I only had the one costume but I LOVE 90s Chick Rock, so I was glad to have this act in my pocket. I love that my tendency to forget things and drive to GO ON NO MATTER WHAT have lead me to create an act I can do with nothing more than what can be found at your local CVS. I hope to make use of this while traveling in the future. Speaking of the things I've learned from doing burlesque, a friend who is a writer/editor/book doctor approached me about writing a burlesque memoir. He'd recently met with the owner of a mid sized publishing house who had an imprint that focused on odd/underground memoirs and he was really sick of the cookie cutter MFA writers agents had been pitching him. So now I have to write a book proposal. And I'm kind of stumped. God knows i have material. I have a morass of "one time I [insert ludicrous thing here]" but I don't know how they fit together in a narrative through line. I think somewhere in this 12 years of burlesque and *cough* 32 years of performing, there's a lesson to be learned and a story to be told, but I'm not sure how to find it. With that in mind, we haven't had an Ask Me Anything in a LONG while so, please, send me some questions about burlesque or being a performer. Or whatever you want, really.