This weekend: "Rehabilitation of Wayward Ladies" cabaret
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
HoneyTree EvilEye, Tesla Tease, Rusty Davenport...burlesque names are awesome.
“Do you have a disobedient woman in your life?” asks the press release for The Education of a Woman.
Uh, what? Disobedient how? Who should a woman be obeying? Do we need to get all #yesallwomen up in here?
Nah — it’s tongue-in-cheek. On Sunday at L’etage, the Burlesque Toy Shop-produced performance by La Petite Mort Cabaret will use burlesque, music and “texts from the turn-of-the-century to the present” to humorously explore what it means to be “a lady.”
“To burlesque something is to parody,” said writer Rose Fairley, who in collaboration with Jessy Gruver and Carly J. Mooney conceived of the performance. “We talked about how there are not a lot of places to talk about sexuality. And we wanted to get people thinking a little,” Fairley said earlier this week.
It’s presented as a sort of cabaret hybrid, Fairley said, in which Miss Chastity Primm (Mooney) will act as MC, with a variety-show feel interspersed with burlesque numbers, all woven together by narrative.
“I think there is a zeitgeist we are picking up on here,” Fairley said, citing the continuing conversation and current events focused on women’s rights and how female sexuality can be punished or controlled in myriad ways. “The initial idea was this ‘female hysteria’ diagnosis in the 1800s,” Fairly continued. “Any woman who had homosexual tendencies was diagnosed with hysteria. You’re either too sexual or not sexual enough.”
What better way to lampoon that by presenting a burlesque in which Headmistress Chastity Primm will offer a special seminar on “the art of disciplining the female of the species” in her Academy for the Education and Rehabilitation of Wayward Ladies?
“There’s still a lot of stigma about even just stripping,” Fairley said. “As much as we’re supposedly desensitized, when a woman actually chooses to do that on her own, there’s a reaction that’s disbelief. [But] these performers are really in charge of what they’re doing.”
Featuring Mooney along with performers Hayley Jane, HoneyTree EvilEye, Tesla Tease, Rusty Davenport, Buffy Montgomery (Brendan Norton) and Valen Derriere (Gruver), along with Tom Fosnocht on keys, the performance aims to remove the stigma from sexual expression.
“I think creating an environment where people are comfortable, relaxing, enjoying something, with an element of fiction — there’s just enough of a separation of reality when talking about this kind of thing,” Fairley said.
The Education of a Woman, June 22, doors at 8 p.m., show at 9. L’etage, 624 S. 6th St., $10-$20, available at the door or online at burlesquetoyshop.com.
