This Thursday, Bad Girl Burlesque presents the second BOOZE, SHOES, and GIRLS with TATTOOS – an evening featuring the best in Vancouver burlesque. Sad Mag sat down with the beautiful and talented Bad Girls to talk about sweepers, girl crushes, and their upcoming show at The Cobalt.

Sad Mag: Who is Bad Girl Burlesque?

Beatrix Hotter: Myself, Didi Disaster and Dizzy Little. Also known as Heather Leaf, Cynthia Weiss and Amber Lamoureux. The name is very tongue in cheek, and is partly inspired by the legendary burlesque performer, Dee Milo, whom we personally met and heard speak about the condemnation performers of her generation faced from society. These women, whom we consider heroes, were the “bad girls” of their era. We chose the name to pay a small homage to Dee Milo and so many other women and because it’s cheeky – and we like cheeky.

SM: How did you meet?

Didi Disaster: Craigslist casual encounters. Unless you want the boring truth, we worked together at a few jobs in the “real world” slinging adult beverages and/or children’s toys.

SM: What does Bad Girl Burlesque do?

DD: We produce high energy, bad-ass burlesque shows with a rock ‘n’ roll edge. We are so fortunate to feature Vancouver’s absolute best performers – and that’s not even bragging – we’re flattered that such amazing women want to be part of what we do.

SM: Do you all perform burlesque?

DD: Dizzy performs and is Bad Girl Burlesque’s PR girl, I’m the sleazy business man behind the scenes, and Beatrix acts as performer/MC/producer.

SM: How did you get started in burlesque?

DD: With a background in radio, TV and theatre, Beatrix first found her way onto a burlesque stage by being a sweeper (the cheeky girl who picks up the dancer’s discarded articles of clothing between numbers and entertains the crowd).

Dizzy was inspired by bad-ass go-go girls she saw perform at punk rock shows when she was younger. This lead Dizzy to take some burlesque classes and develop her love into a skill.

A fan of burlesque from since I can remember, I worked as co-producer of Girls On Top Cabaret Society, a troupe that worked to help DTES women’s charities.

SM: How often do you produce shows?

DD: We’re aiming for every month or two.

SM: What’s the aim of your events?

DD: Our aim is to rock your socks off! We want the audience to be genuinely excited. We want them to be aroused. We want them to be PUMPED! And seriously – what’s not to get excited about? Dance, music, comedy, theatrics, strip-tease, and all with the cherry-on-top of a body-positive portrayal of women’s bodies! What could possibly be better?

SM: Who are some of your favourite burlesque ladies in town?

DD: We are so lucky to be in Vancouver amongst an enormous amount of talented ladies! There are far too many to name but we definitely have girl crushes on Lola Frost and Spooksy DeLune.

SM: What’s your favourite thing about working together?

DD: We all get so excited to hear each other’s ideas! Every time we brainstorm, we are giddy over the creative juices that flow and the inspiration for new ideas that we bounce off each other. We really compliment each other as a production team.

BOOZE, SHOES, & GIRLS with TATTOOS
Pre­sented by Bad Girl Burlesque
The Cobalt
Thursday, Feb­ru­ary 17th 9:00 pm
RSVP on Facebook

Photograph: Matt Leaf

Valentine’s Day, Schmalentine’s Day – chase your champale hangover with Pump Trolley’s Stolen Hearts show on February 15th. Pump Trolley is a fresh-faced comedy collective of eight endearing and talented folks who produce hilarious shows at The China Cloud. Read on to learn about sunflowers, dreams, and what happens when you push just enough.

Sad Mag: Tell me a bit about yourself.

Nick Harvey-Cheetham: I am an improviser, performer and student originally from Toronto. When I was around 9 years old, I realized I was never going to make it to the NBA so I decided to pursue other things.

Ember Konopaki: I’m an improvisor from Edmonton. I’ve been doing improv for almost 8 years and only started doing sketch when I moved to Vancouver in 2009.

Tom Hill: I’m a writer, comedian, improviser, marketing guy with history in the province of Saskatchewan. I’ve spent a good deal of my life doing unusual jobs while making jokes on the side.

SM: What is Pump Trolley?

NHC: Pump Trolley (the group) is a collective of writers, improvisers, musicians, filmmakers and all-around creative folks who decided to write and perform a regular comedy show at The China Cloud Theatre.

TH: A “pump trolley” is a cart operated by two people. We’re a sketch comedy group operated by eight. Otherwise we’re about the same.

SM: Who comprises Pump Trolley?

NHC: Pump Trolley is: Warren Bates, Nik Bunting, Ember Konopaki, Nick Harvey-Cheetham, Tom Hill, Alex Hudson, Devin Mackenzie and Tegan Verheul with frequent musical accompaniment from the endlessly talented Devon Lougheed.

TH: Whole bunch of swell goofs.

SM: When and how was Pump Trolley started?

TH: Most of us started performing together through UBCimprov, where we’d been together for years. We had a real treat of a time so we took it to the streets and for six months in 2009 did a new show every week at the Cottage Bistro. We’ve since had a few beautiful members move away to pursue acting/genius- ing, and Warren and Ember moved here and joined us.We did every two weeks for a while in 2010, then dialed it in by the summer of last year and really got settled as an eight-person thang.

NHC: I still have no idea how we were able to put on a show every week.

SM: What do you like best about working with each other?

TH: We have this weird joke we’ve been making with each other where we sort of mash our hands/forearms together to mimic what I think is supposed to be two pieces of raw meat slapping together. I like that a lot.

NHC: If I had to pick my seven best friends, it would probably be the seven other people in Pump Trolley. If I had to pick the seven people I want to impress the most, it would be the same seven. This strange fusion of a trusting, open environment with a collective desire to produce strong well-developed work really lets us push our ideas to interesting places.

EK: Everyone is committed to creating great shows. People are selfless and will write pieces for other members, take creative notes, etc. Plus, they all make me laugh.

SM: What sorts of things/situations/people inspire sketches?

NHC: A lot of our ideas come from some marriage of the mundane and the absurd. At the end of the day, though, any idea that makes us more than half of us laugh is a good idea. We are a laughter-based democracy.

EK: A huge variety! One sketch came to me in my dream, another time I thought a specific line of dialogue I heard was funny so I built a sketch around it. I like taking fairly mundane experiences and trying to make them funny.

TH: I’m primarily inspired to write by needing to write when the time comes. Sure I write things down ahead of time, but when push comes to shove I’m really just squeezing my sphincter until jokes come out.

SM: How do you find the sketch comedy scene in Vancouver?

TH: We seem to be settled right into what I would call the alternative comedy scene in Vancouver. Lots of drugs. One time we were guesting on a show and the host comes up to me with a crack rock and tells me to put it in my eye. I was like “well, fuck, I guess this is Vancouver comedy.”

NHC: I think a lot of the interesting sketch and improv shows in Vancouver have a specific D.I.Y. charm. Creative people are getting together and starting their own projects left and right, not for money or fame but for the simple joy of making people laugh. A lot of sketch comedians in Vancouver are just starting to discover each other, which is really exciting.

SM: What was one of your favourite performances or moments as a performer?

EK: Anytime anyone laughs at something I come up with – that will always feel good.

TH: Nik and I did a sketch in which we enacted the full life cycle of two sunflowers. It required us to don a half dozen full-sized sunflowers of my

neighbour’s. The sketch builds up for the first half with us yelling the sunflowers’ ambitions and eventually egotistical rants, before hitting our peak and groaning our way to the floor over another minute or so. Felt pretty damn good. That, and when Devin and I hit each other in the balls for eight minutes to open our first show at the China Cloud.

SM: Any upcoming performances?

NHC: After Stolen Hearts (Feb 15th at The China Cloud), Pump Trolley’s next big show is Tuesday, April 19th (also at The China Cloud).

EK: The Sunday after Stolen Hearts we’re creating two long-form improv pieces as part of the Launch Party of the Neanderthals Arts Festival. We create an “inspiration package” for each set and base everything off of those. February 20 at the Cultch, 7pm and 9pm show times.

TH: Just come to Stolen Hearts, ok? OK!? God.

STOLEN HEARTS
Pre­sented by Pump Trolley
The China Cloud
Tuesday, February 15th 9:00 pm
RSVP on Facebook

Photograph: Rob Anderson

As a playwright, it’s never popular to speak the words “I don’t like watching Shakespeare” aloud. So, instead, I’ll just put them in print. It’s not that I don’t like the plays, it’s just that once I’ve read them once, seen them once, I’m happy to retire them.

The Comedy of Errors, itself a rather structurally flawed play, happens to be one of the few Shakespeares of which I’ve seen multiple productions. So boy did these students have to work hard to win this curmudgeonly audience member over. And work they did.

The ever-impressive Studio 58 students, combined with the magic of director Scott Bellis and a dream design team have created the most refreshing, original, engaging, quirky and laugh-out-loud funny piece of theatre I’ve seen all season.

There’s so much to take in: the breathtaking opening movement sequence, Pam Johnson’s grungy Steam Punk set, Naomi Sider’s colourful and ever-surprising costume design, Shawn Sorensen’s Tim Burton-esque underscoring, Ital Erdal’s ever-complimentary lighting, Bellis’ inventive staging and the perfect pace for a show that, in writing, can drag on for an eternity. Never in my life have I urged an audience to run, not walk, to see Shakespeare – until now.

If you’re not familiar with the play, as you can imagine, there are a lot of mistaken identity errors that lead to laughs (see play title), mostly stemming from characters having twins they don’t know about and the surrounding fifth business confusing them for one another over and over and over again.

But there’s real comedy here, certainly in the leads, but more prominently in the strong character actors who make of the periphery of the play: Noah Rosenbaum and Joel Ballard’s work as servants make for some of the evening’s greatest laughs, as do Adele Noronha and Carlos Rodriguez’s villagers.

That characters with very little actual dialogue can steal such focus is a testament that the instructors at Studio are doing something right. It should come as no surprise that the school has been noted as Canada’s foremost acting school time and time again.

Comedy of Errors
Studio 58
Remain­ing Per­for­mances:
January 27 — February 20
8:00 pm Tuesdays – Saturdays, 3:00 pm Saturday – Sunday
Call 604 992?2313 to make reservations

Photographs by David Cooper.

You can’t argue with the premise of 100% Vancouver – turning statistics about our city into performance.

100 typical Vancouverites, chosen carefully to represent the different demographics of Vancouver to create a portrait of the city (drawn 1/6000th to scale), enter a stage set up with signs marking Vancouver neighbourhoods. They introduce themselves to the audience and describe a precious object that they have brought with them before standing in their neighbourhood. The performers range in age by about ninety years and the youngest children bring stuffed animals or iPods. The older performers have family photos and keepsakes. The oldest participant holds a century-old lamp.

I admit that I’m skeptical. After all, I see a mixed cohort of Vancouverites clutching at various objects every day, but it’s not theatre – it’s called riding the bus. And while the concept is clever, the execution is flawed – some performers are visibly fatigued by all the stage crossing, and the youngest children aren’t sure what to do. But it’s impossible not to be genuinely moved while watching your neighbours reveal personal, intimate details.

Performers take turns asking questions to the audience and the performers about their lives and beliefs, asking them to identify or not with the statement. Signs appear on either side of the stage, reading “ME” or “NOT ME,” and the performers flow towards the side that describes them. Sometimes the performers stand together and raise their hands, or sit around the stage. A camera projects an image of the performers from above, creating a human pie chart.

100% Vancouver reveals the strangeness of impersonal, abstract statistics. A question like, “Have you suffered from a mental illness?” or “Have you been a victim of violence?” is divorced from the people it describes when rendered as a percentage. But the individuals on stage are the data, and the audience and performers are connected by transcendent moments of recognition and comfort.

Statistics become the tool for building community, reminding us that we have been a community with a shared and complex history all along. The atmosphere is reverent, respectful, and non-judgmental. If these audience memebers have ever written a hateful comment on a CBC article about addiction or incarceration, you wouldn’t know it from their steady, heartfelt applause.

100% Vancouver
Part of the PuSh Festival
SFU Woodward’s Theatre
Remaining Performances:
January 21st & 22nd, 7:00 pm

Photographs by Theatre Replacement (Vancouver).

Funny man, Devon Lougheed, and storyteller extraordinaire, Lizzy Karp, have joined forces to bring you Hush Hush City – an online literary soap opera composed by eight anonymous improvisers and writers.

Save for Lougheed and Karp, no one, not even the contributors themselves, knows the identities behind each character. The contributors are assigned roles and the context of a hotel, in which all the characters live, and they post as little or as often as they like, incorporating the occasional twist thrown at them from the creators and the readers.

The literary experiment starts January 1st and runs until January 31st, after which time, there will be a launch party and the identities of the contributors will be revealed. We can’t wait!

Sad Mag: Who are the two of you?

Lizzy Karp: When not fronting Vancouver’s favourite indie-band Beekeeper, Devon Lougheed is a  funny-man, thinker, writer, runner and lover of rock music (especially from the ’90s). I’m Lizzy Karp and I love stories – my involvement in Rain City Chronicles, the Vancouver Book Club and the radio show Feels Like Home are several ways I help to share them.

SM: How did you meet?

Devon Lougheed: We have lots of mutual friends, but had our first good chat at the Vancouver Is Awesome book club. We talked about how we each used to do lots of writing, but lost a supportive group of fellow writers after moving.

SM: What is Hush Hush City?

LK: Our tagline is an online, collectively-generated, anonymous, improvised writing experiment. But in practice it’s another way to connect this city’s ever-growing creative community.

SM: Is it set in Vancouver?

DL: In a way, this is up to our contributors. The official line is that Hush Hush City is not Vancouver, although other seasons have, admittedly, borrowed heavily on its neighbourhoods and geography. It’s only natural, I suppose! You’ll have to read and see!

SM: Why anonymous?

LK: Anonymity not only prevents writers from being biased or giving in to standard forms they are known for already, but it adds another layer of mystery. We hope while following Hush Hush City readers and writers will be asking themselves what Vancouverites are behind their favourite characters.

SM: What are you hoping for readers and contributors to take away from this project?

DL: For the contributors: a unique experience that challenges writers to be improvisers and improvisers to be writers. For the readers: that feeling that you get about ten minutes after drinking a triple espresso, but before the jitters set in. Oh and a little bit of fame would be nice, for all involved.

SM: What’s the end result going to be?

LK: We have no idea… and that is part of the magic! At the end we will be celebrating with writers and followers of Hush Hush City, and we’ve already got Season 4 in the works.

SM: I hear you two are good collaborators! What else are you working on together?

DL: Lizzy and I are training together for the Vancouver Marathon! 3:45, baby!

SM: What do you like best about working with each other?

LK: We share a very similar combination of creativity, inventiveness and excitement – and our American entrepreneurial genes ensure that we see the project through. It’s also been really exciting to see so many different groups of people become involved in a project together – it’s like facilitating a creative orgy without any of the messy cleanup or awkward mornings after.

SM: What do you like least about working with each other?

DL: Little known fact: Lizzy can’t do ANY work unless “Unbreak My Heart” by Toni Braxton is playing quietly in the background. I suspect she doesn’t really like my tendency to show up to meetings in spandex, but she’s been relatively nice about it.

Check out Hush Hush City, starting January 1st!