The Sequined Menace

Kate O’Halloran talks to the crew behind The Sequined Menace – Glitta Supernova, Fancy Piece and Pluto Savage – about Sydney’s underground scene, queer cabaret and what we can expect from this powerhouse of performers' new venture.

The Sequined Menace premieres in Sydney this December as the brainchild of long-time and long-loved queer performers Glitta Supernova, duo Fancy Piece and Pluto Savage. It’s billed by the trio as a “monster out of control,” “burlesque with brains,” and above all, “queer entertainment”. It is the first time they have worked together developing a project from scratch, although they share a history of involvement with the queer cabaret scene in Sydney. Precisely pinpointing where this popular underground movement began is difficult, but all can recall their first encounters with it.

Glitta Supernova, perhaps best known as the co-founder of enormously popular strip-club for women ‘Gurlesque’, found her way to queer cabaret via her work as a stripper in the 90s.

“In the early 90s I started work as a stripper doing the rounds of all the strip clubs in Sydney. This also happened to coincide with my crew of friends stampeding into the club scene with our acid colour and over the top antics pushing our looks and selves beyond our limitations,” she said.

This was where she first encountered ‘Wicked Women,’ a performance competition night run by the magazine of the same name.

Glitta recalls that Wicked Women was heavily “SM/BDSM based, but [also] about the broad sexuality of women and trans”.

“It was hot, horny, heavy, camp, and very creative and took our sexual personas and practice to the next level, where we were open and sex positive,” she added.

Although Glitta can’t say for certain that Wicked Women was the first event of its kind in Sydney, “it was by damned the first event I had been to of its kind”.

Glitta recalls “rocking up” and “creating a spectacle” at Wicked Women events with her friends, in the days before she was a performer, but also before there was even a name for ‘queer cabaret’.

“This is way before they tagged this as a burlesque revival or even had a word for it. It was just performance art and sex performance. It was always nude or nudish with lots of accessories.”

In contrast, both Fancy Piece and Pluto Savage recall their first encounters with queer cabaret as escapes from their more conventional performance backgrounds.

Fancy Piece formed out of a background in circus and theatre, while Pluto Savage was also involved in theatre.

“Fancy Piece formed in 2006 as a response to censorship of work to do with sexuality within Circus WOW, of which we had both been a part. Many of our pre-copulation acts had theatre and cabaret dalliances, but it wasn’t until we became Fancy Piece that we got to spread our very queer wings,” said duo Fancy Piece.

These days Fancy Piece are regulars on the queer scene, performing frequently at, hosting and organising a variety of queer events such as the ‘Pussycat Club’ within the goth, drag king, performance art and kink/fetish communities.

Pluto Savage has a similar story of finding a haven or outlet in queer performance:

“I first became involved in cabaret/burlesque when I did my first ever performance for a queer audience at Club Kooky in 1995 at the age of 19,” he said.

“Before that I had been working on stage in a more conventional ‘theatre’ context [but] it had become clear to me that I wasn’t interested in playing into the conventions necessary to make it as an actor in Australia. After seeing what the queers were up to on stage, I knew exactly what direction my creative juices would flow in.”

Like Glitta, Fancy Piece recall being involved in nights like Wicked Women, but also the many other queer shows, parties and clubs that fuelled their interest in queer cabaret during the 1990s. Pluto also spoke at length about the 90s as a real predecessor to the scene as we know it today. This history included his time as a schoolboy, “sneaking into Steve Allkins’ legendary Thursday and Sunday nights at the Phoenix”, as well as attending ‘sex and subculture’ parties.

“During the mid and late 90s Sydney appeared to be experiencing some kind of amazing explosion of queer culture and I’m so glad I was lucky enough to experience those times,” Pluto said.

It was out of this explosion of creative energy that Glitta, along with Sex Intents (and later Imogen Kelly and Meredith Williams), conceived of ‘Gurlesque’ as a “strip club for women”. Glitta could have had no idea that Gurlesque would run for ten years and become the trailblazing event that really cemented the place of burlesque within queer Sydney history.

“Stripping in the straight strip clubs as lezzos, we always fantasised… if the room was full of women how different would that be? What would happen if we took stripping and did exactly what we wanted with it; look the way we wanted to look, act the way we wanted to act?”

“It was kinda like a social experiment for us [but] the lezzo scene had become quite straight. We were often told by lesbians why we couldn’t just 'dance around and be pretty and sexy'. It was the same pressure from the straight strip clubs as we were getting at the lezzo bars, they all wanted us tamed and pretty and not saying much. The places that we could do our untamed work were at the subculture sex parties that were more poofta based with wild shows of anal fisting and crazy characters or Club Kooky that was very queer before ‘queer’ was labeled and mixed.

“So Gurlesque was a huge gamble, there was no place for us in the lezzo scene and we felt like outsiders… [That’s why] it was an amazing feeling when the first Gurlesque show was packed and was packed forever more. It showed us all that we as a community were ready and aching for this kind of stuff, and it also gave us a place to be us and be celebrated for this."

One of the special things Gurlesque was able to achieve was to encourage members of the queer community who were not otherwise performers to get up and celebrate their bodies.

“There is a considerably long list of now established and professional performers who proudly name Gurlesque as their first exposure to burlesque and stage debut,” Fancy Piece pointed out.

Glitta also added her perspective: “We were trying to loosen up all the preconceptions around the ‘perfect’ body and when people actually started to see different types of figures up there they got inspired and afterward empowered by the whole experience.”

For Pluto Savage, this is part of the ‘spirit’ of queer cabaret, and something The Sequined Menace hopes to continue. “The ‘spirit’ of queer performance art/cabaret for me is the richness and diversity of the conversation that takes place,” he said. For him, this involves a "healthy" interaction of politics and entertainment.

“Promoters favouring only light-hearted entertainment over a healthy mix of light-hearted and thought-provoking work is an attack on that ‘spirit’ of queer cabaret,” said Pluto.

It is in this vein that The Sequined Menace was created, to continue the trend of a queer attack on mainstream society, performance and values through cabaret. Only you sense that there is something ‘darker’ about this installment, which Pluto Savage describes as a “clusterfuck of minds”.

“Many of our shows have always had a darker edge. We are all passionate about addressing political, social, and sexual issues with rivers of glitter and razor-tipped eyelashes, and this show is about harnessing that power,” said Fancy Piece.

“The panic about queerness in mainstream arenas – the idea that queers will corrupt children, destroy the sanctity of marriage, bring about the end of civilization as we know it – is feeding The Sequined Menace’s mission to go forth and flame on!”

Glitta agreed: “[The Sequined Menace] may be a bit darker [but] it’s a camp darkness wrapped in a sequined cloak. Burlesque is about satire, a commentary and parody of life – our show stands for this and society’s ‘fear of a queer planet’”.

The Sequined Menace will debut in December at one of Sydney’s hubs of underground entertainment: The Red Rattler. It continues the rich history of queer cabaret in Sydney. “Sydney has a long history of saying ‘fuck you’ with sequins," said Fancy Piece. But the collective wants to take it further this time. None of them are taking any money from the performance, instead hoping to feed it back into The Sequined Menace’s travel fund.

“This is a show we will tour nationally with plans on taking it internationally to showcase what has been gestating in isolation in the Sydney underground,” said Glitta.

Pluto Savage simply can’t wait to let the beast out: “I’m going to buy up as many tinned and non-perishable items of food as I can carry, then I’m coming back to board up my windows and dig out a shelter under my house. There is no telling what could happen to this city when The Sequined Menace gets out.”

Photo: Kelly LaFranchi

The Sequined Menace
December 10, 8pm
The Red Rattler, 6 Faversham Street, Marrickville, Sydney
Mardi Gras @ The Imperial Hotel, 35 Erskineville Road  Erskineville, Sydney every Thursday night from February 9 – March 1
For more dates go to www.facebook.com/thesequinedmenace