Cass King came slinking through the curtains behind the stage wearing a platinum blond wig, silver high heels, glittery leggings, a satin bra and a rainbow boa.
“Drag ain’t easy,” King said last week at the WISE Hall, a cavernous venue she calls “ground zero for East Van alternative culture.”
King could have been referring to the hour it took to apply her sparkly blue eye shadow and porcelain face makeup or the six years she spent redeveloping SHINE, the burlesque musical she co-wrote with Sam Dulmage and 18 original songs she penned with her partner John Woods.
“As an artist, you know when your art is good, but not perfect,” said King, who has performed in SHINE to sold out shows in Vancouver, New York and Seattle. Despite the musical’s initial success, King wanted to tell the complete story, she said. So she refined the script and strengthened the antagonist, added more song and dance numbers and included a live band.
The raunchy, sex-positive production explores the clash of cultures when money meets artists, said King, who acknowledges the storyline of a ragtag group of performers striving to save their venue from moneyed corporatists shares similarities with the musical RENT.
“There’s a cultural shift and gentrification in North America, but especially in Vancouver,” King said of SHINE’s birthplace, where it first hit the stage seven years ago at the Vancouver Burlesque Festival. SHINE, however, is based on La MaMa, a renowned cultural institution and non-profit experimental theatre founded in 1961 in New York’s East Village. In the summer of 2010, King brought SHINE back to its roots, performing at La MaMa as part of the New York International Fringe Festival.
King says SHINE was first conceived when she was a sex columnist for the now defunct Terminal City Magazine and met Woods, a singer-songwriter. “The two of us went together like Reeses and peanut butter cups,” King said. The couple wrote one bawdy song, then another.
“Then we just said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if this was our act?’ And now we’re here.”
Touring under the name the Wet Spots, the acclaimed cabaret act has performed at burlesque venues around the world and wanted to capture the ragged glamour they found in the sequestered, often endangered performance spaces.
Back home, King says Vancouver has always been a thriving town for burlesque. However, even with the city’s enthusiasm for nudity, drag and the tassel-twirling performing arts, it’s still a risky business.
“When you’re trying to promote a show as racy as this, it can be a tough sell for a season tickets-buying audience,” King said.
SHINE runs July 6 to 16 at the WISE Hall. Tickets are available at shinemusical.brownpapertickets.com.
