Stripping for School

You know your ecconomy is down, when you find yourself stripping to fundraise for your kid's school. Ok, so I'm being a little extreem, but only a little..... read on.

Last night, we had an event that put the FUN back in fundraiser. Family School parent's night out at a great pub called Sam Bonds. Talent night, so we took turns entertaining eachother with songs and performances. Beer and happy hooting was plentiful. A wild pack of parents, I'm telling you.

One of the pieces we did was a runway show of Power Bras. Two friends, and I made up this idea to playfully decorate and sell new bras to make money for two friends going through breast cancer. It's been a blast. Last night, we didn't sell any bras after the runway show, but we did pass the bra purse and collected some cash for our friends. Nice!

Max and I were booked as the last two performances at midnight. We are members of the Emerald City Drama kings- we do drag king theater. Most people know what a drag queen is, but drag kings are women who don men's clothes, and impersonate men for fun. It's high theater! Our troupe focuses on fun, thoughtful, and thoroughly prepared gender performance. Cabaret. We don't just lip sync, each song has a full subtext of performance and storyline.

Normally, I'm either femme looking, or the jeans and t-shirt artsie mom, so people have no idea what an awesome dude I can be! None of the moms at my boys school have seen me perform.....

Max took the stage as a thoroughly confident character, in "Business Time" by the kiwi band, "Flight of the Concords". If you have not yet heard them, run run run to the next tab over and YOU TUBE them next. The audience was in hysterics. Max was in boxers and "business socks".

I did my performance of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man". I sing and do a little soft shoe- cane routine with my character I call "Starlight Sam" (see photos-taken when I played Sam with long red hair). I'm happy to say we brought the house down and I had to hand out make believe permission slips for Starlight Sam as fantasy material. (blush). Playing with gender is a great deal of fun. And being an artist, as you know, means all of life is a stage.

Check out this amazing cartoon video I just found that was made for the song. I think it's awesome.