There’s no denying how hot it’s been around these parts all summer long. Overcast days and random spits of rain have done little to stave off the beads of perspiration popping from the brows of even the most composed Seattleites. And there have been days where the humidity’s been, well, pretty oppressive by our temperate standards.
It’s a condition that’s pretty novel for Northwesterners, but it’s a state of physical and emotional being that feeds, and feeds off of, the works of Tennessee Williams. If the collective oeuvre of twentieth century American theater’s most iconic playwright possessed a physical body, its garments would be clinging to it in a hothouse-summer-induced sweat.
That environment would seem a fertile clime for the bump and grind of burlesque performance, and the folks putting on Tennessee Tease (opening at the Theatre Off Jackson tonight) know it.
Co-produced by Sailor St. Claire (a key mover at Sinner Saint Burlesque company) and writer/choreographer/burlesque performer Fosse Jack, Tennessee Tease promises a genuine narrative in which Williams’ memoirs are wedded with burlesque enactments depicting his indelible fictional characters, his real-life friends and loved ones, and his lovers. Sinner Saint’s presentation from last year, Inheritance: Maiden, Mother, Crone, impressed our own Chris Burlingame greatly, and like that work Tennessee Tease is aiming for something more ambitious than your typical burlesque revue. And there’s no denying that the tensions and passions threaded throughout Williams’ writing and private life will provide ample fodder.
Several established local burlesque performers and actors will join St. Claire and Jack onstage, including drag king Al Lykya, Diva le Deviant, Jesse Bell-Jones, and legendary Seattle-based ecdysiast Eartha Quake. The jury’s still out, however, as to whether or not TOJ will be providing bourbon, mint juleps, silk kerchiefs for mopping sweaty brows, and/or handheld fans.
Tennessee Tease plays at TOJ August 13 through 15 at 8:00 p.m (doors at 7:30). Tickets, $20, can be purchased here.
