Performance artists to fem up Tritone

By Larry Nichols
PGN Staff Writer
© Philadelphia Gay News

We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Tritone has reopened, because it would have been a shame to miss the Aug. 29 show that features The Shondes, Liberty City Kings and the Philly debut of The Femme Show.

The Femme Show is a Boston-based revue featuring film, dance, literary readings, burlesque, drag and performance art.

The show’s founder and artistic director, Maggie Crowley, said the group is always on the lookout for performers who have something to say about femme identity or queer femininity.

“I’m very open to all kinds of genres and all kinds of different messages,” she said. “We have people who are femme identified. We have people who are butch, gender queer or otherwise identified. It’s not about just being femme. It’s about having something to say about what a femme gender presentation means in queer society and society as a whole.”

She added that the artists with The Femme Show have to be self-motivated, as they don’t spend much time rehearsing as a group.

Crowley, who herself is queer-femme identified, is trained in both classical and modern dance.

“My choreography has been in the show and also my dancing,” she said. “I do a piece in the show where I dance with a pointe shoe on one foot and a Doc Marten on the other. So I use my ballet training in a way that it wasn’t intended to be used.”

She added that many of the other artists in the show are a little more abstract: “There’s other stuff we just call performance art because we don’t know what to call it.

“We have a piece called ‘New Dawn’ by Johnny Blazes that’s a reverse strip tease where she goes from lingerie to being fully clothed in corduroys and a lacrosse jersey,” she said. “I think someone could walk all around in their corduroys and their lacrosse jersey, but you wouldn’t know the complexity and the layers of their gender identity. Gender identity is not just what’s on the outside.”

Crowley also talked up another piece in the show that might raise some eyebrows, “Hair Piece: The Queer Years” by Havalah Backus, an audience favorite.

“It’s about her journey and how she’s seen differently with short hair, with long hair, with hairy legs or with shaved legs and armpits. I think that is about how the inward and the outward are related.”

Crowley said that as most of the artists are from the Boston area, The Femme Show has elements that reflect their surroundings.

“I feel like what I’ve learned lately is how different queer communities are in every city,” she said. “In some ways, they’re very much the same and also very different. So the whole genesis of the show is influenced by being in Boston’s queer community when I was starting to go out to clubs. There’s an overarching message about being yourself and it being important and valid for everyone to find an identity, not just a gender, but who they are in general, in a way that works for them. Within that, there are differing messages.”

Crowley said that part of her duties as the artistic director is to keep the lineup interesting by making sure there isn’t too much of the same kind of performances.

“After I deal with costume changes and logistics, I look at breaking up the dancing and spoken word from the storytelling so we keep a diverse mix for the audience,” she said. “I also look at balancing out the serious, sad pieces with funny and playful pieces. We want people to experience a range of emotions, but not in a jarring way. We want to keep it all mixed up for folks.”

In the spirit of keeping things mixed up, Crowley said the group will return to Boston to rework the show, which is an incentive to catch the show at Tritone.

“If we show up in Philadelphia again after October of this year, they’re going to see entirely new material.”

The Femme Show performs at 9 p.m. Aug. 29 at Tritone, 1508 South St.

For more information, visit www.tritonebar.com or www.thefemmeshow.com, or call (215) 545-0475.

Larry Nichols can be reached at larry@epgn.com.