Le Petit Mort Cabaret and the Burlesque Toy Shop want to teach Philadelphia a thing or two about debauchery with their new show “The Education of a Woman,” June 22 at L’Etage.
The show features a number of local burlesque performers using music and texts from the turn of the century to the present to explore gender identity and sexual expression.
The show was conceived by Jessy Gruver and Rose Fairley, who came up with the idea and then set about finding performers to bring their vision to life.
“We had a concept in mind and a basic idea of what I wanted to express,” said Gruver, who is also a performer in the show. “We gathered people we were excited to work with and just invited them to share their ideas within that kind of structure and just trusted they would work out. I wanted to work with everybody’s strong suits. I didn’t want to decide for someone what they needed to be doing.”
“We started with looking at the themes that we were interested in exploring,” Fairley added. “We were looking at gender, sexual orientation, promiscuity, BDSM, kink and polyamory. Then we pulled from people in the performance community that had a passion about talking about these issues, whether in performance or in their professional lives. We weren’t looking for any one particular thing.”
Gruver said it was important to them to include all sorts of performers in the show.
“I think art is good for giving voices to stories of people you might not have heard,” she said. “So we have several people in the show who identify as LGBT.”
Both Gruver and Fairley said use of turn-of-the-century music and imagery illustrate how much has changed in society — and how much hasn’t.
“The cabarets of 1890s Paris came about as a safe place for artists to express themselves and put out new poems or songs or comedy routines, but often had some kind of political element or often had to do with gender identity or expression or what society tells us we are allowed to do and how to behave,” Gruver said. “I wanted to have the cabaret idea in a more contemporary setting because I felt like we are still very much confined by society’s ideas of what gender expression should be or just repression of different kinds; women, people of different gender identities, asexuals, poly people. There’s still a lot that is not OK to talk about. I wanted to use the genre as a way of putting it out there.”
“That’s just a jumping-off point,” Fairley added about the turn-of-the-century theme. “It’s really eclectic in terms of the sources we’re drawing from. We’re drawing from the 1930 edition of Emily Post’s etiquette and newspaper articles from the same year that was about dating advice for women. It comes up all the way to the present day. It doesn‘t necessarily start at one point. It’s not a history lesson. We acknowledge there is an anachronistic element. We’re not going for historical accuracy so much as looking at the theme that ties it together, which are all of these things that are proscribing how a woman ought to behave.”
The event features door and raffle prizes by Burlesque Toy Shop, an online lady-friendly adult-toy boutique. Fairley said the boutique’s business philosophy matches up with the theme of the cabaret show.
“It’s based on principles of carrying products that are ethical, with a focus on education and information,” Fairley said about the boutique. “The adult-toy industry is not regulated so a lot of the toys on the market are really toxic for your body. The primary thing that they are doing is everything that they are selling is body-safe. On top of that, it is providing education and a welcoming environment. The burlesque connection is about body positivity and the idea that if you are buying a sex toy you are saying, ‘My body is worth the pleasure,’ and you have no shame about your identity or sexuality for pursuing it.”
Catch “The Education of a Woman” 9 p.m. June 22 at L’Etage, 624 S. Sixth St. For more information or tickets, visit burlesquetoyshop.com or www.facebook.com/burlesquetoyshop/events.