Embodied Scholarship
In addition to my scholarly research profile, I am also a performing artist. My academic interests in performing bodies intersects with my work as a burlesque performer, actor, and emcee. I strive to use performance spaces as tools to build community around the literary arts and critical theory, blending text, movement, and body to illuminate these connections. Under my stage name, Sailor St. Claire, I have spent nearly a decade creating embodied storytelling. Much of my work draws from and comments upon existing narratives from the literary canon and popular culture, revising, reworking, and challenging the cultural understanding of the female body through strategic reveals, camp, and glamour. From this position of embodied scholarship, I write about theoretical conceits such as performative fandom, analyzing my own long-running cabaret based on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. This essay, “Accio Burlesque! Performing Potter Fandom Through Nerdlesque” was published in Playing Harry Potter: Essays and Interviews on Fandom and Performance, edited by Lisa Brenner. I also speak from my position as a scholar and performer at organizations such as Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theatre and the University of Washington’s School of Drama during pre-show discussion series, covering feminist and disability theory in performance. My expertise as a feminist performance researcher with an interest in 19th century circus, burlesque, and theatre has also been recognized by the Burlesque Hall of Fame museum, where I am currently co-curating an exhibit on the feminist principles at the core of both contemporary and historical burlesque. I likewise participate in my artistic community as an educator through my involvement with Burlycon, the world’s only burlesque educational convention, where I have taught for several years, in addition to serving on the programming committee.
The art of storytelling is central to my practice as an emcee whenever I craft introductions between acts, close reading the set list and collaborating with performers to frame and contextualize relevant themes and experiences for the audience. My work creates narrative connections that thematically link the creative work of many different artists, therefore creating a communal experience for both the performers and the audience in the act of hosting a show. In burlesque and cabaret contexts, the emcee is often the only person who speaks during a performance. Therefore, the work of the emcee is to translate the qualities of feeling, sentiment, and story that are expressed through dance into clear, poignant, and entertaining language that engages with audiences on intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional levels. My work has been featured in venues large and small, including burlesque showcases at the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival and in the grand showroom of the Orleans Casino in Las Vegas. In addition to my work with words on cabaret stages, I am also a gala and fundraising emcee. I rely on principles of rhetoric honed through my years of teaching college writing to help nonprofit organizations like Bushwick Book Club Seattle and Planned Parenthood meet their fundraising goals through strategic, effective messaging before, during, and after an event.
As an actor, writer, and producer, I am particularly interested in creating burlesque theatre, utilizing narrative and storytelling techniques to push beyond the cabaret format and speak to larger cultural ideas, while simultaneously merging neo-burlesque performance styles with the genre’s narrative roots from the late nineteenth century. I am proud to have co-produced and hosted Bechdel Test Burlesque, a feminist burlesque show about pop culture and politics, with a collective of Seattle feminist artists. The show was invited to be performed at the University of Oregon by the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Department as part of the programming for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in 2016, and is under negotiation to tour to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2019. As the show’s emcee, I created thematic connections around the acts by drawing on feminist principles of consent and bodily autonomy. I am also invested in using burlesque as a medium for storytelling by adapting and staging feminist, queer, and sex-positive spins on classic works. In 2017, I co-wrote and co-directed a queer, sex-positive adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Evilyn Sin Claire for Sinner Saint Burlesque. In 2015, I co-produced a new burlesque play based on the memoirs of Tennessee Williams with my creative partner, choreographer Fosse Jack, which we restaged in 2018 at Seattle’s Theatre Off Jackson. In both full-length shows, we combined theatrical narrative with burlesque dance in a diegetic format. Drawing on the conventions of musical theatre, we use choreography to continue telling the story where words fade away. By combining text and dance in this way, we not only tell stories to our audience, but embody them in ways that can highlight subtexts that get lost under our words. Fosse Jack and I continue this work as the co-artistic directors of Noveltease Theatre, a repertory company dedicated to literary burlesque adaptations.
The art of storytelling is central to my practice as an emcee whenever I craft introductions between acts, close reading the set list and collaborating with performers to frame and contextualize relevant themes and experiences for the audience. My work creates narrative connections that thematically link the creative work of many different artists, therefore creating a communal experience for both the performers and the audience in the act of hosting a show. In burlesque and cabaret contexts, the emcee is often the only person who speaks during a performance. Therefore, the work of the emcee is to translate the qualities of feeling, sentiment, and story that are expressed through dance into clear, poignant, and entertaining language that engages with audiences on intellectual, aesthetic, and emotional levels. My work has been featured in venues large and small, including burlesque showcases at the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival and in the grand showroom of the Orleans Casino in Las Vegas. In addition to my work with words on cabaret stages, I am also a gala and fundraising emcee. I rely on principles of rhetoric honed through my years of teaching college writing to help nonprofit organizations like Bushwick Book Club Seattle and Planned Parenthood meet their fundraising goals through strategic, effective messaging before, during, and after an event.
As an actor, writer, and producer, I am particularly interested in creating burlesque theatre, utilizing narrative and storytelling techniques to push beyond the cabaret format and speak to larger cultural ideas, while simultaneously merging neo-burlesque performance styles with the genre’s narrative roots from the late nineteenth century. I am proud to have co-produced and hosted Bechdel Test Burlesque, a feminist burlesque show about pop culture and politics, with a collective of Seattle feminist artists. The show was invited to be performed at the University of Oregon by the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Department as part of the programming for Sexual Assault Awareness Month in 2016, and is under negotiation to tour to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2019. As the show’s emcee, I created thematic connections around the acts by drawing on feminist principles of consent and bodily autonomy. I am also invested in using burlesque as a medium for storytelling by adapting and staging feminist, queer, and sex-positive spins on classic works. In 2017, I co-wrote and co-directed a queer, sex-positive adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Evilyn Sin Claire for Sinner Saint Burlesque. In 2015, I co-produced a new burlesque play based on the memoirs of Tennessee Williams with my creative partner, choreographer Fosse Jack, which we restaged in 2018 at Seattle’s Theatre Off Jackson. In both full-length shows, we combined theatrical narrative with burlesque dance in a diegetic format. Drawing on the conventions of musical theatre, we use choreography to continue telling the story where words fade away. By combining text and dance in this way, we not only tell stories to our audience, but embody them in ways that can highlight subtexts that get lost under our words. Fosse Jack and I continue this work as the co-artistic directors of Noveltease Theatre, a repertory company dedicated to literary burlesque adaptations.
Creative Works
A Midsummer Night's Reverie. Sinner Saint Burlesque, 2017 & 2018. Writer/Director.
With Evilyn Sin Claire, I co-adapted and co-directed this feminist, queer, sex-positive adaptation of the Shakespearean classic, using the original text paired with burlesque dance in diegesis.
The Tennessee Tease. 2015 & 2018. Director/Producer/Actor.
A full-length, original burlesque play based on the works of Tennessee Williams. Written and choreographed by Fosse Jack, I performed as Tennessee's literary agent, Audrey Wood, as well as directed and produced.
A Metamodern Prometheus. 2018. Actor.
A one-act burlesque play about the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, generated from the text of her 1832 introduction and poetry from her literary cohort. Written and choreographed by Fosse Jack, and directed by Vixen Valentine, I had the honor of anchoring this production in the role of Mary Shelley.
Accio Burlesque. 2013-2018. Producer/Writer/Emcee.
A cabaret-format showcase of burlesque and variety acts inspired by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. I served as the master of ceremonies playing Rowling herself. The show has existed in 5 separate editions, including one tour to Vancouver, B.C.
Bechdel Test Burlesque. 2014-2019. Co-Producer/Performer/Emcee.
With a group of feminist artists, I have co-produced several editions of this feminist pop culture burlesque showcase. I have performed in some, and served as the master of ceremonies for others. In 2016, this show toured to the University of Oregon at the invitation of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.
With Evilyn Sin Claire, I co-adapted and co-directed this feminist, queer, sex-positive adaptation of the Shakespearean classic, using the original text paired with burlesque dance in diegesis.
The Tennessee Tease. 2015 & 2018. Director/Producer/Actor.
A full-length, original burlesque play based on the works of Tennessee Williams. Written and choreographed by Fosse Jack, I performed as Tennessee's literary agent, Audrey Wood, as well as directed and produced.
A Metamodern Prometheus. 2018. Actor.
A one-act burlesque play about the creation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, generated from the text of her 1832 introduction and poetry from her literary cohort. Written and choreographed by Fosse Jack, and directed by Vixen Valentine, I had the honor of anchoring this production in the role of Mary Shelley.
Accio Burlesque. 2013-2018. Producer/Writer/Emcee.
A cabaret-format showcase of burlesque and variety acts inspired by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. I served as the master of ceremonies playing Rowling herself. The show has existed in 5 separate editions, including one tour to Vancouver, B.C.
Bechdel Test Burlesque. 2014-2019. Co-Producer/Performer/Emcee.
With a group of feminist artists, I have co-produced several editions of this feminist pop culture burlesque showcase. I have performed in some, and served as the master of ceremonies for others. In 2016, this show toured to the University of Oregon at the invitation of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.
