Sex, Comedy and the Burlesque Musical

Comedy about sex has a long history, from bawdy ballads to modern stand-up. A less common form combines it with burlesque and musical theatre, using songs and striptease to examine how bodies, desire and identity are represented on stage.

One Vancouver-based duo, active in the early 2010s, offers a case study. They reportedly recorded albums of irreverent songs, toured, and later staged a burlesque musical in several cities. Their experience illustrates the opportunities and obstacles facing performers whose work is openly about sexuality.

Finding humour in difficult material

One half of the duo described the writing process as uneven. When a sexual issue is unfolding in the writer's own life, glib humour can be harder to produce. Yet honesty about something painful can also turn out to be the richest source of laughs. The same performer described his general approach as observing rather than concluding, on the grounds that observation is funny while conclusion tends to sound judgemental.

A musical with a political argument

The burlesque musical was framed as a punk-rock answer to a mainstream Hollywood film about burlesque. According to its creators, the show addresses several themes:

• The homogenization of culture and its effect on anyone outside a narrow idea of beauty.
• The role of freak and burlesque traditions as a counterweight to that trend.
• Sexual empowerment and the history of queer culture across the twentieth century.
• A reworking of the standard theatrical love triangle, with a polyamorous triad presented as an inclusive resolution.

Cult figures from film and music who gave outsiders in small towns a sense of possibility were also part of the reference points.

Funding and gatekeeping

Many performing arts centres depend partly on public money, which exposes them to criticism whenever a program is seen as spending tax dollars on explicit material. The duo said they had heard from venue programmers that a show could sell well and still draw objections from a board. By their account, this limited bookings in some markets, even as they appeared at festivals and venues elsewhere.

The commercial theatre circuit posed a different problem. The duo reported hesitation from some venues about a show featuring a striptease by a larger-bodied performer, which they saw as reflecting assumptions about what audiences will accept.

The niche that formed

Between those two barriers, the performers settled into burlesque festivals, sex-positive gatherings and kink events, alongside the occasional prestigious stage. Their story is a reminder that adult-themed performance often depends on a network of specialist audiences rather than mainstream institutions, and that the line between art and obscenity is drawn differently by funders, boards and promoters.