Vancouver's Burlesque Boom and Its Theatre Roots

Burlesque in Canada has enjoyed a revival, with troupes, festivals and regular shows now familiar in most large cities. Vancouver was one of the places where that revival took root, and performers with theatre backgrounds were part of the group that built it. Interviews with performers in national sexual-culture magazines recorded how people entered the scene, and this article draws general lessons from those accounts without profiling any one person.

An entry point through theatre

Many performers in the revival came to burlesque by way of stage acting rather than through specialist classes. A love of theatre and old films is a common motive, and some describe burlesque as a way of visiting an era they never knew. Fringe theatre productions and cabaret nights served as meeting points, and auditions before established performers led to places in holiday and variety shows.

A scene taking shape

Fringe-circuit troupes were already respected when the revival began, and some helped produce early burlesque festivals. The wider scene then expanded quickly, helped along by revue-style shows and by classes that introduced newcomers to stagecraft. At the start of the revival, Vancouver had no weekly burlesque night. Within a few years there were several, which illustrates how fast local scenes can grow once an audience is established.

Persona and signature numbers

Performers build a stage persona much as actors build a character. Some lean toward cute and bubbly styles, others toward glamour, comedy or satire. Routines commonly set to pop and jazz songs often tell a small story, such as a character who hides her feelings and then reveals them, or an overenthusiastic teacher leading the audience through a lesson, with the striptease element serving the joke or the narrative.

Drag kings and shared stages

Drag king shows, in which performers present exaggerated male characters, have also been part of the story. Performers describe those audiences as forgiving and the setting as a safe place to step outside a usual persona. Drag and burlesque have mixed more over time in Vancouver, as they already did in Seattle and other cities where performers from both traditions often share a bill.

Influences and ambitions

For stage personas, performers often cite classic film stars for their blend of elegance, comic timing and charm. As working artists, though, they frequently draw inspiration from peers in the local scene, praising originality, singing voices, costumes and stage presence, and they name audiences as a major source of energy.

Careers in burlesque are often part-time and mobile, with performers moving between cities or returning to acting and other work. Some speak of long-term wishes to open dedicated theatres. Accounts from the early 2010s do not describe later developments.