2012 was another year of big change for the show. After a rough 2011 which saw us moving from our original club, Bordello, to an even bigger club, Club Monte Cristo, run by the same owners, even more changes were in store for us, thankfully mostly really positive, but definitely things that changed the show fundimentally.
We started the year by putting together our first Doctor Who themed show, titled "SPACE TEASE". Often we put these theses together not knowing how they'll go, especially when nobody has done a full show based on a theme before. Thankfully, this show was the jumpstart we needed as we had our first sold-out crowd at our bigger club. And what a fun show it was with a storyline that saw "The Doctor" finding himself in the middle of a war between The Daleks, The Cybermen, and...a burlesque show. It was a story structure we would follow for future editions of the show, only with different Doctors, companions, and aliens.
The following months continued much better than the previous year at this new club with mostly strong crowds. We also continued to do the L.A. Chapter of Naked Girls Reading and the 4th edition of our Disneyland burlesque parody "BURLESQUELAND". We brought the first James Bond parody to L.A. called "A LICENSE TO TEASE" as well as the first ever anywhere full parody of Marvel Comics titled "MARVELS OF BURLESQUE" (which itself has become a long running series). We also continued our Frankie & Annette parody shows in a show called "BURLESQUE ON BIKINI ISLAND" which saw our own versions of Frankie and Annette lost on an island after surviving the cruise ship sinking at the end of the previous show in this series. From there they discover the mysterious secrets of the island, including a button that could destroy it and everyone there with an atomic bomb...which is accidentally pushed at the end of the show.
We did have one big issue come up when a new middle management team took over the booking for the club. They didn't really get what we were doing and decided to change one of our dates, that affected some of our guests from across the country who were booked to perform so we were forced to reschedule our anniversary show. This had nothing to do with the owners who were always amazing, but as they had turned over the booking to somebody else, it affected us negatively and thus that show did lighter than it would have. We decided that it wa probably a sign of things to come so we talked to other clubs to see who was interested and decided to bring one last show to Monte Cristo and thus closed out our run there with "SPACETEASE: THE SPECIAL EDITION" with even more acts based on characters from Doctor Who. We still love the owners of Bordello and Club Monte Cristo and hope to work with them again someday (plus they recently spoke in the press about how that middle management team seemed to run all of their successful clubs out, but not bringing in events with the kind of numbers needed to keep them them there so they let them go and sadly the club has since shut down. However we do hope they return as they were always very supportive and believed in us, even when we'd have ups and downs.)
So we had decided on moving the show to Fais Do Do which wasn't too far away from our last club and was known for its amazing independednt music shows. It was also previously the home to Cherry Kiss Burlesque before their founder Crystal Swarovski (currently the founder of the Burlypicks festivals) moved out of state. Our first production there was the latest version of our David Lynch themed "BENEATH THE SURFACE." followed by updated versions of "FAMOUS MONSTERGIRLS OF BURLESQUE", "OH, O!" and "TELEVANGELESQUE" - our annual charity show. The one big shock to us was that we didn't have as hard a time getting people to this club, which may have been due to it being a more well known club as well as easier to park at. Still, while we were enjoying bigger crowds than before, we had no idea what was about to hit us all at the begining of the following year...
(Click on posters to see bigger images and bonus material)
