Gone are the days when the opposite of “sexy” was “geeky.”
Geekiness is an essential ingredient in Geekenders’ recipe for sexy times. The other ingredients: Burlesque, sci-fi, fantasy, fandom, willing participants, and body positivity.
The Vancouver-based performance company specializes in “nerdlesque,” a form of burlesque that marries cheeky movements with the best of ComicCon culture.
Recent Geekenders productions have included The Wizard of Bras, The Empire Strips Back, a Doctor Who burlesque show (featuring all twelve Doctors!), and Star Wars: A Nude Hope.
The latter was enjoyed by roughly 2,000 ticketholders over four days, with more than 300 people turned away at the Rio door.
Anybody with guts and a love of geek culture can take part in a Geekenders show, says Fairlith Harvey, the geek-lovin’ musical theatre impresario behind Vancouver’s nerdlesque movement.
“The thing about Geekenders is if anybody wants to try it, we don’t make them take a course or anything,” says Harvey. “We just set up a time, if they want to take a lesson with us or develop a routine, and then we let them be in our variety show.”
Those variety shows are not just inspired by geeky franchises like Game of Thrones and the Star Wars films. They tell the actual stories from said franchises, except with less dialogue and ample injections of pasties, cheeky comedy, and no-holds-barred musical numbers.
“We use songs that you would recognize from pop culture, and then the striptease informs the story, and all of the dialogue is tweaked so that the natural double entendres in the dialogue come out,” says Harvey.
So the Star Wars films are recognizable in Geekenders productions, with some critical differences. “We don’t change the pronouns used in the movies, but Darth Vader is dressed up like a dominatrix and is a hot woman, and Luke Skywalker is androgynous and is played by a gender queer person,” says Harvey. “R2D2 is a roller derby girl that is on roller skates the entire show and just speaks in beeps and whistles. We really enjoy letting whoever is best for the part play the part regardless of how they identify.”
Harvey had recently returned to the 604 after a two-year stint studying musical theatre in New York City when she tap-danced in a musical that brought together members from Vancouver’s burgeoning burlesque community.
The experience awakened in Harvey a passion for burlesque, the body-positive cousin of striptease with roots in vaudeville. Harvey married this new passion with her old loves – musical theatre and geek culture – and Geekenders was born.
Upcoming Geekenders productions include a remount of the wildly popular The Labyrinth: A Spectacular Burlesque Adventure, an as-yet-unnamed evening of interactive theatre based on DC’s Batman (with South Granville’s Hycroft Mansion in the role of Bruce Manor), and the long-awaited Reveal of the Jedi, which will premiere at the Rio Theatre this October.
Don’t expect to see more than butts and pasties in a Geekenders show. It’s gateway burlesque, and thus comes with a PG-13 rating, according to Harvey.
“I try to avoid going too sexual because I know that the crowd that we’re attracting are people that have probably never seen burlesque before, and I wouldn’t want to overwhelm anybody or scare anybody away,” says Harvey, who will resume the role of Princess Leia in Reveal of the Jedi (as in, the stage version of the film that features Slave Leia in all her metal bikini glory).
“There’s the aspect of burlesque that is very female centric and while nerdlesque is gender inclusive, it’s a safe space for women to go and have the focus be on them,” she says.
The Labyrinth: A Spectacular Burlesque Adventure runs Sept. 12-13 at the Rio Theatre; Reveal of the Jedi runs Oct. 11-12. Tickets and more at Geekenders.ca.
