In the Streets and Collect Pond Present THE FEMME SHOW 6/5

In the Streets Productions and Collect Pond are proud to present The Femme Show on Saturday, June 5. With dance, burlesque, drag, spoken word, performance art and more from award winning artists, The Femme Show is the country's only touring show exploring all aspects of femme identity. This is queer art for queer people, with a variety of diverse perspectives on femme identity that can be thoughtful, sad, funny, sexy, and fun.

The Femme Show plays Saturday, June 5 at 9:30 PM at Collect Pond in Brooklyn, NY. Tickets are $8-15 sliding scale at the door. Collect Pond is a space for trans/genderqueer/gender non-conforming artists to create and present work located at 338 Berry St, (corner of S 5th), 3rd floor. Transportation info: L to Bedford, G to Metropolitan, JMZ to Marcy Ave. www.collectpond.org

In October of 2007, the Boston debut of The Femme Show sold out and received rave reviews from audience members, who called it "wild, raw, transparent, and unique," and "a fantastic, funny, powerful show." The Femme Show has been featured in Bay Windows, New England's largest gay and lesbian newspaper, The Philadelphia Gay News, and have been an editor's choice in the the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix and the Baltimore City Paper.

The Femme Show has been seen True Colors, the country's largest LGBTQI youth conference (Storrs, CT); at Emerson College (Boston, MA); Snug Underground Theatre Festival (Staten Island, NY); Queer Spirit Camp (Greenwich, New York); the St. Lawerence (Portland, ME); The LoF/T and the Strand (Baltimore, MD); and the Rotunda (Philadelphia, PA). Cast members have recently been seen at the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in New York City, the Tranny Road Show, Body Heat, the Femme2008 Conference in Chicago, the EuGene O'Neill Cabaret Conference, with Amanda Palmer at the Boston Pops, and more.

Featured pieces include:
Interactive, gender bending, hula-hooping fun from Bitches with Barrettes.?
Hip-hop meets femme passion in "Swagger" by Alicia Greene.?
"Hot Commodity": In this sassy burlesque, a femme just wants to have fun, but her sexuality is being co-opted everywhere she turns.?
"The Femmebot's Dilemma" by Alana Kumbier is queer femme crip burlesque.?
Johnny Blazes' monologue "trancension" uses voice, music and movement to express the discord of being a female-bodied transgendered person who expresses hirself femininely.?
The etiquette mavens of the Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Sapphic Social Mores ride their scooters around the Sapphic Universe, bringing etiquette aid to the masses. ?
Spoken word from guest artist Cheryl B. and burlesque from guest artist Lola Dean.

About the Artists

Johnny Blazes is known throughout Boston's drag and burlesque scenes for hir genre-bending, gender-blending, tongue-in-cheek performances. Ze received a BA in Dance Performance at Oberlin College where ze founded OCircus! and directed the 95-student group for three years. Ze has directed grassroots circus groups across the country including a smaller touring version of OCircus!, The Madcap Rumpus Society and The ExtraTerrestrial Circus Experiment. Johnny is a regular performer at TraniWreck, the Midway, Jacques Cabaret and colleges across New England. Ze is currently booking a tour of hir one-person evening-length performance entitled wo(n)man show. www.johnnyblazes.com

Cheryl B. (guest artist) has performed her humorous, narrative work at venues throughout NYC and abroad. She has been published in numerous publications such as the literary journal Ping Pong and the anthology Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution (Seal Press, 2007). Her awards include a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry and a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her website is www.cherylb.com.

Maggie Cee (artistic director) is an artist, activist, and teacher committed to community, social change, and sequins. She performs regularly around Boston and has also been seen at the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in New York City, at the Femme2008 Conference, in Boston's Traniwreck, and at the Stonewall Inn. Her essay, "notes to a young not-yet femme" was recently published in the anthology Second Person Queer.

Lola Dean (guest artist) comes to the stage with sassy, nasty, white-trashy spirit. As any good easy Southern woman should, she likes to get around town and undress for lively audiences in NYC queer performance spaces including Bevin Branlandingham's Queer Holiday Extravagaanza at the Historic Stonewall Inn, Switch 'n Play's Anniversary Open Drag Night, and That's My Jam's tribute to burlesque and drag. Lola Dean is a founding member of the Baconettes, a group of burlesque performers committed to anti racist and body positive performance.

Alicia Greene is a black queer educator, activist and performer. She is an alumni of Kansas State University, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-NYC and the Improv Asylum Training Center in Boston, MA.

M. Hanora is a community organizer, abortion care provider, artist, and writer. She was recently published in the anthology Queer and Catholic. Mallory has performed in Boston at the Works in Progress series, Boston University, Emerson College, the Boston Common, Jacques Cabaret, at parties and special events, and with the Reflect and Strengthen Street Theatre troupe. She graduated from the Emerson College Honors Program with a degree in Writing and experience in the performing arts.

Rachel Kahn A recent transplant to Boston by way of New York
City, Rachel is a freelance writer, poet, and performer, but spends the vast majority of her time pretending to be a therapist. Her work has been heard at a variety of venues, including the Apocalypse Lounge, the Ear Inn Poetry Series, and The New York Writers' Coalition ‘Writing Aloud' series. After a semi-successful stint pulling the movie screen down for the first Femme Show, Rachel enjoys being on the other side of the stage. She recently performed at the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in New York, and with the Femme Show's fabulous summer tour. Rachel's first novel came out earlier this year under an assumed identity.

Alana Kumbier is an activist, performer, radical librarian, and writer. Onstage, she regularly performs and is the stage manager for TraniWreck in Boston. Her performance history includes doing femme burlesque, drag king, and genderqueer acts with the Royal Renegades in Columbus, Ohio, and co-founding and performing in Fe-Male Trouble, a drag king and genderqueer troupe in New Orleans. Offstage, she is a reference librarian, a member of the Boston Radical Reference Collective, and a novice letterpress printer. She has published articles and critical essays in Bitch, Punk Planet (RIP), HipMama, and Bust.

Lea Robinson and Elizabeth Whitney live in New York City as partners in life and crime, where they were recently featured in GO Magazine's 100 Women We Love. Together they have brainstormed pioneering performances of gender, such as the butch-femme country-western drag act, "Sissy & Cocoa Chaps: The Urban Cowdykes," and the soon-to-be world famous hooping duo, "Bitches With Barrettes." Boston audiences may recognize "Bitches" from the Works in Progress series at The Theater Offensive and of course from the oh-so-glamourous Femme Show. Elsewhere, Robinson and Whitney's collaborative work has been seen at Dixon Place (NYC), Femmetasia! (Seattle), Dixon Place (NYC), Great Small Works' Spaghetti Dinner (NYC), Hysteria Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto, ON), DramaRama (New Orleans, LA), Broad Vocabulary Books, Woodland Pattern Books, with the Miltown Kings and at Darling Hall (Milwaukee, WI), Utah Pride Center (Salt Lake City, UT), and The National Communication Association Conference (San Antonio. TX). In their parallel lives, they work collaboratively on The Miscegenations Project (www.miscegenations.org), a digital storytelling workshop that explores intersections of race, gender identity, and sexuality. More information about their individual performance work is available at www.learobinson.com and www.elizabethwhitney.com.