THEY’RE AAAALLLLIIIIIIIVEEEEEE!!!
Montreal Queerlesque Troupe GlamGam Has Risen Once Again
Seven years ago, during FringeMTL, I became fast friends with a few members of the queerlesque troupe GlamGam. That year they produced the immensely successful Greasy at Cafe Cleopatra, and I was witness to the unhinged, choreographed chaos three times. After that run, though, the troupe fell quiet. The scene was riding high on GlamGam, we were all in love, and they just… ghosted us. Now, after seven long years, GlamGam has received a jolt of electricity, it is aaaaaaliiiiiiiiiveeeee (I know, I’m mixing spooky references) and is once again taking over the stage at Cafe Cleo with Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre.
To mark this special occasion, I met with Michael McCarthy, Julie Paquet, and Beth Cross, OG “Glamily” members, to chat about the history of the troupe, the upcoming Halloween variety show, and the future of one of Montreal’s best performance collectives.
“It was 2009, and I’d gone to see a show that Michael had appeared in, it was called Cyberlesque, run by another troupe. I was in the audience, I was dressed up, I thought the show was so much fun,” Julie says about the inception of GlamGam. “It was a time when Michael and I were hanging out a lot, and we both wanted to perform. Since he’d already done a performance at Cleo’s, we spoke to the owner and told him we wanted to put a show on. He said ‘great!’, and we just recruited all of the rag-tag misfits we knew. Most of us didn’t have any kind of formal training or anything. But we had a message, and we wanted to put it on stage.”
While GlamGam eventually produced a few full productions, their first event was a variety show. “It was called Tits The Season,” Michael explains, “it was a Christmas show. On the heels of the success of Cyberlesque, I think, people came, and we sold out both nights, which was a big surprise for us. So we decided to continue.”
Producing a variety show is heavy lifting. Putting a scripted production on stage, that’s another story. When I ask about the evolution from variety shows to things like Peter Pansexual and Greasy, where it began, Michael tells me, “It was 2012, the first time we did the play If Looks Could Kill. And then we revamped it. 2014 was the Fringe version.”
I’m a big fan of going with the plot, particularly when it comes to creation. Tackling a complete production from start to finish, then being willing to revisit, and evolve that production, that takes a respectable level of dedication. Regarding their “message”, I ask Julie to tell me more.
“We just wanted to see people who looked like us on stage,” she says. “We were such a diverse group of people and we wanted to see people who had all different kinds of bodies on stage. Also, we were people who weren't necessarily trained, you know, to be performers, so we wanted to make it accessible. And we weren't afraid to get messy and basically redefine what sexiness can look like on stage.”
With such longevity, I’m curious how many shows GlamGam has produced. This line of questioning is met with some laughter and much debate. “We've been away for a long time, so all of our timelines are a little bit conflated,” jokes Michael.
“We’re old,” Julie adds.
Eventually they reach a consensus, as Michael tells me, “We’ve done five Fringe plays, I know that for sure. And I’d say we’ve done about 25 to 30 shows altogether.”
As an event producer and theatre creator myself, that number is staggering. The time commitment, the number of people involved, the space… the space required is so important. Without a stage, what have you got? Luckily, GlamGam has cultivated a lengthy, loving relationship with the historic Montreal venue Cafe Cleopatra.
As Julie explains, “It’s a second home to us. We’ve always felt very welcome there. They go above and beyond to make sure we feel welcome. We were there when they were trying to tear everything down in the Red Light District, and the fight was going on to save Cleo's. We were right in the middle of that.” (For more on that saga, check out the Forget The Box Archives.)
“They still trust us somehow,” Beth adds.
“Every ridiculous idea that we have, they support it,” Julie continues, “they let us make a mess.”
“Like the mural,” Beth says, “They’re great, they let us do it, they kept it. It’s still there. They’ve been really good to us.”
Julie elaborates, “The mural that’s painted on the back wall of Cleo’s, Beth is the artist, she painted that. She’s changed it a few times depending on what the show is, and now it’s a mix of Peter Pansexual, Greasy, and now it has the Bareoke logo.”
“I designed that, too!” Beth laughs.
Bareoke! Montreal’s premiere strip karaoke night (which I’m sure you read all about in this excellent Forget The Box feature) was started by Julie and Michael, and while not part of GlamGam proper, they explain that it’s the same people, so there’s a marriage. Bareoke runs the first and third Saturday of every month, their next edition to follow the closing performance of Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre on November 1st.
When I ask what else the group has done together during their seven-year hiatus, aside from Bareoke, Julie quickly responds, “Therapy.” They laugh, and Michael confirms, “GlamGam went to group therapy.” I have to admit that I admire that commitment to each other, to the collective, to the art. It’s really fucking touching.
“Well, we had some projects that started to work on that just didn't pan out. For example, in 2019, we were planning our anniversary show. And this would have been the first time we had performed together since Greasy.” Michael continues, “So it had been a couple of years. We had done the therapy. But that show didn’t work out. Then we came back together and said, okay, we still care about each other, we still care about this troupe. So let's do the anniversary show. And then the pandemic happened.”
But even through the pandemic, they continued to chip away, plotting an eventual return.
Beth jumps in, “Trying to find the right time is hard. There are always so many reasons not to do something. But we were able to find a moment, the right time, we asked, everyone agreed, we booked it, and here we are.”
“It was Beth,” Julie adds, “this was her baby. She said, ‘we’re doing a show on Halloween!’ and she booked it.”
“Thankfully Beth kept encouraging us to do this,” Michael confesses. “Do we want to perform? The further you get away from performance life, the more you lean into other things. Then the imposter syndrome shows up and you wonder if you can even do it anymore. Then one night, after (more than) a couple drinks at Bareoke, we booked something.”
“If we want to do it, we have to actually make it happen,” Beth concludes. “And we love Halloween, it’s one of our favorite times to do a show.”
For a troupe that operates as a collective, with everyone involved in the adaptation or creation of the production, scheduling can be difficult.
“That’s the challenge, right? People have kids, people have jobs, people have careers. Everybody’s got a side hustle, because the economy is not friendly. So, finding the time with adult schedules is challenging,” Beth agrees, “but we’ve been working on this over the last couple months, when we can, so that we don’t have to pack it all in because we know we can’t. We don’t have the availability for that anymore.”
“The thing that felt a lot easier was to get our feet wet again with a variety show,” Julie explains of the return production. “Large shows are so fulfilling, but it’s not sustainable without funding. But a variety show doesn’t require getting together to write a script, it makes it a bit easier with scheduling.”
“It’s like a test for us,” Michael smiles, “we’re going to see if we have a good time, and if we do, I can’t help but feel afterwards we’ll want to put our energy into writing a grant to put on another production.”
Bringing it all back to Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre, I ask them what to expect from the show. Beth jumps in, “We've got a really diverse cast. So we're going to have Ballroom, there's references to classic Halloween films, like The Exorcist. There's also Biblical references that get played with a bit. We have two hosts that are going to call out to the old ghosts. A big part of the theme with the ghosts comes from rehearsing in that space. We always talked about how it was haunted. And then we realized, being gone for so many years, that we had become the ghosts. We also wanted to invite new people to the stage. That was really important to us to open up the privilege that we have at Cleo’s to people that don't necessarily have that access. So we've got some new people as well that are doing some classic burlesque. We also have people that have worked on their own music tracks, which is really exciting. We have a couple of performers that they're doing their debut burlesque show with us, which I'm so grateful for!”
Michael continues, “We’re looking forward to this show because we have the opportunity to work with a new generation of performers. We had our heyday but since we’ve been away a new generation of talent has emerged. We’re excited to marry the old with the new both on stage and in the crowd.”
Keeping with the spirit of community GlamGam has always championed, there are also multiple charitable actions tied to Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre, as Michael explains. “We're going to be raising money for a charity raising funds for Sudan. There's also a charity one of the performers will be donating to, the West Island LGBTQ community center. We always like to give back to the community. So we'll be selling treats, there will be Go-Go dancing, and we're going to have raffle prizes, all benefitting community organizations.”
This event promises to be an unforgettable experience. GlamGam is primed and ready to entertain, and I’m excited to be in the audience on Halloween. Before we end the conversation, I circle back to the future of the troupe, beyond this event. Michael elaborates on the focus of the collective. “I think that GlamGam definitely wants to go forward. I mean there's still trepidation, but I think it will come back in a 2.0 version. We've reevaluated our mandate, and how we approach things, and we intend on being more intentional about our recruitment process. When we first started off, we were a bunch of friends that just got together, and we happened to be a bunch of white people.”
This is an integral aspect of collective representation that Beth easily expands upon. “It’s also being more intentional about not just the recruitment, but having people in the process, having people in all of the roles. When we realized we didn’t have a lot of diversity on stage, we were focused on inviting that on stage. But then we realized, if we wanted to have other people's point of view presented in our shows, we can't tell it through our lens. So we need those people to be, those different communities to be just not just on stage, but in the sound booth, but in the writing and in the casting, like in all of those roles.”
The powerhouse lineup for this event is led by hosts Douche Ledouche and Les Izmoar, and features Phoenix Inana, Tristan Ginger, Booze Crotch, Julie Paquet, Rusty Jameson, Misty Portugal, Michael J. McCarthy, Anaconda LaSabrosa, Mina Minou, Moonshine Sunshine, Professor Word, ‘Arawelo, Kije, and Toshiro.
GlamGam is not just Montreal performance art history, relegated to “remember that?” and “where are they now?”. GlamGam, with Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre, opening on Thursday night, is here to lead Montreal’s performance art future. This collective, this queerlesque troupe has, and will continue to, build and re-build community, to provide access to the stage, and entertain the fuck out of audiences.
Get your ticket now. See you on Halloween. Buy me a drink.
Les Fantômes de Café Cléopâtre runs from October 30th to November 1st, with a special edition of Bareoke following the show on closing night.
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