Jo Weldon

Catherine D'Lish redefines mixology.

Tease-O-Rama hasn't quite yet reached Santacon-like ubiquity in San Francisco, where one might stumble upon a confused and drunk burlesque performer even in the outer neighborhoods on the right day, but it's making a more than valiant effort to get there. For now, let's just say there is an ample amount of ample loveliness roaming the North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf areas over the next four days as more than 200 performers prepare to set off this annual festival and convention dedicated to this artform's cheek and wit.

Tonight (April 19), an opening party at DNA Lounge rolls to the beat of Los Shimmy Shakers and go-go dancing flair of the Hubba Hubba Revue and is intended to be a mingling affair, though plenty of performers from around the country, such as Hawaii's Violetta Beretta and Chicago's Lady Ginger, have a little something planned to start the teasing.

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Lori Shantzis bears more than a little resemblance to Marilyn Monroe.

Lori Shantzis' ex might not recognize the bombshell cooing "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" beneath the platinum blonde wig, but transformation is the keystone of Shantzis' one-woman burlesque show.

Loved by You tells the tale of a young girl who grew up with a first-generation Russian father, a father who had problems with drinking and bloodlust. Pets were killed. Guns were waved. Trips to Denny's were ruined. When Shantzis' mother finally left, she gave her daughter seconds to decide -- and a lifetime to sort out her abandonment. The dramatic and and engaging Loved By You plays Wednesday and Thursday Brava Theater Center.

Somehow, just as comedienne Marilyn Pittman was able to broach the topic of her mother's uxoricide through humor in All the Rage, Shantzis finds redemption, compassion, and freedom in a nudge, a shimmy, and a wink. Marilyn Monroe, the patron saint of lost little girls trapped inside buxom beauties, is never far out of reach.

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Stanley Frank

Trixxie Carr upholds the dignity characteristic of the original bacchanalian.

Sometimes, the usual career gurus just don't cut it. When you're really down and out, when the recession threatens to quash once and for all your dreams of a career in the arts, you have to look beyond Craigslist and advice columns, past the usual contacts and mentors ... and maybe dispense with mortals entirely.

Well, not entirely. Dionysus is only a half-god. She is played by Trixxie Carr, and channeled by four down-and-out artists (Travis Santell Rowland, Angelica Roque, Norm Munoz, and Jarrad Webster), in Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus, a "Greek comedy rock epic" at CounterPULSE. She may or may not have been kicked off Mount Olympus, and it's uncertain whether she has any real powers to aid in the arts, despite being the god(dess) of theater.

But she has had a lot of jobs, and she's all too happy to share the wisdom of her experience with the hapless mortals, provided they play the part of reverential audience to her self-aggrandizement, and she is afforded all the theatrical devices her heart desires.

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Josue Rivera

DIAmanda Kallas I Dia Dear

Queer performance art series The News made a powerful debut Tuesday night at SOMArts. The evening offered an array of queer narratives, made even more timely and poignant by the federal appeals court ruling on Proposition 8 handed down that morning. Giving intense performances and showing works-in-progress were DIAmanda Kallas | Dia Dear, La Chica Boom, Peter Max Lawrence, Rotimi Agbabiaka, and Shaunna Vella. We also saw the Brontez Purnell Dance Company and Magic Meals.

Host Kolmel WithLove, a filmmaker and performer who curates The News, started things with her own performance in the gallery space of SOMArts. DIAmanda Kallas and La Chica Boom gave show-stopping performances that truly blew us away.

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​Just who is Jesús Ángel García, anyway? It is fair to ask. The inviting cover of BadBadBad, a new novel from New Pulp Press, posits him as the author and first-person narrator thereof, but it also bears this important-seeming advisory: "Roleplay is a dangerous game when you don't know who you are."

Within its pages we envision Jesús Ángel García, or "JAG" if you prefer, as a Southern gentleman of sorts, striving for custody of his infant son by straddling incompatible and increasingly extreme personas. The operating question in BadBadBad seems to be the great existential question of how, if at all, you might reconcile daily duties as a church webmaster with nightly duties as an online sexual messiah. Again, fair to ask.

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We love drag. We love burlesque. We know what to expect. Flashy outfits. Colors so bright they're blinding. Exposed skin. Exploration of racial, political, sexual, and gender issues. [cue loud record-scratch noise] What? Well, sure, when you're in the presence of La Chica Boom. The self-described Chican@ performance artist and community organizer uses drag, burlesque, and other stage conventions to blow these issues to smithereens (or, as she puts it, "destabilize white heteropatriarchy"). She's fisted a piñata. She's worn a shiny purple coin-shaped costume labeled "TOKEN." (In the clip above she wears that outfit in 2009's Kaleidoscope Cabaret.) And she's a perfect fit for Saturday night's Celebrate the Mission, part of a series of late-night Teatro ZinZanni shows called Cabaret Lunatique that focus on San Francisco neighborhoods.

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​In my far-reaching quest to uncover new, different, and unexplored aspects of S.F's alternative underground performing community, sometimes I must go undercover (yes, I mean as a man), and delve into its underbelly. I must GO DEEP.

Well, what a coincidence! This week's adventure was aptly titled just that. "Go Deep" is a joint production of Dottie Lux and El Rio. Its official name is "Go Deep: Let's Wrestle," but if I came out with that right away, it would have lost a bit of the suspense of not knowing what it could possibly be about, right?

Yes, I know. ME, at a wrestling event!?

Oh, did I forget to mention it's lady lube wrestling? Ha! Now I've got your attention, don't I?

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