Local burlesque performers hope to throw the biggest burlesque festival the Quad Cities has ever seen with their Wickedest City Burlesque and Variety Festival, happening April 16-20 across various venues in the Q.C. area. Highlights include The Wickedest Performer competition at the Adler Theatre, a Fandom Showcase at the Circa ’21 Speakeasy and the Grand Showcase at the Capitol Theatre.
The Quad Cities is no stranger to burlesque. In fact, in its heyday as a burgeoning river city, the Bucktown district of downtown Davenport helped earn the city the title of “the Wickedest City in America” by the distraught archbishop of Davenport in 1903. This was due to the rampant city corruption, a slew of speakeasies, gambling dens, jazz clubs and a whopping 42 brothels in a two-block radius. Of course, there were burlesque clubs and a whole slew of nefarious industries to cater to riverboat crews looking for shore leave leisure.
In the modern era, burlesque has become something more niche, with a clear delineation from the tawdriness of strip clubs. It is the art of the tease, and that artistry goes deep. Performers curate songs to soundtrack their disrobing, often from elaborate, homemade costumes. Every move and pose is choreographed, the lighting chosen along with props and bits of humor and drama to portray vignettes of creative seduction.
In the Quad Cities, burlesque began to capture audiences’ attentions over 15 years ago. By my own recollection, a troupe called Burlesque Le Moustache performed at the Capitol Theatre, and to briefly summarize, eventually split into two competing groups, which split again, and again. Now, there are many troupes in the QC along with many independent performers who hop into shows as features. The whole culture is often a theater kid’s dream of inclusive, collaborative and occasionally transgressive performers who stand boldly empowered in their respective feminine, masculine or queer identities.
Now, after over a decade of bifurcations and occasionally messy disagreements, one burlesque performer, Manhattan, seeks to unify and celebrate the performers and local scene.
“I could walk into any establishment in the Quad Cities and ask everybody ‘Have you been to a burlesque show?’ and most everybody would say ‘What’s burlesque?’ or ‘There’s burlesque here?’ I want to show off the local performers, but also people from far away people that are owning the burlesque scene,” Manhattan said.
“I want [the audience] to be not only just wowed because the performers are amazing, but I want them to be culturally enriched by the variety of acts and see that there is a lot of art here, and then hopefully they will ask themselves, ‘When is the next burlesque show?’ I want the audience to grow and be left in awe.”
With that in mind, Manhattan has assembled performers from across the Quad Cities and surrounding regions as well as nationally recognized acts. Headliners like Qween Qwan (voted the most influential burlesque performer in 2024 among a bevy of other accolades) will showcase the out-of-town talent in addition to local stars like Lychee Mynx, Betsey Beau Peep, Kitty Bardot and Drop Dead Red. Manhattan gave a special shout-out to Bardot and Drop Dead Red as, “OGs of the Q.C. burlesque scene.”
Manhattan was a photographer before deciding to start taking burlesque classes and auditioning for local troupes in 2019. They cite seeing a draglesque performance by Kitty Bardot’s male alter ego and thinking, I want to do that. Since then, Manhattan’s love for the art has grown.
“I realized there isn’t just the avenue of going on stage, there is the production side and the marketing side, making flyers, and so many aspects that [make it] a small business, even if it is just yourself.” Manhattan said they’ve been planning Wicked City for three years. “It is crazy how my slight interest blossomed into something like this. It is stressful, very stressful, I’m not going to lie, but I think the payoff will be worth it.”
Naturally, organizing something this massive has a learning curve. For Manhattan, it was learning to collaborate and delegate.
“I tried making the flyers myself, and nope, no, not my strong suit. So, I reached out to Steve Jennings [local comedian and leadership for Nightcaps Improv], who has helped out more than I can express. I have had to learn to delegate and lean on others. Drop Dead Red [co-owner of Abernathy’s, Kitty and Red’s Revue], for example, talked me out of the original name. I wanted to call it Quad Titties Festival, and she was like, ‘no.'” (Though the festival’s name may have changed, Manhattan still had “Greetings from the Quad Titties” stickers made.)
That spirit of collaboration is needed to make any theatrical production work, whether its burlesque or Shakespeare.
“There are multiple troupes here, and they all have their niche, and I think that’s fantastic,” Manhattan said. “I’m glad that things have turned out the way that they are now, where we see people are cross-promoting and supporting each other. It feels healed.”
Wickedest City Burlesque and Variety Festival could very well be the beginning of a new local tradition.
In addition to the showcase performances, Wickedest City will host public workshops on topics ranging from costuming and posing to character building, as well as a lecture on hypermobility by local performer Mae Golightly. Tickets for each performance and workshop are available online.
