Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl | Black Flamingo | Until Feb 5 | ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Jess Love is very welcoming when you go to her Fringe Festival Show. Tea, coffee, Caro and biscuits are available. She wanders around making sure everyone is settled before starting her one-woman show by announcing that she is an alcoholic and we are at an AA meeting.

There’s a large amount of audience participation as Jess goes through her relationship with alcohol, beginning at ten when she sampled her parent’s rum. She relates how it felt to be the life of the party and how an escalating need to experience the adrenaline and the excitement led to increasing drug use.

In her very brave performance, Jess lays bare the ups and the inevitable downs of her love affair with alcohol and drugs. This is not a boring ‘I’m standing here and telling you about it all’ performance. Jess, who was previously in La Soiree, incorporates her considerable circus skills in enhancing her revelations.

After introducing her saintly family and wondering where the DNA came from that gave her an addictive personality, Jess discovered her convict ancestry. The audience get to play Boozy Bingo and my partner scored three-in-a-row. It was a fun way to learn about a bete noir that many people have to face.

It has taken 5 years to put this show together and it is condensed into a powerful moving performance in the intimate space of the Black Flamingo tent. Jess fearlessly bares her soul and her body to take us into the uncontrollable frenzy of addiction and her drunk, death-defying trapeze is brilliant.

Having said that, Jess still leaves the audience with smiles on their faces as they leave the tent. The 7pm performance is on every night at The Pleasure Garden until Sunday. Put it on your go-see list.

Notorious Strumpet and Dangerous Girl will be in the Pleasure Gardens until Sunday February 5th. Tickets and more information available from fringeworld.com.au

Lezly Herbert

Image:- Tom Russell

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A sex worker and a queer carnie meet at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Jess Love’s new solo work Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl, appearing at Fringe World this year. Love uses her incredible circus skills previously featured in the Fringe World favourite La Soiree to tell the story of discovering her convict ancestry and a transformative connection to her great-great-great-great-grandmother. Love caught up with OUTinPerth to have a chat about the show.

Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl seems to explore some very intimate content – does this draw from personal experience?

Yes, very much so. The show is completely autobiographical. I tell the most intimate experiences of my life, some very funny, some very dark and some sad. The show delves deep into my soul, my obsessions and my past.

You’ve performed in some high intensity shows in the past, like La Soiree. How do you incorporate your circus training to a performance like this?

That is harder to explain! I am a theatre maker and a performance artist but I am also an acrobat. It is who I am and how I identify, just like being queer or bi-sexual is. So it is actually almost impossible for me to make work without using the circus skills I have. For an explanation of how they are woven throughout the show well, you’ll just have to come and see for yourself.

There are over 100+ shows that we found in the Fringe guide that feature openly LGBTIQ+ artists – do you think there is an affinity between our community and these festivals?

Of course there is! You can’t turn a corner in a theatre festival without bumping into one of us… we’re everywhere, like a rainbow plague. As the brilliant Gerry Connolly explains while addressing an audience as The Queen; “Queens have always patronised the arts and the arts have always relied on the support of queens.”

You explore your family history in the show, how have new discoveries shaped the work?

Everything shapes my work and I started writing this show in 2011 so that was quite a journey of discovery. Not only for the show but for me personally. I married my girlfriend, I divorced my wife, I was diagnosed with a mental illness, I went into remission from the illness, I moved to the other side of the world, I lost family, I gained friends, I took way too many drugs and I ended up sober. I found my convict ancestry and I finally felt like I belonged.

What Perth Fringe World Festival shows are you looking forward to?

December has left me a little exhausted and I haven’t really had a chance to explore the program but I am definitely looking forward to The Little Death Club, because I’m in it and I get to take my clothes off onstage and I love doing that so….

Notorious Strumpet & Dangerous Girl will be at the Black Flamingo in Fringe World’s Pleasure Garden from January 31st to February 4th. Tickets available from fringeworld.com.au

Image:- Tom Russell

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Not only did DJ JimJam bring a serious party to the main dance floor, a host of Fringe World’s top international performers delivered surprise performances on the terrace.

Out on the terrace La Soiree’s Ursula Martinez appeared in front of the spotlight.

Taking a swig of champagne from a bottle, she asked if anyone had a light for her cigarette.

Encouraging the crowd to rave on with her to the sound of Mousse T’s track ‘Fire’.

Suddenly there was a flash of fire as Martinez’s minimal nipple covering went up in flames.

Soon the other breast covering was also disappearing in a flash. By the end of the mesmerizing performance little of the artist’s costume remained.

Martinez wasn’t the only La Soiree alumni shedding a costume.

The amazing Jess Love performed her hula hoop routine after stripping off her costume – much to the crowd’s delight.

Scottee, whose solo show opens at Connections this Wednesday, hosted the night.

The club entertainer impressed the crowd with his offbeat magic routine and rousing rendition of a ’90’s pop classic sing-a-long.

The cast of East End Cabaret Bernadette Byrne and  Victor Victoria also took to the stage for a rousing musical number.

Catch Scottee at Connections in ‘The Worst of Scotee’. 

Jess Love and Ursula Martinez are appearing in La Soiree in the Pleasure Garden.

Eastend Cabaret: Sexual Tension opens on Saturday at The Pleasure Gardens.

Tickets are available from www.fringeworld.com.au 

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