Blood Upon the Stage: Creeplesque Burlesque Fest is This Weekend

Creeplesque co-creators Alabaster and Presley Peach want people to get weirder...and bloodier.

“We want people acting completely unhinged on stage," Alabaster says. "We want to entice and allure and arouse people, but we want them to be a little bit scared about why they find it so attractive.”

If that’s not a good pitch for the second annual Creeplesque Burlesque Fest at the Creepatorium scheduled to run from Friday, August 22, through Sunday, August 24, then we don’t know what is.

This year’s edition of the alternative event is taking the inaugural tagline — “a celebration of unconventional burlesque in Colorado” — and turning it even more into a live-action slasher movie, and then some. Pretty much anything goes when it comes to Creeplesque.

According to Peach, it's not just the performers who want to indulge in the strange and unusual. “Number one feedback on applications was, ‘We really love this. We’d love to do it. Can you make it weirder?’” Peach says.

Alabaster and Peach certainly took that into consideration and have some suggestions on how to achieve that this year, including crazy crowd work and participation. “A lot of the time, it just includes even more outlandish costuming. And in our festival, we encourage audience involvement, which isn’t usually available on big festival stages,” Alabaster says.

Plus, performers and fans never have to worry about abiding by any leave-no-trace practices afterwards, so there’s no reason not to go wild. “We want you to be messier," she adds. "Mess is usually contained at festivals for ease of clean-up and keeping the show moving, which makes sense. But we like to drive our kitten (stage manager) insane. It’s lots of mess. But we have a mop that’s specifically designed to clean up fake blood. It’s called the blood mop, and whenever we bring it out, we really like when the audience chants, ‘Blood mop! Blood mop! Blood mop!’”

Seriously, where else can you go and cheer for a freakin’ wet broom? And with twenty performers on the weekend slate, there are going to be many more surprises, whether you’re familiar with this type of physical theater or not.
“I can’t think of anything that’s like, ‘No, we don’t want that,’” Alabaster says. “I mean, there are people dressed as animals. I’ve learned you have to specify that, like a ‘ritual sacrifice.’ I don’t slaughter animals on stage, thank you very much, or at home. No one actually dies, human or animal. Sometimes we want to push it further, but the law’s like ‘no,’ so we got to be mindful.”

Alabaster, who originally took to burlesque ten years ago in Boulder before exploring the extremities of the art form in Philly for several years, shares that she’ll be turning herself into a black widow during her performance this year. The costume features a rhinestone project she admits is bigger than she anticipated, but she promises the result will be worth it.

“The surprise of why it’s weird I’ll keep close to the vest,” Alabaster winks.

Peach, who also boasts over a decade of performance experience, is putting together a unique set, too. “I won’t tell the theme of the act, but what makes it weird is that I eat eggs,” Peach says.

As a professional clown for the past five years, Peach is pulling from that circus background and diving into sideshow, particularly geeking. “It’s eating things you shouldn’t, but the original sideshow bit was where they’d put some in an arena and they’d chase a live chicken and they’d rip its head off and eat it,” Peach explains of geek lore.

Think of Riley Cooper’s character arc in Nightmare Alley. “So I’ll be doing raw eggs," Peach continues. "No chickens will be harmed in the making of this act.”

“Yes, this is a PETA-approved show,” Alabaster quips.

The two initially met up after Alabaster moved back to town four years ago and started her own exhibition — Blassphemy!, a recurring GoGo metal burlesque show at Lion’s Lair — in which Peach performed.

“There weren’t really any continuing metal shows out here. It pops up every once and a while, especially around October, when a lot of people like to do metal shows,” Alabaster explains. “But nobody was doing long-form, and nobody was doing metal very often, so it was a niche that needed to be filled.

“We mix in a lot of genres because it’s really hard to shake your ass to endless breakdowns for fifteen minutes,” she adds, in case anybody was curious.

Both Alabaster and Peach have their own production companies at this point — Alabastard Productions and ConSensual Circus, respectively — but the idea to team up to create Creeplesque manifested itself rather quickly.

“We literally came up with the concept of this festival, like the week before we launched applications last year. It came together real quick,” Alabaster admits. “We were like, ‘Cool, we can just do that.’”

Now, the one-of-a-kind event aims to combine elements of sex education and inclusivity, while shattering any preconceived misconceptions or stereotypes that people may have. So if even you think you know what burlesque is, Creeplesque takes it to another level.

“A lot of people think it’s stripping for theater kids, and that’s it, which is partially true,” Alabaster says. “A lot of people will compare burlesque to stripping in any strip club, and those are also two different jobs.

“There’s not really a good comparison because burlesque can take a lot of forms. What it comes down to is burlesque is about satire and subverting expectations,” she continues. “As long as there’s an element of tease and throwing people off from what they expect, it’s burlesque.”

If anyone is interested in getting on stage, they’re encouraged to reach out. Alabaster also runs the Denver Burlesque Hub, a website highlighting local resources and shows. “It’s my pet project that I’ve been working on because people have been coming up to me so often,” she says.

And that’s indicative of the interest and need for an outlet like this, which points to maybe the biggest misconception regarding the burlesque scene.

“With burlesque, one of the biggest expectations that is subverted is that it’s for you at all. A lot of the audience might come in and be like, ‘I don’t like this particular style.’ Well, too bad, it’s for the performer,” Alabaster shares.

“Burlesque isn’t for one particular audience. A lot of times shows aren’t created to appeal to a mass audience,” she adds. “We really hope that somebody who already likes this concept gets eyes on it, so we can showcase it for people who like it.”

In that sense, the possibilities are endless.

“I think people are used to submitting stuff and toning it down, or they’re submitting an act they’ve done before and they haven’t been able to do the full thing that they wanted to,” Peach concludes. “So, yeah, be weirder. Be messier.”

Creeplesque Burlesque Fest, 7 p.m. Friday, August 22, through Sunday, August 24, Creepatorium, 1974 South Acoma Street. Tickets are $10 to $200 at creepatoriumdenver.com.