The troupe is in Melbourne for the Gangsters Balls which took place last weekend, and are performing two shows of their own at Red Bennies this week as well. Although they’ve been to Australia before, performing at the Port Mcquarie Wintersun Festival in 2011, this is their first visit to Melbourne. “Everyone in the show was pushing me to figure out how we could get back to Australia. Now we’re here as part of our world domination tour,” Amy says. The team’s been on a whirl travelling since the end of last year. “We’ve been touring the States, we’ve been in the UK and now we’re here,” she continues. “I haven’t seen my dog in five months. I’ve got this really whacky sleep pattern.”
Amy Go-go put Pretty Things Peepshow together herself five years ago when the show she was previously working in closed down. “I was with the Brothers Grimm Sideshow and when that shut down I decided to do one myself,” says the native New Yorker. “ I’m sure there was a job out there for me somewhere but I was impatient, I was used to the lifestyle of touring and playing big festivals and I didn’t want to wait around for it.” With classic North American optimism she says, “If life isn’t giving you what you want, you make it yourself.”
As well as performing in the show, Amy says she takes care of ‘the things that give you headaches and ulcers’. “The bookings, paying taxes, paying for stuff. Boobs and money is what I do!” This tour hasn’t been such a headache for her as the onus of putting it together has fallen mostly on the Gangsters Ball organisers. She started off training in costume design, planning to create fabulous costumes for fabulous shows (something she still does for Pretty Things; she made all but one of the costumes for the shows on this tour) but soon found she wanted to be on stage herself. She’s been doing burlesque now for 14 years. “I started off very young, performing in nightclubs,” she notes. “I was always going to get into those pretty underpants.” Those pretty underpants come at a cost: the dangerous side to Pretty Things acts means they travel with ‘a lot of first aid.’ Accidents do happen. “No-one’s hurt themselves that badly,” Amy continues, “but we’ve bled a bit backstage.”
One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a Pretty Thing for Amy involves meeting people after performances. “Once the show starts I’m so busy getting changed or doing sound checks, and it’s often hard when you’re on stage to judge how the show’s going, hard to catch the audience’s reactions when you’re in the zone. So it’s really fun to see people after the show, talk to people who say they’re really amazed, that they haven’t seen anything like us before. We’re out there selling merchandise, selling our wares so we can afford to get back home.”
The show’s host is Donny V who used to host the Coney Island Sideshow; he’s been with PTPS from the beginning. “Donny has this amazing knack for creating the perfect set list,” notes Amy. “He puts together the flow of the show.” The troupe also includes Rachel Renegade and Audacious Miss Vivacious (not their real names). “Rachel and I have worked together for ten years. She worked her way up from selling tickets,” Amy recalls. “She wanted to learn the act and now she’s the star of the show. People start small. We’ve never had to do a cattle call or auditions; it’s all happened organically. Occasionally we get some amazing performer coming from the website.” Amy has some advice for anyone out there wanting to join the troupe: “Mainly I have to like you. Be nice to me.” Besides meeting audience members after her performances, what does Amy enjoy most about the show? “It changes every night,” she answers. “I like the Bed of Nails act because there are three of us in it. Donny can’t pull funny faces at us from the sides.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
