Located in the middle of the Mojave Desert , the Exotic World Museum , its caretakers and visitors are a central focus of "Gurlesque Burlesque." The museum, founded by burlesque dancer Jennie Lee and run by the former "Marilyn Monroe of burlesque," Dixie Evans, is America 's only institution solely dedicated to preserving the history of burlesque. The film will also investigate America 's love/hate affair with burlesque and why so many women in recent generations are dedicated to keeping it alive.

Over a period of several years, this documentary will focus on the performers and fans that gather each year both at the museum (for the 46-50th annual reunions of burlesque dancers) as well as at Tease-O-Rama (an annual burlesque extravaganza of performances and workshops).


Drawing on interviews of veteran and new performers, ages 20 to 80, archival footage of burlesque and historical and sociological accounts of the striptease, the documentary will peel away both sensationalism and the bias against burlesque to tell a moving tale about an irreverent and powerful entertainment form that continues to raise important questions about women, their sexuality and their public power in American culture. Broader currents in American history, according to filmmakers, are central to understanding the long and hearty life of burlesque.



Both dangerous and pleasurable, early female burlesque, starting in 1869, placed women and their sexuality at the center of theater, purposefully and insistently taking up public space. Women burlesque performers, unlike ballet dancers of the day, created meaning through winks, laughter, and wit. They held influence over audiences, addressing them with defiance, walking alone on stage with confidence, placing their female bodies in public and insisting that people pay attention to them. Women solicited laughter and desire by playing with meaning, critiquing legislators, and like traditional burlesque, making a mockery of hierarchies of the day. Early burlesque performers invoked female sexuality through language, innuendo, puns, double entendres, intonation and male drag, arousing a frenzy of desire and then eventually, censure.

Anti-burlesque campaigns have been launched periodically since
1870 when women first appeared as feature performers. One
crusade during the Great Depression culminated in the outlawing of burlesque by New York City 's Mayor LaGuardia. And yet, new generations of performers and fans are insistent that burlesque remain a vital and relevant part of American culture and history. Because early burlesque centered on the red-hot issues of the day, women, their sexuality and gender hierarchies, and because those issues remain significant today, burlesque lives on. Despite wave after wave of repression, burlesque continues to arouse new generations of performers and audiences who play with the meanings of women's sexuality and power in public.

This documentary moves beyond an examination of burlesque as a novel entertainment form to an investigation of what burlesque and its continued, although intermittent, popularity can reveal about gender, sexuality and display in American culture over the long 20th century.