One step closer...

We have reached another very exciting mile stone this week and it means you are one step closer to being able to see the show that we are all so passionate about.

Tickets are on sale now!

Once you have your ticket in hand, you will enter the grand old lady and be transported into another world.  Entering the foyer you’ll be swept up in the carnivalesque playground, complete with a magical photo booth, sparkling lights and a beautiful singer serenading you up the spiral staircase. Upstairs you will find yourself immersed in the ‘backstage’ area of another world.

You can purchase your ticket directly from Paramount or from Eventfinder.

You can get your hands on one of these hot little tickets for only $45 and $35 for concessions. Stay tuned for further details of our VIP packages. 


We are of course encouraging all our fabulous audience members to come dressed to the absolute nines... and if all else fails, just go trampy!
You could support our lovely supporters... the Costume Cave.. and find a winner of an outfit as well. Those crazy people are just amazing at transforming you completely... and for a very reasonable price too!!!

You can find further information about the show on either of the sites selling the tickets or get stuck into reading all our other posts on the blog and follow our progress all the way until opening night when we will see you there x

Venus Starr shines for Monster Burlesque!

The super sweet Miss Venus Starr

While our costume team of amazing volunteers beavers away,  our performers are getting ready to begin workshopping and rehearsals.
We have introduced you to Magenta Diamond, now we'll take a look at Miss Venus Starr who will also be gracing our stage.







Venus in print... always makes a paper pretty!






Venus is well known to Wellingtonians as the power house behind Carousel Burlesque, the monthly high-end burlesque revue. She is a super combination of talented business woman and performer;  Venus has headlined multiple festivals and events in New Zealand and Internationally. 

Venus will not only be performing in Monster Burlesque but will be one of our choreographers, working with some challenging costumes, and generally having a ball!

Before starting up her own successful company "Venus Burlesque," she worked with Fuse Circus and stunned the crowds with her daring trapeze and tissu performances, and cracked everyone up with her crazy characters.



Venus with baby Floyd



Most recently Venus has become a MUM!

Which is where she will really need her superwoman powers!








We are so excited to have Venus as part of the Monster family: she is super sexy, hilarious and just oozing with talent.

Textures and sparkles

The costuming for Monster Burlesque is all important!
We have been having SUCH fun, working with gorgeous fabrics and lovely trims. And on top of that we are making fantastic creatures like werewolves and monsters and zombies...

The basic form under the werewolf mask.

The base is then draped in fur, and trimmed to fit and sit right.

You can see how the right kind of fur starts to really give a great shape!

And you can give the mask a lot of character.

Thanks to our wonderful supporters and suppliers, The Fabric Warehouse and Pete's Emporium, we have amassed a huge array of fabric (all of which is taking over my house) and trims so I thought I would share a little more of the workings of the costume world of Monster Burlesque....

The textures and colours of the purple monster... 

The textures of the Wolf Queen

Delicious, yes?

And how it will all sparkle on stage!!!!

And behind the scenes...

The magic of theatre is that there are a huge number of people who donate time and energy to make sure that the project comes to life.

Monster Burlesque is lucky to have a small but devoted group of volunteers, and we are slowly collecting more!
(Can you see the hint here? If you are keen to be part of the development of Monster Burlesque.... get in touch!)

Some of our key volunteers are the wonderful Community Groups who will be part of the show, and who will be showcasing their talents in colourful street shows around Wellington City over the weeks leading up to the show.

Taikoza practising in Wellington

The fabulous TAIKOZA, Wellington's only Taiko Drumming group will be welcoming audience to the show, and sending their thrilling drum beats across the Wellington streets!

Clo Mudrik dancing with ZambaBem

ZambaBem, the beautiful Samba Group led by Clo Mudrik will be bringing their beautiful traditional Brazilian dances to Monster Burlesque and dancing up a storm on the street.
UFO a great break-dance and hip hop group of local boys with far too much energy and good looks!
Capoeira Resitencia are champing at the bit to try on monster outfits... who knows what fabulous performance they will put on for you! And there are other groups coming on board as well!

Soon we will be confirming the dates and locations of the street performances with these groups - they will be part of the wonderful colourful festivities in Wellington, as part of the WCC Festival of Carnivale in September.
Over the coming weeks I will do my best to showcase more of our volunteers, a small part of the thanks we owe them for their support!

We're having a monster shoot!

A few posts ago you will have met Hugo Monster - or at least seen him begin to take shape.

This post is a wee bit belated, as our shoot took place back in March, but here we can show you some delightful "behind the scenes" images and then unveil our beautiful photos taken by Stephen A'Court.

Hugo (the blue mask on the right) was co designed by myself and Tree, and created through over 40 hours of frantic late night foam carving (I am still picking it out of my socks in June!) and fur cutting.

The beautiful Love Bird costume is a Cathy Tree Harris creation through and through, and although I helped cut and glue various pieces of lace, feathers and fluff, I have to say I'm a very lucky girl to be able to wear this gorgeous frothy piece of loveliness! Tree made this costume for my character The Avian Belle.

Our makeup artist was Dara Wakely (Thanks Dara!!!) who threw herself into the project wholeheartedly, here she is putting furry touches on Tere who is the heart and soul of Hugo.

Dara is extremely busy working on The Hobbit at the moment, like so many Wellington creatives; but we are assured she will be returning to design our makeup for the Monster Burlesque show. I can't wait to see what she comes up with!

Thanks to Toi Poneke for allowing their weekend receptionist (moi) to skive off early, and thanks to David for covering for me while I was crimped and painted and prettied! This was the first time I have had my hair made into perfect zigzags...

While I was getting primped, Tere took a very sensible opportunity to get some shut-eye... it was entirely too early to be painted blue!

Besides which we wanted him to conserve his energy for the shoot.

Tere is an instructor for Parkour Wellington, and we were hoping he could get up to some mischief at the Moorings in the Hugo suit.

Dara turned me into a feathered fantasy... I barely recognised myself.  The Avian Belle character is tied to my love of birds and flight... there is a series of old fairy-tales that tell about fairy women with bird skin cloaks, who can turn into swans (or cranes in some stories) and fly away. This idea of freedom and transformation has always fascinated me.

After his little nap, Tere is raring to go!

Our incredible location was the aged and curious mansion

"The Moorings" a building so full of interesting decay, texture and light, that you feel like you are in a time machine, or perhaps an old book. Wellingtonians lucky enough to know the place will reminice fondly about the amazing dressup parties they have been to there... it is definately one of Wellington's treasures.

 Apologies now for the darkness in some of these images... here is the team : Mary Laine (our fantastic producer), Maria Dabrowska (choreographer), Stephen A'Court (photographer), Aaron Black designer), Cathy Tree Harris (Costumier) and of course Tere and I.

Tree laced me into the corset (below) and I thought of women who once had to wear such things as a daily article of clothing, subject to the strictures of feminine fashion of the day.

Now, I felt a slight guilty pleasure at being able to wear such a thing. It seemed to hug me, to hold me tight. The constriction was comforting. The Love Bird costume has layers of lace, organza, satin and sequins. There are ostritch feathers in the skirt and the headdress, and the corset is a dream in silver, grey and pink. The matching feather fans in this shoot were custom made by Flo Foxworthy Costumier - who specialises in hand dyed and made burlesque performance fans!

Tree giving suggestions to Hugo... you can see the amazing water staining in the wall paper. The Ballroom, where we did the shoot had a mezzanine balcony, and a very high ceiling with old glass panelled skylights.   Before I forget, I should also mention that Stephen has an exhibition on at Toi Poneke Gallery at the moment: Toi - Portraits of Toi Whakaari Alumni. It is beautiful and on until July 3 so do get in and have a look!

The light streaming in through the dirty glass, comined with Stephen's clever lighting set up lent an angelic glow to the proceedings... even if our outfits and behaviour were less than angelic!

Carrying on with costumes.

As I think I have mentioned before, the costuming in Monster Burlesque is a huge part of the show.
We are extremely lucky to have Cathy Tree Harris as an essential part of the Monster Burlesque team, and she is amazing as my costume mentor.

A mock up of a werewolf muzzle in card... how long is too long?

With multiple furry monster costumes, werewolves,  giant roosters and dancing girls there's a heap to do.
We have a wonderful team of costume volunteers - and this weekend we will be stitching it up with the monster masks, penis pasties and werewolf muzzles.

Here are some pictures of our workroom... full of creativity and mess!
The werewolf masks are getting tested first, as we need to make sure the aerialist can work in them, and the dancers can see past their noses!

Making the monster suits are next up, and so we padded up a dress dummy to suitable cuddly proportions to measure and start creating the patterns. To keep myself entertained you can see I was watching House of Flying Daggers in the background...

I love the costuming in that film... such gorgeous patterns and textures.
It can be quite distracting though, to work with films on in the background, you can get sucked into the tense bits!


Here is a bit of a progression on the monster mask mockup...
I needed to create a monster mask that can be comfortable, light weight and easy for dancers to move in.
This is a front view, on a glass head. The brown felt is creating larger cheek and eyebrow forms. I have left the forehead and eye area clear, so that we can really go crazy on the eye makeup!
The nose looks a bit weird here as it is still fluffy - it gets covered with different fabric later.

 This is a side view with the eyebrows done in a contrasting fabric.
They can be different shapes to add different feels and looks to the characters.


Below is the hood, almost finished, with ears attached.
They are supposed to look quite ridiculous, and this one looks very "cutie cute" because the light blue fabric is so pretty. Once i get into the more interesting colours of fur, things will be a little more funky!

 And here I have attached a the horns.
Fun to make and fun to wear :)

Next on the stage....

The seductive Magenta  removing a Vaune Mason beaded mask 

The next of our stars is someone I once called "Wellington's own circus luminary."
She certainly continues to live up to that name, and I know The Magenta Diamond (aka Tanya Drewery) will dazzle us all with her wit, and her sparkle.

Here she is performing at the Toronto Burlesque Festival 2010.

The gorgeous geisha at Carousel

Magenta comes to us with a wealth of experience, working in the circus industry. She also is a very respected Burlesque performer with a spanking list of appearances at international festivals and exclusive clubs.


Luckily for us, she also graces the stage at home... including one of Wellington's hottest events: Carousel Burlesque and Revolver Circus!

Magenta always brings a little something different to the stage - she is deeply interested in the background of burlesque and fetish, and her performances are witty and intelligent.


In Monster Burlesque, Magenta's skills will all be brought together -
circus, burlesque, fetish, and her charming character.

Aerial Straps above Wellington harbour