I'm now also performing every 4 weeks or so at Auckland's hottest club, 1885. I don't produce the shows myself, which is great to be honest. I didn't get into burlesque to be a producer. I had to become one so there'd be shows for me to perform in. Finally, 5 years after I started, venues are producing the shows, so I can just turn up, do what I do best, get guaranteed pay and not have to worry about breaking even.
Plans are also afoot to bring over an awesome and very different burlesque show from Australia, which I've wanted to get over to New Zealand for a while. That will be later in the year around September/October time and you're going to love it, especially if you're a fan of a certain cinematic phenomenon from the 1970s.
But the biggest thing I'm doing, which I've been working on for over a year, is my one-woman show, Karl Urban Makes My Lady Parts Tingle, on the 5th and 6th of April at the Musgrove Studio. In a nutshell, it's a comedy show about the incredibly fervent and amorous fans of Karl Urban around the globe and the manifestations of their fandom on the Internet. It has taken a long time to research and put together and has involved me learning the ukelele, getting my singing voice back (I used to have a pretty good singing voice in my teens when I was at stage school, but I let my diaphragmatic control go in my 20s), writing and learning 4000 words of dialogue, and choreographing a routine doing something I've never done in burlesque before.
The show also features, The Nudey Ukes, a group which I put together mid last year so I could learn how to play the ukelele properly and actually play with other people, rather than at home on my own. So I've also been song writing as well as dialogue writing for the show.
It will initially run at The Musgrove on 5th and 6th of April. Then I plan to put it in a larger theatre in winter, and take it to Wellington and Christchurch after that. I'm confident that there's no other shows out there like it (as my bio says, I pride myself on being different) and I'm also confident that you'll find it very funny. So if you're in Auckland first weekend of April, come check it out. Tickets are $25(+booking fee) and can be purchased here www.maidment.auckland.ac.nz
After that will be the Very Vintage Day Out on Saturday 14 April at Alexandra Park. I will be hosting the Miss Pinup NZ competition. If you love anything to do with vintage - clothes, entertainment, cars, history, you should definitely come along. A full event schedule and ticket details can be found at www.veryvintage.co.nz
And I think that's quite enough from me for the moment!
