by Karen Tortora-Lee on April 4, 2011


Linda Evangelista is the source of the oft-quoted line “I won’t get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.” I’ve often paraphrased and said that I won’t get out of bed before six a.m. unless a number like that is mentioned. Yeah, well … how about a number like over 5 million?
Let me explain …
Horse Trade Theater Group (Erez Ziv, Managing Director, Heidi Grumelot, Artistic Director) learned today [March 30th] that 94. St. Marks Place, home to UNDER St. Marks Theater has been put up for sale at the market rate of $5,750,000.
Regular readers of The Happiest Medium know that UNDER St. Marks Theater is one of the theatres that I return to time and time again. It’s where I first laid eyes on Killy Dwyer and Kill The Band, it’s where Alex Bond did her staged reading of Late Nights With The Boys, it’s where Penny Pollak holds Penny’s Open Mic and where Gigi LaFemme holds Revealed Burlesque. It’s where I saw Heidi Grumelot make a sock puppet into something much more in Donnie and the Monsters. UNDER St. Marks is home to not only an army of downtown theatre artists but also to countless people who sit in the audience and shower them with love. People like … me.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on March 28, 2011


These women of the arts hail from different disciplines, but they all have an indomitable spirit and a luminescent spark that makes them amazing human beings who are out there every day, doing amazing work.
Today we continue our series with GiGi La Femme. The first time I saw Ms. La Femme it was December during the Burlesque Blitz and she was completely naked. I then watched, mesmerized, as she did the most seductive reverse strip tease I’d ever seen in my life. After Blitzing my way through the Burlesque offerings I though I understood what it meant to sit and watch a gal take her clothes off. Some do it with charm. Some do it with flair. Some do it with lights. Some do it with humor. Some do it with a touch of rage. Some do it better than others. Some do it better than most.
But Gigi? She does it with a breathtaking, hypnotic vamp that’s covered in a type of voodoo that has been living in the veins of women like her since the dawn of time. Women with names like Delilah, Jezebel, Aphrodite, and Cleopatra.She is a temptress whose power reaches like a vapor right out to each member of the audience and tickles them under the chin before, winking, it slinks back around her where it lives.
However behind all this glitter, glamour, sequins and feathers beats the heart of a businesswoman who has been able to take her show and transform it into a very successful monthly feature called Revealed Burlesque which runs at UNDER St. Marks.
I’ve been wanting to interview her for months, and this series gives me the perfect opportunity to celebrate a woman who is beautiful, smart, powerful, dynamic and amazing. Ladies and gentlemen – I give you – Gigi La Femme.
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by Karen Tortora-Lee on December 27, 2010


Wondering what to do with the last week of the year? Maybe 2010 hasn’t been steamy enough for you and you need a little more sexiness before counting down to 2011? If that sounds like your kinda heat – especially in this snowy weather, then get yourself to the 2010 BURLESQUE BLITZ! For Four Nights Only (December 27th through the 30th) at the Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street between 2nd Ave and Bowery) you can catch the hottest Burlesque in New York City.
I’ll be getting my fill of all things glamorous, glittery and gorgeous while being seduced by sweet sirens, beautiful boys and delicious drag queens. Come to some or come to all – but don’t miss what promises to be the hottest week of December!
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by Lina Zeldovich on September 25, 2010


Burlesque is about fun and mischief, and Revealed Burlesque is as mischievous and revealing as it gets.
The producer, Doc Wasabassco and co-producer GiGi La Femme, who is also the star of the show, have the moxie and sexy to create a one-of-a-kind neo-burlesque, that combined everything from female allure to the beauty of a human body to a hearty laugh with some deliciously dirty thoughts thrown in. Hosted by the hilarious Bastard Keith along with his stage kitten sidekick, Madame Rosebud, this monthly striptease extravaganza makes your fantasies come true. Perhaps it can even teaches you a thing or two that you always wanted to know but you were embarrassed to ask.
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