Super Happy Funtime Burlesque

Bio:

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Member Since:

December 20, 2006

Members:

Imagine you are at your neighborhood burlesque show. It is just ending. The show was good, your friends had a great time, you head over to the merch table to get your name on their email list. Suddenly the lights flare up, sirens start blaring, and armed police officers come flooding into the room and allow no one to leave. Sound odd or out of this world? Not for Super Happy Funtime Burlesque.

The above is an actual incident which occurred at SHFB’s third ever performance at the Sazerac Lounge in Grand Rapids Michigan. “It was insane,” says Corey Ruffin, host and bandleader of the show. “Cops were everywhere, they detained the cast, searched every room, started interrogating the audience, we didn’t know what the hell was going on.” What was going on? The officers of this somewhat conservative and rather culturally devoid small Michigan city were acting under the presumption that a burlesque show was, as the officers told Mr Ruffin, a live sex show with caged animals. “They were looking for a sad puppy sitting in the corner, weeping and clutching a bloody handkerchief,” laughs Ruffin, with eyes ablaze.

5 years after the above incident, SHFB has been through a lot in their bible belt town. Lots of fights with city government and local churches, conferences with the American Civil Liberties Union, and lots of great press from a controversy money couldn’t buy. Now SHFB boasts itself as the biggest and most successful burlesque show of the midwest. Weekly shows from Chicago to Detroit and even Michigan’s upper peninsula bring the fans out in massive droves to see their bawdy and sexy brand of musical theater where their performers seamlessly and easily blend striptease with original music, sex, and comedy; perhaps the only true burlesque show in the nation. So now comes the time for a national tour. But how does a midwestern DIY work of musical theater break onto the national scene? You ask your fans to invest $15,000 into the show.

“I knew we could do it,” says Ruffin. “We had the fans, we had the support, it was just a matter of making the case. And they did. Using the popular kickstarter fundraising website SHFB embarked on something a little sexier than an NPR pledge drive. With packages that included incentives like dirty songs written about the donor, coy photos, and personalized shows at an event of their choice; the SHFB crew quickly and easily raised the money necessary to take an 18 member crew, cast, and band on the road and to your city. “We’re thumbing our nose in the face of a dying and out of touch entertainment industry. While record labels and entertainment outlets scratch their heads and wonder why their mindless pap isn’t generating the dollars they expected we are doing what they forgot to do long ago, listening to the fans.”

If the fans are right, Super Happy Funtime Burlesque is a show not to be missed. With a live and eccentric 8 member orchestra, out of this world burlesque dancers, and a team of comedians that forage confidently into a new and bold style, SHFB bridges a gap in entertainment that has been long empty. Fans young and old, from all walks of life, are clamoring to see more from this new and exciting show.

For more info and tour dates of "Super Happy Funtime Across the Nation" check out http://www.myspace.com/superhappyfuntimeburlesque

"Some easily chalk it up as mere entertainment. But, at the end of the show, for every pair of hands that come together as result of being satisfactorily entertained, there is another whose clap is a thank you for provoking liberation of thought; a dissection of convention.” -- Drew Storey, The Rapidian

SHFB has had its share of notable collaborations. Director Richard Elfman flew to Grand Rapids in 2009 to perform musical numbers from cult classic Forbidden Zone with SHFB at Wealthy Theatre in Grand Rapids. SHFB has performed with Just Larry (Ringling Bros. Circus’ head clown), World Famous Brett (Cirque du Soleil), film director and SPIN Magazine photographer Erik Voake, Hustler Magazine cartoonist John Bilette, Bobby Conn, Buckwheat Zydeco, Detholz, and Man Man’s Chang Wang. They enjoyed sold-out shows at many 400+ capacity venues around the Midwest including The Jackhammer (Chicago), The Ritz (Warren), Wealthy Theatre, The Intersection, The Riviera Theater, The Acorn Theater, Park Theater, Inside Out Gallery, UICA, Bell's Eccentric Cafe, Papa Pete's, Czar's, and The Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts.

EPK is available at: http://www.sonicbids.com/SHFB

OUR PROMO!!!BOOK US!!!

AND MANY MORE!!!

Influences:

vaudeville, side shows, circus arts, burlesque, comedy, magic, clowning, american musical theatre, television game shows, fetish acts, freak shows, female or male impersonators, monty python, bonzo dog band, rocky horror, jim rose, coney island burlesque, this or that game show, twirling tassles! Us performing 'Forbbiden Zone' live onstage with director Richard Elfman (brother/collaborator of composer Danny Elfman)!!!!

Sounds Like:

Record Label:

happy pants productions