Seattle is home to many fun and creative artists, but no scene is as colorful or multifaceted as indie burlesque. Led by some of the world's most talented Queer performers, Seattle’s scene boasts multifaceted icons who know how to put on a show, whose art is transcendent. Performances often encompass satire mocking serious topics, detailed outfits and costume changes, bawdy comedy, and striptease.
With a history sometimes intertwined with drag, burlesque has always been Queer in nature. Many of Seattle’s best performers are also prominent members of Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ community and have found the art form a way to express their Queer and Trans identities and critique the growing political outrage of conservatives toward the community.
“Post-neoburlesque is not created for the male gaze. Burlesque is very, very very Queer,” award-winning, Seattle-based burlesque performer Mx. Pucks A’Plenty told the SGN. “Burlesque has always been a home for Queer folks, including Trans folks.”
“It’s inevitable for me when I do burlesque, regardless of any character or persona you can impose. Burlesque has to do with who you are as a person,” said Seattle-based burlesque artist Sneaky Boo. As a Trans woman, gender is always present in her act. Even before coming out, Sneaky Boo found that performance provided her a space to interact with and deconstruct notions of gender.
“In my case, my transition happened basically on stage,” she recalled.
Before she began burlesque, Sneaky Boo performed as a drag queen. “I started doing drag, identifying as male and socialized as male,” she said, “and then [I] started switching it up and going through a lot of body modifications and personal shifts in the way I see the world, and the way I experience the world socially.”
The more Sneaky Boo found community in performance, the more comfortable she felt in exploring her identity. “I think theater and drag and burlesque, all of that, happens on stage, and [it] also happens around and off stage,” she said. “My identity grew inside that theater.”
Finding one’s voice
Sneaky Boo isn’t the only performer to find her voice on stage. Mx. Pucks A’Plenty also found that burlesque and performance were the perfect outlet to play with and explore gender. “It was through burlesque that I discovered that I was Nonbinary,” Mx. Pucks said. “My art and my identity are forever linked because of this.”
Mx. Pucks discovered burlesque in 2010 through A Wink and a Smile, a Netflix documentary. “I fell in love with the art form right then and there, but [I] didn’t think I could be involved as a Black, fat, and disabled human,” they said. They remained a fan of the art form, and ultimately worked up the courage to take a class at Miss Indigo Blue's Academy of Burlesque seven years later.
Today, Mx. Pucks is living a life they couldn’t have imagined a decade ago. Along with Lavish the Jewel and The Blacksparrow, they run their own burlesque school, founded the What the Funk?! and Fatlesque Fest NW burlesque festivals, and perform all over the world.
“I have already gotten so much out of burlesque,” Mx. Pucks said. “My career, business partners, friends, travel — and I’ve learned so much about what I'm capable of.” Burlesque has also given them incredible memories, including an iconic moment in the city of love. “[My favorite memory was] performing my croissant act in France,” they said. “It was such a surreal moment to be in Europe for the first time, performing for the French people, dressed as something that is so French coded. I mean it doesn’t get more French than a croissant, right?!”
Influences
Traveling is a big part of the job for professional burlesque performers like Mx. Pucks A’Plenty and Sneaky Boo, who has performed in festivals all over the world, from Canada to Europe to South America, which is one of her favorite places to perform. “I love South America. I had the best time in Chile and Buenos Aires,” she said. “I’m going to Brazil this year, and I’m super, super excited to see the scene [there], because it’s one of my favorite countries, and some of the best drag and dancing and music comes from there.”
The Argentinian American Sneaky Boo studied special effects in Buenos Aires, then later worked in theater, advertising, and modeling. “I ended up taking a job in a box office of a theater that happened to have a big revista theater play,” she explained. [Revista is “a fast-paced, multiact theatrical genre combining music, dance, comedic sketches, and satirical commentary.”] “My first inspirations come from there, and probably subconsciously or maybe not so subconsciously, the idea of transition came from there too.”
She moved to the States in her twenties, trying out different forms of art, until she ultimately returned to the theater. “I came back to the theater through drag, and then I started transitioning, and I landed in burlesque,” she said. “It was magnetizing; after knowing that I wanted to do revista and getting to know that burlesque was the most similar thing to revista in the States, that reeled me in.”
Today, Sneaky Boo uses her background in special effects to make all of her own costumes and props. She works full-time in her studio at Inscape Arts, creating breathtaking pieces and costumes to reflect her “high-glam camp” look, which she pairs with a stage persona she can only describe as “an unhinged version of myself, with a dial-up in the glamour, for sure.”
Obstacles
Despite being an international performer, Sneaky Boo has recently faced limitations on her ability to travel due to her identity as a Trans woman. Last month, Sneaky Boo attempted to travel to Canada to visit her girlfriend. She was stopped at the border, despite everyone else around her going through without an issue. “The lady didn’t understand my accent; she asked me to repeat everything twice. Then after that, she started asking me what the reason for my travel was, how long I was staying, who I was staying with.”
Border control searched through her belongings and found two medications they deemed suspicious — the two she just so happens to need as a Trans woman. “I got denied crossing because they looked into my medication list, and my hormones and my PrEP happened to be a problem to them; they told me I’m ‘too sick to travel.’ So, my burlesque work is getting restricted a lot, just by how difficult it is to go outside the country… My work in [September] was supposed to be in Canada, and since I got denied crossing, I will not be going there.”
Many people don’t realize just how important travel is for professional burlesque artists, an aspect of the job that has now put many Trans performers in jeopardy. “Being a Trans woman in burlesque is very different from being a Trans woman in drag,” Sneaky Boo said. “Most of the time I travel, I am the only Trans woman in the lineup. Sometimes I am the only Trans person in the theater, or the city.”
Changes
Seattle is special in that many Trans performers can find safe spaces in the local burlesque scene. Unfortunately, its burlesque community has been seeing a decline in performing spaces due to the closing and changing of hands of many of the established performing spaces and theaters. “[The scene is] pretty white and [does] not [have] a lot of venues anymore for burlesque,” Mx. Pucks said. “The scene feels a little under pressure right now. Lots of talent, not enough opportunities, the pay is still very little, and honestly we’re not given the same opportunities as drag shows around the city.
“The spaces [for Trans burlesque performers] are diminishing, both because of the economic crisis and because there is a little fear of going on the streets. That has really been hard around the community. Seattle has a magical community that is also at risk, because of the same reasons that every Queer space is [at risk] right now.
“Burlesque is political. I think it is important always to stress this. It is a political act to step on stage in a marginalized body and share your art with the world. Burlesque has been and will always at its core be about bodily autonomy.”
Upcoming
Now, more than ever, showing up to support LGBTQIA+ artists, especially bawdy ones like burlesque performers, is a political act. If you’re interested in attending a burlesque show, Mx. Pucks A’Plenty will be producing Shape & Shadow: A Fat Masquerade Ball at Black & Tan Hall featuring burlesque performances (October 1, https://www.instagram.com/p/DbykL1rDRM_/). They are also hosting Fatlesque Fest NW at the Triple Door on February 4-6 and FatCon on February 5-7, 2027.
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