Responder: Aulby Cornette, Artistic & Executive Director
Name of Company: Vulva Va-Voom & Co.
Name of Show: Vulva Va-Voom: Hollywood Psychic of the Golden Age
“We specialize in combining high-brow intellectual references with the lowest, most oversexed frat-boy humor. It’s a pungent blend, but we’re amazing at what we do.”
- Why should people see your show?
First and foremost, it’s entertaining as hell. People who aren’t easily offended laugh through the entire thing. People who *are* easily offended will probably clutch their pearls a bit, but will hopefully find something they enjoy in the Hollywood history.
The dialogue is clever. The performers are talented. The songs are fun. The props are ridiculous, and a lot of love went into the videos. And the puppets? The puppets are like nothing you’ve ever seen.
We specialize in combining high-brow intellectual references with the lowest, most oversexed frat-boy humor. It’s a pungent blend– and a bit much for some people– but we’re amazing at what we do. And we can absolutely guarantee you’ve never seen a show similar to ours. The genre is one of a kind.
- What about festivals intrigues you? And why the Atlanta Fringe?
Our home festival, Tampa Fringe, has become a beloved community for us. We love Fringe. The Fringe model gives us the freedom to evolve and celebrate our unique genre. It also helps us build community with other artists. We get to see shows from other countries and spend entire days hopping between performances. It’s been exactly the environment we needed to bring our art to the next level.
Re: Atlanta Fringe:
We’re excited to meet the Atlanta-area artists and experience a whole new fest! I had met one or two folks from the Atlanta Fringe community through Tampa’s fest, and they seemed very friendly and welcoming. We’re looking forward to meeting the rest of y’all.
- What inspired you to create this?
[I think this was answered in an earlier question]
- Life has been weird the last few years, to say the least. How has the “real world” affected the art you’re creating?
Truthfully? When the very first headlines about Covid-19 started showing up and the U.S. had barely taken notice, I started writing a show where Vulva Va-Voom was in a pickle because they had given an entire Fringe Festival a sexually transmitted infection called the Skank Flu.
Needless to say, that project got shelved, and instead we masked up and created a 35 minute two-camera short film, complete with underscoring, called “Vulva Va-Voom Lives In This Bar Now.”
It won Tampa Fringe’s Edge Award for 2020. It’s the story of Vulva and their sidekick refusing to accept that the bar they’ve been performing in has been shut down for quarantine…so they start living there, zombie-apocalypse style. They go slightly feral and give three shows nightly to an audience of stuffed animals.
- What have you learned from working on your show so far?
– Not every puppet needs a custom-sewn sparkly Vegas-style jacket, but ours deserves it.
– Yes, we can continue our company tradition of putting googly eyes on anything that isn’t holding still and then talking to it as if it’s a person.
– A show where about a third of the running time is video projection (and most of the plot centers around things that happen in the videos) will become much, MUCH more difficult to pull off if the venue’s projector malfunctions and all you get is audio. Absolute f***ing nightmare. We handled it well.
- There’s a mysterious stranger in the back row of your show, wearing a big ol’ N95 mask and a baseball cap and there’s something weirdly familiar about them, and then they come up afterwards to tell you they loved your show. In your WILDEST DREAMS, who is this mysterious stranger? (Bonus points if your mysterious stranger is an Atlanta celeb.)
Most of my heroes died years ago, but if I could make Tim Curry laugh, I’d feel pretty great.
My vaudeville tomfoolery did make Nichelle Nichols and Garrett Wang laugh during a DragonCon performance, which was a great feeling.
- Fringes are the place to really push the boundaries so we gotta ask: are you inviting your family to this show are “Hey, maybe sit this one out you guys…”
My father occasionally contributes punch-up jokes, but generally speaking, we don’t invite our parents or siblings.
Back in Tampa Bay, there’s a married gay couple with “friend of the company” status; they’re fairly close to Vulva. The running joke is that of course they have to attend new shows, but they also have to avert their eyes during strip-tease numbers so they won’t have awkward nightmares.
- Will your show change the world?
If a young transmasculine kid feels like they don’t have a valid gender identity because they present as too “femme” sometimes, I think Vulva could be of some help. Vulva (a fully self-accepting creation) hops freely between masc and femme without giving half a damn whether anyone considers it valid. This is MUCH harder to do, in real life.
- Zoom meetings: dress up head to toe or Donald Duck it?
“Plausible Deniability” sweatpants.
- We’re making an excellent Fringey Feelings playlist. Describe your show in two or three songs we can add to keep the jams flowing.
1) Sentimental Journey – Les Brown Orchestra, 1944
2) Smells Like Teen Spirit – Post-Modern Jukebox
3) There’s actually an original “New lyrics to ‘The Trolley Song from Meet Me In Saint Louis'” number in the show that explains our plot. I’d be happy to see if there’s a recording somewhere. 😉
Barring that… “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” (also from WWII)
Sounds amazing, right? Click here to learn more and get your tickets to this show today.
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