Since October last year, as well as giving Friday mornings the middle finger, East Bloc’s Thursgays night has been home to the new kids on the bloc, The Yeast London Cabaret collective, who, with their midnight shows, provide a spotlight to fresh and new alternative performers, as well as established artists.
Heading the collective is Oozing Gloop, who is backed by her twisted sisters, Rodent DeCay, Lewis Burton and Daisy Confused. This week Jason Reid spoke to the man behind the Gloop about the newest tranny troupe in town…
For those who haven’t been, what can they expect at Thursgays?
Something super fun! We put on three/four shows a night, consisting of live music, lip-syncing, spoken word and dance pieces. People sit on the floor at the front to get the best view, and behind on stools. The audience is crammed in nice and tight, and because we all host as well as perform, it means everyone gets to be part of the act. It’s one big spectacle.
Which turns into a club night after the show?
Well, more like a house party than a club night, because the drinks are really cheap and it’s open late. It’s so small that we’re all up in each others grill, and everyone is open to hanging out with whoever, which makes the night electric. And when that gets too much there’s all these secret cubby holes to hang out and chat in.
Tell us a bit about the Yeast London Cabaret collective; who is Oozing Gloop?
Oozing is a failed politics student who taught himself to design costumes and do make up, before becoming the golden child of Sink The Pink and learning the craft of cabaret from Marisa Carnesky and Scottee.
How do you want the character to be perceived?
As the active transgression of private to public, inner to outer and the subversion of the appropriate. Simultaneously, a person and a process as well as being the world’s only autistic green drag queen. An irreducible set of ambiguities.
What’s Oozing’s role?
She’s the founder of the Yeast London Cabaret and is committed to creating new spaces for new queens to get a foot-up on the same stage as local legends and performance art superstars, whilst keeping the experimental spirit of East London alive. She’s also the eternal pageant mom who fusses over everyone to keep all the shit on her stage looking cute.
It’s good to be fussy, I find. And the other members of the collective?
Rodent DeCay is a student of performance artist Dominic Johnson but was forced into doing drag by Ms. Gloop, and is set to become one of London’s most formidable queens. She is quite literally the most beautiful freak; there’s definitely something really twisted inside her and it’s screaming to get out with every perfectly poised moment of the show.
Lewis Burton on the other hand, fresh out of art school, revels in all the glories of the corporeal and never denies indulgence. Standing next to each other they look like the number ten and are two sides of the same coin held together by Gloop. Resident DJ, stage manager and all-round mechanic, James Phillips also wheels out his drag character, Daisy Confused, who Gloop hates and is trying to kill. She’s yet to take to the stage but furnishes us with hip-hop, electro-pop and a theatre of fun to wile away our disco dreams in.
How much of an influence is punk on you and your performance style?
Well the attitude of punk transgression is an influence on us but in a modern setting. We’re certainly not all tartan and safety pins. I mean, The Sex Pistols are a bunch of lame old men who sell butter now. You could call us the only Millennial pop-punk cabaret if you like. Punk really is a static idea that sold out and died ages ago; basically all of our performances centre around the tension between creating work with integrity and satisfying the needs of an over hyped, stagnating consumer culture.
What do you think you’re doing that others aren’t?
We’re the youngest authentic cabaret troupe and the only weekly tranny trove constantly creating new shows, featuring stars from the circuit. Some fail but most fly and both are awe inspiring. That’s pretty special.
So, what’s next on the cards?
An American Sweethearts series. Five weeks of yankee doodle themed cabaret of all-new, all-original shows, starting off with a ‘Courtney Love trailer park party’, followed by some ‘Californication’ then ‘It’s Vegas Baby!’ before ‘Freedom and the Freeway’, only to wind up in ‘New York, NEW YOOORK!’. All interspersed with some variety nights.
Thursgays is at East Bloc, 217 City Road, Shoreditch, EC1V 1JN from 10.30pm-4am. Suggested donation of £3, £2 minimum.
