New Year, New Hole, Newsletter
some post-hole musings (and more)
Hello everyone! We hope you’re having a good February. In this issue Cass and Babz opine on their past work and how making their fuddy-duddy lil show has built upon, and inspired change to those brands. Fun pictures of the acts included!
Also, mark your calendars for March 23, as that’s when our next show will be happening — stay tuned for more details.
Xoxo, Cass n' Babz
A Wholly Nostalgic Hole (Song)
by Cassidy Dawn Graves
The first songs I ever wrote were of the “very silly” variety. One of the very first, penned on a ukulele, centered around a tortilla becoming someone’s friend. (Well, technically one of the first was a ditty paying tribute to various types of cheese, scrawled on scrap paper with my sister when I was a kid, but I’m not sure it ever had a melody.)
They were theatrical, because I was knee-deep in theater school at the time and was still partially in a particularly voracious musical theater phase. (I prob still have bootleg recordings of specific Broadway understudies in Legally Blonde and Spring Awakening on an external hard drive somewhere… Who can relate?!?) They were mostly comedic, and they were mostly about sex.
Actually, I started truly writing songs around the same time I started producing variety shows. I still perform my more comedic songs (most of which were written 4-5 years ago), but it’s been a while since I’ve written anything specifically tailored to a show or production.
“A Whole New Hole,” a parody I wrote of “A Whole New World” from Aladdin that Babz and I performed as the opening number at our New Year New Hole show, broke this hiatus for me. It was the first time any of my variety shows has had a proper opening number, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Our co-producer/friend Caty, who came aboard QnP last summer, loves a good carnal quip and/or erotic anecdote. She’s the one who planted the seed for our increasingly outrageous show themes, which has been a good reminder that themes are one of the most helpful things for my creative brain.
I also consider myself somewhat of a vibe sponge (#pisces). When I’m around silly energy, it usually helps me be sillier and thus more creative. I got the idea for A Whole New Hole during a meeting where we brainstormed ideas for bits to do during the show. I hoped I’d actually follow through on it, and I’m glad to say I did.
Making 50 Shades of Graves, an interactive sex ed musical I wrote and performed in college, taught me an important lesson that some of my favorite comedic performers and creators continue to remind me of: The dumbest idea you can think of, the one that feels too unhinged to bring to life, is absolutely the way to go.
Caty’s presence on our team has helped revive those more absurd corners of my brain, and writing this silly hole song reminded me of how I felt when I was making that musical back in 2015, playing “Who’s That Pokemon” with genital diagrams, belting sexting ballads, and making the audience play charades with anonymous submissions about unique sexual experiences. It felt good to feel that again.
Babz wasn’t just part of the duet, either; they were there to bug me about rehearsing (veryyy necessary), and injected our performance with a burst of campy energy thanks to their choreographic impulses. Technically I wrote most of the song, but it did feel like a collaboration between the three of us. Teamwork! It may just really make the dream work.
But of course, this was just one component of a whole night showcasing all sorts of performers. We started off with improv team Chicken Big (the first time we’ve had improv on our show), who leaned into unexpected audience participation to riff about goo — very on brand for us.
Then we had Von, who regularly performs at Gender Experts (a lovely community-centered trans open mic) and was a joy to watch as he commanded the stage to confidently sing the praises of trans bodies and poetically skewer his past lovers.
We had Edson Montenegro, who gave us the gift of comedic characters that were as unabashedly, dramatically silly as they were queer, and to close the night, we had Super Duper clown around and shock everyone by swallowing a seven-foot balloon.
Once again, it was a true display of variety, and once again, I feel grateful to be doing this. Hope to see you at the next one!!!
C'mon, get Happy by Babz
It would seem Cassidy and I are in similarly reflective moods as we debrief from our most recent show. We do, after all, come from similar molds in our theater school history. I too had a bootleg copy of Next to Normal's Crystal City Virginia regional run one stowed away on a MacBook desktop folder and torrented sheet music to Bare: A Pop Opera; two extremely obscure and equally depressing musicals that would come to define my creative output for most of my adolescence.
If you asked just about anyone with whom I went to college, they'd probably remember my early work and a young artist as dark, heavy, and, at times, sanctimonious. One particularly egregious example that comes to mind was sophomore year's 10-minute performance of a poem heavily derivative of Allen Ginsberg's (cringe) "America" that included lines such as "We will harvest your corn/ And guzzle your oil." Insert vomit emoji here.
Another more comical morsel for you: in my senior year, I decided my final project was going to be an autobiographical one-person show. It included graphic descriptions of losing my virginity, all 112 instances of sexual intercourse I had engaged in up to that date, and perhaps greater than average substance use. Stripping to Kesha's "Ur Love is My Drug" in front of my mother and sister has to be one of the highlights on the blooper reel of my performance career.
It's been a challenge to free myself of that decidedly emo expressive bent. When I look back at my body of drag, I can't help but see politically charged tirades. I've written before about how everything we do as queer people is ultimately political. I've begun to realize that I've probably internalized that a bit more than what's tolerable.
Cue to Edson Montenegro in character as a grade school student, proudly snorting a huge hit of his Gay Dads' bottle of poppers during the schools "Heritage Day" show-and-tell presentation. It was the perfect, absurdist jab at the Groomer narrative that has become so popular with certain public officials. Further diabolical indoctrination tactics included a Skittles filled PrEP bottle complete with daily ritual taking our "Truvada" together!
As my work evolves, I want it to become more like Edson's. More super gay PrEP-popping five year olds to the front.
That's why I was so delighted by this last round of shows we presented at New Year, New Hole. A collection of performances that, by nature of the name and theme, brought a level of absurdity to the stage. I can't help but feel like we've got our own kleines Kabarettchen complete with a balloon-swallowing clown and a poet enacting an orgasm.
Cassidy's truly inspired spoof on a Disney classic felt like just the right opener to a night that has been one of my favorite of our curations to date. "A Whole New Hole" certainly had me wanting to soak up those sponge vibes they had mentioned above. It was such a thrilling act that I demanded in our post-mortem that we have a theme song in all of our future shows ((((MARCH 23))) so get excited for that. It's inspired me to start writing my own parody song for the next show - and with my endless backlog of evangelical Sunday School anthems, I'm delighted by the prospects this might unlock.
He's under our feet (STOMP)
He's under our feet (STOMP)
He's under our feet (STOMP)
He's under our feet (STOMP)
SATAN IS UNDER OUR FEET
Talk very soon, kids. Until then!
can't wait for the evangelical opener for the next show. love the silly sexual shenanigans QnP brings forth. congrats, y'all clearly killed it! <3