When talking about performance, the adjective ‘experimental’ is often used out of convenience, laziness or politeness (it can, after all, cover a multitude of sins). But last Thursday really was good for experimental queer performance in east London. At both Shindig, hosted by Bourgeois & Maurice at Ace Hotel London Shoreditch, and East Bloc’s Thursgays, whose Yeast London Cabaret show is hosted by Oozing Gloop, there was a palpable sense of talented performers pushing and probing at the boundaries of their own abilities. What made it an especially interesting night – apart from the vintage trans mags and on-stage humping – was the sense of communication and continuity across several generations of alt-drag expression.

It was the debut night for Shindig, a new mixed-bill evening from musical duo Bourgeois & Maurice (not seen them? Imagine the Osmonds joined the Manson family.) Held in the Ace Hotel’s basement bar – a stylish concrete bunker with a DJ booth plonked in the corner of the stage like the reception desk from Crossroads – it was a zippy, rowdy enterprise. Our hosts were on strong, confident form, he in bone-themed unitard, she in fluffy-sparkly black cape, delivering a salvo of familiar numbers and marshalling an innovative range of acts.

Nathan Penlington mixed evidence of his own dodgy teenage dabblings (video of a magic act, excerpts of excruciating poetry) with up-to-date trickery with a sarky edge; Rachel Porter (of Figs in Wigs) snacked on dates while mulling on family-themed numerology and carving animals out of fruit and veg; and Lorraine Bowen and pal raised the roof as the Chalkwell Ladies Drum N Bass League (file between Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer and the Original Street Dancers), an act that included a gentle aerobics work-out for the whole audience. The weak link was headliner Octavio, Master of the Panpipes, a leather-waistcoated would-be love-god whose instrumental miming to muzak pop standards makes for kitschy YouTube videos but a flat live act.

The element of the night that really stood out for me was the assured experimentation of Bourgeois & Maurice and Scottee. Our hosts took a moment to improvise a song, with Bourgeois donning a blindfold to feel up audience members in the name of inspiration. The results were surprisingly tuneful – rousing, even – rewarding the sense of tongue-in-cheek suspense. “Middle eight section,” Maurice deadpanned. “I wonder what’s going to happen…”

Scottee, meanwhile, presented a couple of intriguing scratch pieces. In the first half – dressed, in his words, “like an extra from The Tudors” in choppy pageboy wig and billowy gold blouson – he gave a dramatic reading of a naff epistolary fantasia from a vintage trans magazine he’d unearthed (“I got out my baby-doll nighty. It was a lovely shade of brown”). Later, he shared the fruits of a week’s poetry residency spent in his parents’ converted attic in Essex: mostly haikus calling objectionable public figures cunts with critiques of normative gay campaigning and factory-line ennui thrown in for good measure.

These were fun turns, heartening for the sense they gave of established acts pushing in new directions rather than resting on laurels. Bourgeois & Maurice’s last show, Sugartits, was their tightest and best written yet but there’s plainly untapped potential for them to work more in the moment, both as musicians and in their interaction with audiences; and Scottee’s pieces suggested that last year’s solo show, The Worst of Scottee, has nudged him towards further development of less stylised, more autobiographical work.

Just before the interval, a plaintive screech rang out from the bar from a gorgeously monstrous vision in blue. “Plug my night!” This was Oozing Gloop, 23-year-old politics student and creator of the Yeast London Cabaret collective, whose Thursday night residency at East Bloc kicked off last October and continues to gather steam. Half a mile from Ace Hotel, come 1am in the basement club with its Keith Haring-esque murals, the crowd politely sat down on the floor for the latest edition of what Gloop proudly calls the east end’s only weekly queer cabaret.

Key themes were power-pop lip synching, gorgeous-grotesque fierceness and pound-shop ingenuity, all in the service of genuinely inventive (if not exactly unprecedented) creativity. Gloop opened proceedings with an alluring number set to Total Eclipse of the Heart: the song is forever associated in my mind with Kiki and Herb’s showstopping version but this was a neat experiment, using various forms of lighting – from within and on the surface of a suitcase, on Gloop’s outfit and in handheld form – to play up the song’s light-and-dark motifs.

The other Yeast regulars are Lewis Burton, who didn’t perform but looked rather amazing in a monochrome Blue Meanie kind of way, and Rodent Decay, who delivered an outré striptease to Christina Aguilera’s Fighter, starting in plastic sheeting and black balloons and ending in fishnets and body-hugging bin-liners, all laser-beam eyes and angular physicality.

The headliner was a special guest: London’s very own tranny superstar Jonny Woo. Resplendent in platinum lesbian-cockatoo wig and pearly-queen couture, the effortlessly charismatic Woo served a suite of fresh work handily confirming that he still pretty much shits on anyone else in his combination of lightly-worn satire, deft wordplay, musical nous and silky gams. He played the big daddy top, fantasised about the Incredible Hulk and cocked a snook at gay marriage. “Should I be grateful that you sanitise me, show me as a Stepford wife?… Same love? I’ll tell you what: it’s not my love. My love’s got a dirty beat.”

It’s got offspring too. Gloop – who, like some other young performers, seems precociously preoccupied with the idea of being recognised as a drag mother - introduced the star guest as “grandfather Jonny Woo”. It’s a cheeky label but not an inappropriate one. Woo helped beget Bourgeois & Maurice and Scottee, who in turn nurtured Figs in Wigs; and Gloop first performed with Sink the Pink, whose main inspiration was Gay Bingo, created by Woo and pals in 2003. Since then, east London has undergone extraordinary change – there was nothing quite like Ace Hotel or East Bloc a decade back – but the dirty beat goes on, and experiment is what keeps it pumping.

Shindig
bourgeoisandmaurice.co.uk
acehotel.com

Thursgays
Facebook

yeast-london.tumblr.com