Burlesque in the Bible Belt, as its name implies, offers plenty of lace, corsets and fishnets, but is more about amazing local talent, a sense of community and an undeniable sisterhood that has empowered every woman who has stepped on its stage.
Hattiesburg — Hattiesburlesque, a burlesque-inspired musical revue, began three years ago as the brainchild of Abigail Lenz Allen, a Hattiesburg transplant by way of New York and Los Angeles. To truly understand her passion for this show, you must first understand 45-year-old Allen’s zeal for life, her love for Hattiesburg and the bumpy road that brought her here.
The world of entertainment is in her DNA. Her mother was a low-budget horror movie producer and her father was a working character actor in Hollywood. Her grandfather Claude Rains was a four-time Oscar nominee who appeared in more than 40 movies alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. So, as early as elementary school, it was natural that this young Hollywood darling would have high hopes of being famous.
“I remember being around 8 and my father asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said a rock star,” she said. “He said, ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ And my response was, ‘Well, you wanted to be an actor.’”
And so began Allen’s passion for the world of entertainment. Having family in the business only amplified her drive for success.
“I grew up knowing who my grandfather was and knowing he was a movie star, so if you told me that I couldn’t be a rock star, and I’m 8 years old, I’m going to look at you and go, ‘Yes, I can. Grandpa did it,’” she said.
Allen is a self-proclaimed kinesthetic learner who said music was always her first love, along with dancing and theater. Broadway songs even helped in her schoolwork. Her mother used the familiar tunes to help Allen learn verb conjugation.
“I was a dancer by default, but then I realized that the singers usually got to be in front of the dancers on stage, so that was it for me,” she said as she laughed.
She made her official debut as a rock star at the age of 14. Accompanied by her mother to every gig since she was a minor, Allen was playing at Sunset Strip mainstays such as The Roxy and Whiskey A Go Go by the time she was 15.
By 21, she was the lead vocalist for the Swamp Boogie Queens, playing as the house band at the newly opened House of Blues in Los Angeles. One night, after opening for Gregg Allman, the band was approached by renowned music producer Phil Ramone.
“He came backstage and said, ‘Do you guys want a big fat record deal?’ It was like literally out of a movie,” she said.
That was all it took to kick Allen’s fairytale dreams of stardom into high gear.
The band spent two years on the road opening for Lynyrd Skynyrd, then for Kenny Wayne Shepherd. Allen and her band were living the rock star dream.
“I believed so blindly in this fairytale of thinking we were going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. I think that’s why we had the success we did. I believed in this band, and I was the cheerleader for us through the hard times,” she said. “I think it’s important to believe in yourself blindly, but at the same token, I believed in something that wasn’t a real thing. I mean, what does being a rock star even really mean?”
We are lifting up women and celebrating that every single woman — no matter their size or shape — is beautiful.
Abigail Lenz Allen
But the hard times and that blind confidence eventually got the best of them, and one night after a gig in Vancouver, the band called it quits.
“I was so sick with that Hollywood mindset thinking that if you weren’t constantly climbing that ladder to the next rung of success, you were failing,” said Allen. “The truth is the minute you get to that next level you’re just going to want to go higher.”
Over the next three years, Allen found herself in a dark place with drugs and depression. She considered herself a failure. Down the proverbial rabbit hole she fell, chasing whatever she could to make her feel successful again. At the suggestion of a wise friend, Allen landed in Hattiesburg 10 years ago searching for a new start and professional help with her addiction. To this day, she says it’s the best decision she ever made.
After rehab, she immediately became pregnant with daughter Frances, which Allen said saved her life.
“That situation made me stay here in Hattiesburg,” she said. “If I had gone back to that Hollywood environment, I would have just done drugs again. That was all I knew.”
Allen said she quickly learned the truth of what was really important in life. It wasn’t the money or the fame.
“Two years into living here, I looked around and realized I was actually showing up for people. I could be counted on. I had friends who had never seen me fall and make excuses. I found the best people with the strongest roots that I had ever met in my life here in Hattiesburg,” she said. “There’s a sense of community that I never felt growing up in L.A. I could never leave this place.”
Allen began to flourish in the downtown arts scene. Her passion for music — once dulled by depression — returned with a vengeance, and in 2009 she partnered with local musician Lance Blackwell to form a new band, Ralph Nix and the Catfish Gospel.
“I never dreamed there would be such incredible musical talent here in Hattiesburg,” Allen said. “I mean, why would there be? Coming from that rock and roll mindset, I just assumed that anyone who was a really great musician would want to be on MTV. It never occurred to me that there were people out there who just truly loved to play amazing music and not chase the fame.”
After a few years of immersion in the art world of the Hub City, Allen had a new goal — to bring a fun, interactive burlesque show to town. Hattiesburg had community theater, a thriving local music scene and an outstanding dance department at the University of Southern Mississippi. There just didn’t seem to be a platform to combine the three.
“I knew burlesque would be fun. I’ve always loved musical theater, and I felt like it was time that people here experience a show like that,” she said.
The name Hattiesburlesque just rolled right off her tongue.
A mutual friend introduced her to Rebecca Chandler, a USM dance performance and choreography major who recently had success opening her own ballroom dance studio.
“We were as opposite as could be in every aspect, but if you played an old Broadway tune, it would bring us both to tears. We immediately connected and thought we could really make Hattiesburlesque a reality,” she said.
This was the summer of 2013, and the Thirsty Hippo — one of the downtown mainstays for live music since 2000 — had recently moved into a new location on McLeod Street. The new building just so happened to feature a separate performance area in the back of the building complete with its own bar and stage. Allen thought the space would be ideal for the show’s debut.
“It kind of had a speakeasy feel. I talked with Brad Newton, the owner, and he not only said that I could do it there, but he said he would help make it happen,” she said.
All of these women live very different lives. They are stay-at-home moms, students, 9-5 businesswomen… This gives them all a little ‘me’ time that they deserve and a little escape they look forward to.
Rebecca Chandler
“We started rehearsals for our fall show, and we had all this great momentum, and then school started. Our dancers were all from the USM dance department. There was no way they could keep up with their own rehearsal schedule along with ours, too. It fizzled pretty fast,” said Allen.
They put the idea on the back burner for almost a year until Chandler introduced Allen to Julie White, one of her former professors in the dance department who wanted to help. White agreed to help provide set rehearsal times for Hattiesburlesque if it did not interfere with the dance department’s standing rehearsal schedule.
This time around, auditions were promoted on social media, and 18 women showed up.
“We had all kinds of women come — all shapes and sizes with all levels of dance experience. And every single one of them had a different reason for being there,” said Allen. “Some fumbled through the dance; some aced it. We were just amazed. At the end, we told them this had not been an audition of their dance skills; it was an audition to see who had the courage to put themselves out there, and every one of these ladies nailed it.”
Eight weeks later Hattiesburlesque made its debut at the Thirsty Hippo — after only one full dress rehearsal with the lights, costumes and live band.
“The dress rehearsal was a disaster. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” said Allen. “But when it came to the night of the show, it was pure magic. Everything was absolutely perfect and these girls put on one hell of a show.”
The rest, as they say, is history. The two-night February show sold out two weeks before the opening night and later went on the road with a performance at Duling Hall in Jackson. The most recent show — themed “Beach Blanket Blowout” — sold out all three performances days before the curtain opened in June.
Allen and Chandler, along with choreographer Katie Ginn and Thirsty Hippo owner Newton, are the combined beauty, brains and brawn behind the success of Hattiesburlesque. They seem to have found the perfect balance of local talent, crowd participation and contagious spirit. Newton plays the drums in the Hattiesburlesque house band alongside a blend of members from Ralph Nix and the Catfish Gospel and Scott Chism & the Better Half, another Hattiesburg favorite.
“We really consider it as a type of community theater,” said Allen. “Everyone volunteers their time and their talent. All the money we make, aside from equipment rental fees and a few other things, goes right back into the next show.”
Hattiesburlesque has been embraced overwhelmingly by the community, garnering more donations and contributions than Allen can name, and it has even coined its own catchphrase: Art makes art makes art.
“Maybe one of our dancers can also sing, and maybe one of the singers can also sew. Maybe one of the costume designers likes to paint and helps make our props. It can go on and on and on, so art makes art makes art,” said Allen.
Unlike any preconceptions of what a burlesque show might be, this show is about community and inspiration.
“We have had women who hated to speak in public now get up on stage and belt out a solo. We’ve had women who never wanted to get in a bathing suit now proudly walk around the water park with their kids. We’ve had women who never had the courage to stand up for themselves leave bad marriages because they finally had the guts to do it.
Chandler said the production value, from the props and the set to the dancers’ skills, keeps getting better. The group is now working on a Halloween show, scheduled for Oct. 22-24.
Clearly, this burlesque show is unique to Hattiesburg, as well as the Thirsty Hippo. It’s a production like no other, and all parties involved agree it wouldn’t have quite the pizazz if at another venue.
And as for Hattiesburg, Allen said Hollywood has nothing on the Hub City.
“I wouldn’t live anywhere else — not for a million dollars,” she said. “This is the best place with the best people in the world. Man, everyone else is just missing out.”
STORY Elizabeth Grey
PHOTOGRAPHY Eli Baylis
