Pump that Pussy is a song from the musical Bride of Wildenstein, a musical in which an aging socialite grows fur and claws to recapture her philandering game hunter husband’s attention.
Using puppets and masks to augment the body, this solo cabaret performance playfully unpacks desire and the contagion of identity with songs that examine the making of a monstrosity.
The weird and tragic love story wildly reimagines tabloid accounts of the real-life “cat woman”, Jocelyn Wildenstein. As the protagonist’s marriage dissolves, she begins to reinvent herself through drastic measures. But biomedical and surgical procedures to become more feline only heighten her sense of estrangement and embolden her quest to find a fiercer sense of self.
After being estranged from her husband, Jocelyn finds herself in a junk yard pumping party* where she encounters a rat doctor and a pigeon recovering from a beak job. A cockroach who’s just had his thorax pumped convinces Jocelyn to inject her face so she can feel beautiful again.
*a gathering where participants inject industrial grade silicone to create low-cost curves as a dangerous, often fatal alternative to medically sanctioned cosmetic surgery
HISTORY
In addition to the premiere and full workshops, I have performed Pump that Pussy as a stand alone number in Los Angeles at REDCAT, in Olympia at PLOP, in Atlanta at Georgia Tech, in Phoenix at Great Arizona Puppet Theater, and in Waterford, Connecticut at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Pump that Pussy (Excerpt)
Puppet Theatre
Phoenix
Olympia
Atlanta
Waterford, Connecticut
Bride of Wildenstein was developed at CalArts and the National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center with funding from The Durfee Foundation and Ibex Puppetry.
