We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shi Feticcio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shi, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I think I first consciously realized— and accepted— that I wanted to pursue an artistic, artful and art-filled life when I was in my 20’s. I grew up in a household that was founded on the arts and the pursuit of creation. My mother was a maverick who I still to this day believe, in a past life, ran with Genghis Khan. (Saying she was strict would be an understatement.) Art was an everyday occurrence. She ate, drank, slept, lost sleep over, bathed, breathed, cooked and dressed in art everyday. I can’t really remember a day where she wasn’t creating, producing, presenting, and being something new, big, wild and wholly other and different from the rest of the populace. Despite what television showed, the varied professions my schoolmates’ parents had, and all the adults I saw working out in the world, I thought anything that was art and creation was the only occupation everyone should have. Dancing, painting, drawing, photography, music, writing and theater were the most consistent things in my life growing up. If there wasn’t food, there was art. If there wasn’t anyone around to hang out with, there was art. If there wasn’t anything interesting outside to do, there was art. If there were responsibilities to shirk, there was art to get into trouble with.
Yeah… it was in my early 20’s I made the conscious decision to make art my life. To consciously pursue it rather than just habitually doing it. My very first job was at a dance studio. Their slogan was “No dance. No life”. Change “dance” to the catch-all that is “art”, or whatever it is that matters to you, and it becomes something rather… final. Solidifying in the most profound way that seems to cement itself forever in time. “No dance. No life”. I didn’t realize at the time how much truth there was, and still is, in that.
Art was all I did. Throughout my “academic career” as a child and teenager, I overlooked everything for painting and sketching, dancing and the consumption of music, literature and writing, and overall dreaming. Honestly, I’m surprised I graduated. It was hard to see myself doing anything else. I tried doing anything that wasn’t art for a semester in college; “real history”, advanced math, “traditional science”, the “unartistic” art classes, and all the trappings of your expected foundation requirements that seemed to weigh more than the electives and courses you actually needed for your degree. I was horribly depressed. The world was ugly. Getting up in the morning to go to a foundation design class that had nothing to do with art felt like a death sentence. It was my first taste of feeling my soul die on a regular basis and I wasn’t even working a soul crushing day job yet!
I ended up jumping ship on my college residency and decided to advance in any field of study, intrigue and fascination that I needed and/or wanted on my own. Just about anything that motivated and inspired me that could be continued, cultivated, incorporated, and engaged independently of a traditional academic setting, I did. Learning is an unending process and I am in a constant state of practice. Everyone is, or at least, should be. That is how evolution, growth and expansion works. The mastery of something is never ending ’til death do we part.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

It’s been said that if what you want to see or experience doesn’t exist in the world, create it yourself. It’s how The Girlie Revue, or TGR, came into being. My name is Shi Feticcio. I am the Head Mistress and founder of the erotic theater and cabaret house The Girlie Revue. TGR is an immersive theatrical presentation of cabaret, fantasy and storytelling trafficking the realms of the adult human experience where appetite, obsession, exposure and distress meet. Often showcasing nuanced and stylized exhibitions of expressions and experiences fronting various elements of sexuality, sensuality, erotism, mania and the influences of emotional involvement within the realms of love, lust, pain and loss. I have always been a huge supporter and promoter of telling a story and presenting an experience when it comes to performing. “To reach out into the dark to feel what reaches back”, I often say. Before creating and performing predominantly under TGR, I started as a soloist. I still perform as a guest soloist in the playgrounds of others like Austin Influential Group, Fat Bottom Cabaret, and Proyecto Teatro to name a few.
My journey to the world of stage performing as a cabaret artist and erotic storyteller through the avenue of dance, costuming and writing was varied, philosophical, and unexpected. I had always been intrigued with anything and everything that involved creating, developing and presenting a story around certain aspects of the human condition. I thought of myself as a “professional dreamer”— constantly world building and mapping out scenarios and exhibitions of grand proportions— and as a scientist in a sense; constantly theorizing, experimenting, scrutinizing and dissecting both common parallels and uncommon connections of experience under the influence of emotion and sensation and the discomfort it could cause or the peace it could bring.
I danced all of my life but got started with developing and understanding dance technique pretty late in the game. I love ballet, but I wasn’t very good at it. That didn’t stop me from doing it though. Jazz, modern dance and tango were and are my absolute favorite forms of dance. Being a performer and pursuing dance hadn’t always been something I wanted to do. Not as the driving force of my life anyway. I actually wanted to be, worked towards, and heavily entertained the actuality being a studio artist. Drawing and painting came first in my life for me. My focus in drawing and painting was the human body. I loved drapery and figure studies. Exploration and dissection of my own and the world’s fascination, addiction, conflicts and aversions that the human body and what that encompassed was my bread and butter. I wanted to be an erotic artist. I said at 16 with the greatest certainty: “I want to be an erotic artist”. Now what that actually meant and would entail wasn’t as black and white as I thought it to be.
Audre Lorde, in her 1978 essay “Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power” describe the erotic as being a fullness of experience, sensation with feeling, and serving as a function for excellence that gives the courage/the strength to pursue it. Although I enjoyed creating and producing work on paper and canvas, the full breadth and depth in which I wanted to enmesh myself with and express my understanding of the erotic, I realized that wet and dry mediums and the two-dimensional plain wasn’t enough. There lacked a certain level of immediacy, influence, interaction and accessibility in painting. Trying to get into a gallery or present in an art showcase, featuring/centered on the erotic or otherwise, isn’t easy. However, dancing and stages— where they could be made— provided the avenue, the access, and the foundation I wanted and needed. That was realized through neo-burlesque.
I started out as a burlesque dancer around ‘05/’06 before venturing into cabaret in 2011 which resulted in cabaret married to theater. Burlesque is the art of striptease and has a long, complex and complicated history. Although it is a very feminine art form, many women, “folkx” and men have found their voice, solidified their identities as artists, and found confirmation, their calling or craft through it. It was and is an excellent gateway drug for expression and creation. The burlesque community supports and encourages itself in a very cyclical way. It’s tight knit and well connected.We all go to each other’s shows and support each other’s work. However, I didn’t/couldn’t find comfort or stability of self as a dancer and erotic artist in burlesque nor in wearing the title of “burlesque dancer”. There still lacked a certain level of depth, distillation, and alchemizing of the erotic that I wanted and needed that I didn’t at all see expressed in most other performers or on other stages. I felt that there wasn’t actually room or place for the erotic.
Yes, there were displays and executions of glamor, empowerment through stylized exposure of the body, the challenging, breaking and redefining of conventional beauty standards, it’s feminism and feminist commentary, and the politics of femininity and masculinity on parade but the erotic within all of that as I wanted to see it, feel it, internalize it, and project it was absent. Not to mention the respectability politics and the assertions of “proper vs improper” partnered with the continuous debate and divide of the modern argument of “burlesque equals good, exotic dance/stripping/sex work equals bad” only exacerbated by the long standing misguided assumption that “the erotic equals the pornographic” didn’t make it any easier. It was frustrating and exhausting. And then to top it all with the loaded and nuanced history and present socio-societal reality and current state of affairs of misinformed assumptions, stereotyping, and mismanaged expectations, and politics of being a black woman in a predominantly white-favored and white-centered arena? Saying it was a rather insecure and uncertain experience for me would be an understatement. Despite its growing popularity and its renaissance as I experienced it in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, burlesque didn’t seem big enough, flexible enough, or accepting enough for what I wanted to see and do. But eventually I found what I was looking for; cabaret.
Cabaret was everything I was looking for and gave me the space for all I wanted, intended and more. Patrick King’s “Ambrosia Berlin”, the Crazy Horse of Paris, reruns of HBO’s Real Sex— most notably the episodes featuring The Punany Poets and Natacha Merritt, and a thick journal I had a growing up filled with my reactions, thoughts, dreams and interpretations of and about a curated collection wonderfully dated erotic dramas of the 90’s, subversive art, literature and articles that left their mark on me. In cabaret I found my voice and identity as a stage performer. I found the pathway, foundation, and arena for becoming the erotic artist I was striving to be. This was the platform for which to jump me on myself that helped me birth The Girlie Revue.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

What I find most rewarding about being an artist is that it is a consistent and constant reminder to conquer one’s own mediocrity, especially in the realm of cabaret theater, and to push beyond it. Art is invention and invitation to invent and/or reinvent. It is also an opportunity to question and deconstruct or even destroy already existing systems and structures in the art world or the world in general. Creation comes with its own rebellion, revolt and revolution. There is a kind of God and Devil— creator-destroyer— complex that comes with being an artist. For me, there is a certain kind of dichotomy in being an artist— a certain level of egosim and altruism and even ego driven altruism. Art centers the self or centers one person’s self or interpretation of experience and often an artist’s work is put on a pedestal to be the voice of a generation, an existence or a current state of affairs. Now whether that is an artist’s intention or that of the audience consuming their work, if their work is anywhere for public consumption in some capacity, is dependent on that artist. Art can also center someone or something else outside of the artist but either way, what it centers is still at the mercy of the artist’s interpretation, expression, execution and presentation and whatever that may be (painting/drawing/illustration, music, writing, costume design, acting, dancing, etc …) it resonates, influences and moves others. Art is permating, disturbing, beautiful, essential and superfluous, obsolete and absolute. The artist, like the scientist and philosopher, transcends time. Art has always had the power to shape, define, reinvent and even defy reality. Being an artist and doing art, in whatever form it comes in, is always an opportunity to change the world, externally or internally, even if just for a moment or until the end of time, quietly or loudly, for a small few or for everyone.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

When it comes to art and being an artist, society would be better off if it managed its expectations better. This includes the artist as well. Art is hard. Being an artist is hard. Creating is hard. Creating is a struggle of either making something out of nothing or creating under the influence of something that already exists while in the pursuit of originality. Anyone who says it’s easy means making art and being an artist is easier for them than doing and being something else. Not everyone who does art is an artist and not every artist meets the traditional criteria of “producing art”. Some “artists” are thieves and others are hobbyists. As there is great art and there is also really terrible art, questionable art and art that is just stupid and masturbatory. The “successful” artist isn’t always someone who is selling their work or having their work shown and talked about. The “unsuccessful” isn’t someone who fails to do so. The art world is not perfect, peaceful nor has itself put together. It’s messy and imperfect in all its nuances, elitist and problematic too. The art/creative world has the same cultural, gendered, racialized, privileged and marginalized, moral and ethical problems as other “aspects” of the world. The “ecosystem” of creativity is flawed and comes from a very flawed, skewed and unbalanced history that still affects it and creates imbalances to this day.
There is so much art and so many artists in the world. Art and creation takes so much time and energy. The products of creation are not an instantaneous thing. Art is not cheap. It costs. It costs time and energy because it takes time and energy. Art lacks a certain level of respect and seriousness that science and technology and other fields have and because of that lack of respect, so many people disregard art and the artist and think very little of it. Without art there would be no culture. Art and the artist propels and expands technology and creativity is necessary in science and supports math as these things also influence, support and propel art, the artist and creation.

Contact Info:

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Image Credits
Argentina Leyva, Nick Brooks, Tyler Whitman, James Cano