Interview: Paula Now on her epic Theatrical Rock’n Roll Spectacle — House of Thee UnHoly

For almost thirty years now, since 1987, Paula Sjunneson has been producing and performing in burlesque and cabaret shows, running for mayor, being a political activist and a passionate advocate for free speech and free expression, and more. For that time, she’s been responsible for bringing notable stars like Joey Arias, John Sex, and Mx. Justin Vivian Bond to Seattle. The Stranger called her “the veritable Harriet Tubman of drag art, smuggling in faraway drag talent for the benefit of us all.” All things considered, she’s quite amazing and inspiring and Seattle is lucky to have her.

After being known as “The Swedish Housewife” most of those years, she recently re-branded her self as Paula Now and her production company as PaulaNowEvent. The latest from PaulaNowEvent is House of Thee UnHoly, a long-running burlesque/rock show that is taking place at the Triple Door from March 11 through 14. It’s a 90 minute, epic production with sex, drugs, and rock and/or roll, inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin. It features a live band, and three of Seattle’s strongest voices: Sarah Rudinoff, Jen Ayers, and Zach Davidson. The Huffington Post called it “The World’s Sexiest ‘Rocklesque’ Show.” OK, I’m sold.

I met up with Paula Now over brunch to talk about House of Thee UnHoly, the 1970s, why she re-branded her identity, her “gay agenda,” Seattle’s conservatism, and more.

I first want to ask about your inspiration for this show, House of Thee UnHoly.

I’ve been producing shows since 1988, so I have 27 years of production behind me. I come from a background in cabaret and variety shows, and then I started producing burlesque shows. It’s another genre of cabaret and variety shows, right? So that’s my background.

I became bored with this formula, and as the burlesque community in Seattle started to grow exponentially, I wanted to create something different that set my product apart. Very early on, I was incorporating live music into my shows. I prefer live music and have lots of friends that are musicians, so I thought, “Why not create a show that has live music and dancers and no emcee?” To let people sit back and have their own experience without being told what told what they’re supposed to think. Also, there’s no intermission in my show. It runs for 90 minutes. I love Fellini and you get lost in an experience and that is what this is. It’s a psychedelic trip. It is inspired by the most decadent decade of the 20th century the 1970’s. With a few dances inspired by blues based classic rock’n roll album covers.

I use classic rock that is based in blues because that is very conducive to some of the burlesque type elements, but there are other traditions of dance that are in the show. There are actually five different types of dance in the show. There’s modern dance, ballet, butoh, odyssey, and burlesque. Plus there’s a little bit of go-go tossed in for good measure. (laughs)

What else inspired me? Monty Python inspired me. Bennie Hill inspired me. Aleister Crowley inspired me. Hippies, free love, sex, drugs, rock and roll, mystics. There’s a little bit of environmental commentary, but that takes you more into the present day.

Once again, it’s an acid trip. You go here and there and everywhere and do a little bit of time travel.

There are three amazing singers. Unsuspectingly, the people you would expect to have low voices have high voices. There’s a lot of play. There’s some androgyny. A lot of the things you would expect to happen don’t. It has some surprises.

How has the production evolved over the past few years?

It started at the Catwalk. Everything you see now was definitely at the Catwalk, we’ve just expanded and gone a little deeper with the material. The cast is larger now. The cast has been twenty-one people since the second year. I wanted an epic. The cast is five musicians, three singers, and the rest are all dancers.

Lily Verlaine is the first trained dancer in the show, and she’s been in the show since the beginning. In the second year, I hired Waxie Moon, who came to the show. He comes with classic ballet and modern dance training. He has traveled the world with José Limòn. He has excellent pedigree, and he helped co-found Washington Ensemble Theatre. We presented the material to him and he helped develop the dances and the ideas using a theatrical school called Viewpoints. It helped us build on the architecture of the show and help us understand what is going on.

The second year, I also hired Ricki Mason, and she’s a modern dancer. She was instrumental in creating the Children on the Rocks, which is the opening act of the show. It’s very much based in modern dance.

She’s no longer in the show, but I hired Jody Kuehner, who is another modern dancer. Last year, I hired Jody Kuehner, Tory Peil, Shadou Mintrone, and Davione Gordon. They are all professionally dancing in Seattle with Spectrum (Dance Company) and Whim W’Him. Jody has danced with a lot of different dance companies, as well as done a lot of solo work in Seattle. She used to be Launch Dance Theater with Ricki Mason, so they are known for their modern dance, as well as the campier things like Cherdonna Shinatra and Lou Henry Hoover. The Cherdonna and Lou Show is spectacular.

Cherdonna isn’t in this show, Jody is in the show. I love Cherdonna, but I didn’t feel Cherdonna had a place in a show based in the 1970s.

Over the years, I have incorporated more and more professionally trained dancers. I used to be in the show but I stepped out last year. I’m the creative director and the producer of the show and I’ve art directed the show, I hired costumers to help with many elements of the costumes. The contributing costumers include It’s Mark Mitchell, Lisa Marie Styles, I made some of the costumes in the show, and I also hired Erik Andor, who has worked with the Opera and the Seattle Rep to build some things for the show. I also hired some set builders to build some things to life for the show, Jim Guerci and Christopher Ford.

I’ve incorporated local costumers, local prop and set builders, local dancers, local musicians. It is a local producer. I built all of the props to go on the Triple Door, but we barely fit on there. It’s a lot of stuff on one stage!

Red Delicious is our living, loving maid in the show and she’s the hardest working gal in the show. She cleans up everything! Michael Upchurch wrote a review after our first show at the Triple Door and said something like “Nothing like having a maid to clean up after your orgy.” In burlesque you have what’s known as pick-up artists, and some call them stage kittens. I don’t. I think she’s the first one to be reviewed by Michael Upchurch for doing such a great job. And she does!

Can I ask about how you work with your performers and crew to put the show together?

There’s a big fan dance that has been a signature of mine. It’s something I call the MGM Fan Dance Project. In many of my productions, they end with big fan dances. So I wanted to add that to House of Thee UnHoly. You can’t beat a big fan dance, right?

So a lot of the way we work is like “this is the idea” and, say, for the Children on the Rocks, I want three children playing on the rocks, so do that, but do it in modern dance. Here’s the music, go! There’s a lot of freedom in the show. So when I taught Tory Peil, who calls herself Tory Tiara, how to do my dance “I Can’t Quit You Baby,” I just said this is the story and you’re the ultimate groupie and your favorite band is on the stage and you run up to the stage. The act is basically a reenactment of what happened at the Edgewater Inn, but it’s my version of what happened. She has a three-way with two fish. (laughs) Erik Andor made the headdresses for that. So, it was like “You’re the fish, so you can’t walk. How are you going to get on stage? How are you going to walk?” It’s very playful. It’s me sharing a concept and idea. Not only is it an ensemble piece, it is an ensemble how we work out some of the details.

I’ve had a distinct idea but I feel like everyone gets to contribute part of what their story is or what their expertise is. They’re not wind-up monkeys doing whatever I want. They’re contributing their part. I feel that’s why it is so deep.

I used to be the Queen Bee but now Jody Kuehner is the Queen Bee and she plays it very differently than I did because she’s a different style dancer than I am. I want her to be her version of the Queen Bee. It’s been a very playful process and each person brings their persona into the performance.

Photo by Michael Doucett.

I know you also recently, or somewhat recently, rebranded from being the Swedish Housewife to Paula Now Event. Can I ask about that process?

Sure. I have been producing as the Swedish Housewife since about 1988. That was meant to be a production name, not a persona. I was working with a guy named Dennis White, whose company was White Boy International. He worked at The Rocket. The Rocket was a huge supporter from like 1987 on. So when I did my first show in 1987, bringing Joey Arias and John Sex to Seattle from New York, Dennis really taught me how to produce a show, and this and that. So I needed a name, and the Swedish Housewife came to be. I was that company and it slowly became a persona. As it became a persona, I ran for mayor as on the write-in bill. The Swedish Housewife has a very long history in Seattle. Then I started performing as the Swedish Housewife when I was exploring doing burlesque myself. She had never been a performer before, but a persona in town.

Then about two years ago, I started to feel hampered by that name. I felt like, with the birth of House of Thee UnHoly, it’s a theatrical production and I felt stigmatized, like “Oh yeah, she’s the big stripper in town.” A) I’m not “the big stripper in town” and B) I do so much more. I’m a producer of performance art, and I have been. I felt like I needed to change my branding name to PaulaNowEvent to remove this idea that it’s just burlesque. I’m a whole lot of other things and I’m trying to separate myself from that persona. My LLC is no longer The Swedish Housewife Presents, it’s PaulaNowEvent. I needed to change things around. It also makes it potentially easier to get corporate gigs or other gigs. There’s a difference between “Hi, I’m the Swedish Housewife” and “Hi, I’m Paula Sjunneson, my company is PaulaNowEvent.”

I’m sure there was some hindrance with companies saying, “We just can’t make an invoice out to the Swedish Housewife.”

Well yeah. Seattle can be rather conservative. I and my product deserved not to have “Swedish Housewife” and whatever that conjures up in their mind. That was entertaining in my twenties and in the eighties and that was fun, but it’s not where I’m at right now. I’ve grown and I’m older and things change.

Another place where there is confusion is that when David Schmader short-listed me for a Stranger Genius Award, it was as an organization. I am an organization, as well as a persona. I hope it makes it easier to talk about what I do. PaulaNowEvent presents blah blah blah is the event, Paula Sjunneson is the person, and because my name is hard to pronounce, you can call me “Paula Now.”

I’m not ashamed of being the Swedish Housewife or anything, but it’s like “Oh please, can’t we get over that?”

I said before turning on the tape recorder that I want to use what little influence I have to promote freedom of expression, and Seattle can be a bit conservative and puritanical at times. This production, because it’s a big, sexy production inspired by the music of Led Zeppelin, it can be a little ideologically inconvenient in a culture war.

I said before that I wanted to meet the person that hates this show. And I did last year! I got an e-mail from someone who was on my e-mail list that said “I HATED that show! Stop shoving your gay agenda down my throat!”

Oh my god!

I just sat there and wondered “Gay Agenda? Where’s the gay agenda in this show?” I guess there was one kinda sexy act with two women and there’s an orgy scene, but where’s the ‘gay agenda’? I just didn’t see it and it made me laugh.

Actually, I feel the show is very representative of the archetypes of the 1970s. I love the 1970s and I cherish the freedom of that era. I also wanted to create a product that is for adults. It’s not triple-X but it’s for adults. Leave your children at home. It’s about free expression and blurring gender lines. That’s what the seventies were about! It’s very liberal and free and I love that! I think we could all use a lot more of that!

The show is unforgivingly sexy, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. There’s something between what is sexy and what’s triple X and that’s what this show is.