Destinations

Kazoo Playing Avec le Vagin at Bobino

How a New Yorker ends up playing the kazoo with her vagina at a Paris cabaret

How does a girl from Brooklyn end up playing the kazoo with her vagina in a Paris cabaret? And how in the world did she come up with that outrageous idea?

“It started in Edinburgh with the Daredevil Opera Company, Rocket and Roxy's Untimely, Tragic, Fiery Death Stunt Show,” Amy Gordon (aka Amy G”) explains. “There I met the good people at the Famous Spiegeltent (a Dutch mirrored tent) and played one of the first La Clique club nights. Rocket & Roxy and I ended up at the Sydney Opera House. I had to figure out how to do a high impact act that didn’t involve fireworks in the middle of a pyrogenics show. So, I thought, what’s the most explosive magical part of me? The answer was clear.”

She played “Dream the Impossible Dream.”

For the past few years the blue-eyed, dark haired, 35 year old comedienne has been playing the kazoo with her various orifices as a member of the raucously iconoclastic La Clique, a troupe of 7-10 players now performing at Bobino in the 14th arrondissement. It’s a festive carnival atmosphere with starry ceiling lights and a roving spotlight. Performers speak to the audience, even slug down guests’ drinks. It’s a tight, well timed show orchestrated by producer Brett Haylock and performed by seasoned troupers who include a Norwegian who contorts his entire body into the rims of two tennis rackets, a balancing act by muscular Australians, a German hunk taking a bath (bare-chested in jeans) while spurting water from his mouth and dangling from a trapeze, and a wine-slugging, scissor-swallowing Russian Betty Bop in red latex.

At Bobino, Amy first appears as a roller-skating, ukulele-playing hen. She’s wearing a plumed hat, pinkish body suit, black mesh tights and a bright red G string. In the second part of the show, she saunters on in an elegant black evening gown. She might be a guest at a black tie White House reception. “I was going for the ‘Senator’s wife look,’ then I blow ‘America the Beautiful’ out of my ass,” Amy says. “It never fails to impress.” It’s as subtle as inserting a kazoo into one’s private parts can get it, nothing tawdry, just a slight elevation of the evening gown and oops!

I noticed some rather austere looking Francais who seemed a bit tight lipped at her rendition.  Which begs the question: do the French have a sense of humor? Amy says they do. “The French do have a sense of humor but it’s not like New Yorkers who understand the ironic. The French are more traditionalists. They like silliness, big gestures. They don’t want to work too hard to understand what’s funny. They get the hen act, but they are not used to seeing a comedienne making fun of one of her country’s traditions. But when it comes down to it everyone loves to make fun of America. It’s especially acceptable when it’s an American who’s making fun of her own.”

La Clique has played seven countries to full houses. Amy has played twenty six countries as a solo or with other acts on the festival circuit. What does she enjoy most about her long stint in Paris? “The fabulous city which I still haven’t really explored,” Amy says. And, of course, in every city there are the rehearsal sessions that precede the shows. “The most fun thing you can do in an act like this is to try to get the angles right.” Amy laughs.

Bobino’s show has been held over until March.

BOBINO, 14-20 rue de la Gaîté 75014 Paris 01 43 27 24 24
billetterie@bobino.fr
Price : 31,50 to 45 Euros
Tel. : 08 2000 9000*
contact@bobino.fr
La Clique : www.laclique-france.fr

Métro : Gaîté (line 13) or Edgar Quinet lLine 6)
Monday-Wednesday: 14h30 à 18h30
Wednesday to Saturday : 14h30 à 21h30
Sunday : 16h30 à 19h30

Judith Reitman is an American author living in Provence who runs the Expat Club of Provence.