CLEARWATER, Fla. -- Before the curtain came down on performance venues nationwide, burlesque was undergoing an overdue resurgence.

Hipsters, boomers, geek-culture fans, and others who understood the difference between “strip” and “striptease” were flocking to live shows and enjoying both classic and new takes on the timeless artistic practice—particularly here in the Sunshine State, where a flourishing cultural scene is often lost in the towering shadow of Florida Man.

“There’s a lot more opportunity here… in the St. Pete and Tampa area it’s always been a thing,” said Nilla Bean, who asked that her real name be withheld due to concerns about “creepers.” “And we have a great group of women, and men, doing it here.”

Bean, originally a Northeasterner, has been performing burlesque for nearly a decade. She’s also a Brazilian samba and belly dancer—in short, someone who makes their living on the stage.

Then came the pandemic. Clubs and venues closed. Artists and performers of all styles suddenly found themselves without an outlet and an income. There was nowhere to play, and no tipping crowds to play to. The performing arts were second only to the service industry in terms of being hardest hit by the abruptness and totality of the COVID-19 shutdown. 

“The first thing was, what do we do?” Bean said. “For all of us it was panic and sadness, because there went our livelihood. There went our lives. It took some time to get out of that shock and think about what’s coming next, how we can keep this art form going.”

She credits another Bay area burlesque performer and promoter, Mayven Missbehavin, for coming up with an answer. Taking a cue from the musicians, comedians, and other artists who moved their efforts online, Mayven Missbehavin’s Burlesque Backstage began streaming burlesque shows via the internet.

“She came up with a solution,” Bean said. “That’s been a nice avenue for many of us to keep going.”

Soon, burlesque streams were proliferating online. Burlesque Backstage holds regular events, many of them themed, such as this Friday’s Midnight Cabaret. Another regular stream, the Techy Tiki Takeover and Variety Show, is helmed by Orlando area personality Jupiter Jones and will be raising the curtain again this Sunday, July 12.

Bean said that when local burlesque first went online, the novelty drew large crowds and an appreciably comparable amount of tips. Four months in, things have dropped off a little.

“When it first started, everyone was just biting for something,” she said. “The first show that I did went really well, that was the ‘Dirty Disney’ themed one. I was Bambi. I just loved doing that act, it was in such poor taste!"

“Now it feels as if we’re all… we’re stuck on Zoom calls, we miss our friends, we miss our audience,” Bean expressed.

Like most performers, Bean was anxiously awaiting the opportunity to return to the stage. When Florida began to reopen, she found a willing partner in Lina Teixeira, owner of Clearwater’s Pour Yours wine tasting bar, and this Saturday, July 11, will find Bean and a cohort of her peers performing live for the first time in several months.

The show’s theme is Comic Con; a self-professed nerd-culture obsessive, Bean had planned on attending the Tampa Bay Comic Convention before heading out to Clearwater for her show. Once the pandemic forced the convention’s cancellation, she decided to go ahead and do the show anyway.

“We do have a lot of precautions,” she said. “We’re keeping the capacity to less than 50 percent, we have hands-free tipping, we’ll have hand sanitizer. Everybody who gets a ticket gets a mask, I’ve been making masks since this whole thing began, I think I’ve made between 3,000 and 4,000 masks.”

While some might question the connection between the now-mainstream “geek culture” and the erotic allure of burlesque, Bean thinks there’s definitely a crossover.

“We’re all a bunch of nerds!” she said with a laugh. “We’re a bunch of beautiful nerdy weirdos. We’re into cosplay, we’re into games, that whole subculture that people used to make fun of before they wised up and realized we’re the cool ones. ‘Star Trek is awesome and you’re going to do a striptease as that?’ I think it does go hand-in-hand.”

More important than the cultural connection, though, is the need to not only get performers working in the real world again, but to get them in front of an audience and deliver the kind of show that only comes with being in the moment.

“It just makes the performance so much better when there’s somebody there in front of you instead of a camera.”