14 April 23, 1999

'A pretty girl is like a melody..."

by Kaizaad Kotwal

Columbus-Buckle up everybody, it's going to be a rough ride. The Glamoresse Beauty Pageant is coming to town, and every contestant is a potential winner. The lovely ladies will scratch their way to the top in several categories including evening gown, swimwear, talent and question of the evening. This contest is a bit non-traditional and includes two new categories-the fitness contest and the beauty crisis hot line.

After an extensive search, years of practicing the right techniques of anorexia and bulimia, six buxom beauties have made the final cut of the Glamoresse Pageant. This contest is tougher than the Miss America or Miss U.S.A. where over 50 women get to compete. The Glamoresse divides the nation into six regions and so the contestants have already been through extensive rounds of back-biting, breast implants and sleeping their way to the top.

The region's competing will be Miss West Coast, Miss Great Plains, Miss Industrial Northeast, Miss Deep South, Miss Bible Belt and Miss Texas a state so vast that it deserves to be its own region.

While the evening gown segment of the proceedings promises to be scintillating, it is the talent contest that will set the girls apart from the women. Miss West Coast will be doing a performance art piece while Miss Great Plains will be giving us a dramatic monologue about the land. Miss Deep South promises a few surprises with her ventriloquist act while Miss Texas will hope to win by dancing to "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

But Miss Bible Belt's rendition of “Banking on Jesus" could tug at the judges heart

strings, upsetting the odds on favorite Miss Industrial Northeast, a latin firecracker, who will play the maracas while roller skating.

A bonus attraction of the evening will be the spokesmodel category, where these delightful damsels will hawk some very interesting new beauty products.

I visited with the director of the Glamoresse Beauty Pageant and was given an exclusive, behind the scenes peek at the women who will soon make beauty history.

"The actors have to walk a very fine line here, they are acting, but they are also competing for the audience's votes.”

These ladies are charming and loaded with talents and life's experiences. Miss Deep South is a double major in college, studying acting and cancer research while Miss Bible Belt has focused her major on studying The Book of Lamentations. This cornucopia of mental calisthenics will make the question segment of the evening extremely engrossing. Miss West Coast is said to want to "experience her many reincarnations" and "in the future" she "wants to live in the past!"

The six contestants are C.M. Probst, Myles Stickle, Andy Scahill, Mark Pasarello, Roger Whitaker, and Stuart Bender, and the evening's pageantry will be emceed by none other than Dee Shepherd.

In case you haven't guessed already, Glamoresse is a spoof pageant that is being presented by Act Out Productions and Out on Main Restaurant in Columbus. Direc-

tor Frank Barnhart is also producing this laugh riot play, simply titled

Pageant. All the women in the contest are being played by men and Barnhart has gone one step further with the cross-dressing drama by casting the male emcee as a woman playing a man.

Pageant takes on an American institution as sacred as apple pie and spoofs and skewers those veritable freak shows we call beauty contests. One could argue that the beauty contests are already spoofs, so how can one spoof a spoof?

"This play only goes slightly beyond what beauty pageants already are," Barnhart said. "As such, it is a very healthy spoof of the institution."

Each night, the audience will be the judges and pick the lucky lady who will be crowned Miss Glamoresse 1999, setting up the possibility of a new winner every show.

"The actors have to walk a very fine line here," Barnhart said. "They are acting, but they are also competing for the audience's votes."

While the contestants will be played by men, this is not a drag show or a drag beauty pageant. The men will be working hard to transform themselves convincingly into women, a task that requires a lot of skill, observation and transformation.

"The makeup is not just about putting on some blush and lip color," Barnhart explained, "but rather it's about redesigning the male features and turning them into female ones."

"Even with movement," Barnhart continued, "heels don't make one feminine automatically. It's all about softening things, rounding the gestures and curves and lines."

When Pageant opened in New York in the early '90s it was a huge hit. Barnhart said that the "play is pure, unadulterated entertainment that will make you laugh at a holy American institution because we take these things way too seriously."

Pageant will strut its stuff at Out on Main Upstairs, pstairs, 122 East Main Street. Performances are April 22 24; April 29 May 1; May 6-8; May 13 and 14. Shows start at 9:00 p.m. Tickets are $18. Call 614263-9448 for reservations.

Kaizaad Kotwal is a Chronicle contributing writer.

Myles Stickle

Dee Shepherd

GAY PEOPLI

CHRONICLE