Patron Spotlight: Xena Zeit-Geist!

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I have to be honest, I’m fangirling pretty hard for this month’s Patron Spotlight. Xena Zeit-Geist is a cosplayer, actor, burlesque performer/producer, and all-around badass. I had the opportunity to catch one of Xena’s live nerdlesque shows in New Orleans a little while back and it was an incredible experience!

I had never seen a burlesque show before and had no idea what to expect, so I asked Xena to describe the environment of a burlesque show for anyone who’s as new to the scene as I was. “Burlesque is such a strange and beautiful art form to me for many reasons,” they say, “but one of the big ones is that it's very open to interpretation, so some shows have this very glamorous, polished, upscale, ‘Las Vegas showgirl’ or ‘Dita von Teese’ kind of feel that happen in fancy venues, while others are just extremely silly and nerdy events that happen in theaters.”

The latter is more the type of show that Xena performs in and produces. I was curious about what goes into producing and organizing a burlesque show, and they casually rattled off a list of tasks that could easily be the work of an entire team. They book and coordinate performers and venues, hire crew, manage marketing and ticket sales, arrange rehearsals, and much more. “There were two to three years that I was producing 8-12 shows a month and doing all of the producer things myself,” Xena says.

With all that going on, it’s even more incredible that they also create their own costumes and burlesque acts. One of their favorite costumes is Pinhead from Hellraiser. “I taught myself to do the makeup with the bald cap and the nails and everything.,” they say. “It takes a full day of prep work, plus 5-6 hours on the day to get into the makeup. I have a giant Lamentation Box that I dismantle during the act, revealing a bed of nails inside of it, so I finish the act laying on the bed of nails.” You can watch a video of the act here (NSFW, of course!)

Of course, with COVID-19 making in-person performances impossible, Xena has turned to digital content creation to fill the void. “There's something magical about the ephemeral quality of live performance that can never fully be brought into digital content,” they say. Despite that, Xena says they’ve really enjoyed the chance to bring what they describe as their “playful performance energy” into a new medium. “Normally I can't really invest in a costume unless I know I'm going to be able to reuse it over and over again at different shows,” they say. “But now it lives online and people can see it whenever they want, so I feel like I have more freedom to do something obscure or fun, or to put my own spin on a character. It's much easier to revel in a small niche on the internet than it is for stage shows.”

Xena is also working to combine live performance with digital content in an upcoming live D&D stream called “Charisma? Check!” in which the performers will get into full drag during gameplay, ending the session in costume as their character. “I'm playing a wild magic sorceress elf named Flip who looks sort of undead, but in a hot way, and deals in bad luck,” Xena says. If that doesn’t sell you, I don’t know what will.

On top of all the logistical challenges of burlesque, both live and online, it’s also important to discuss the social ones. Xena has pointed out the expectations placed on them to present femme — to “check the pink box,” as they wryly describe it. “I think the gender binary is a scam invented to sell pink razors & pantyhose,” they say. “We live in a capitalist dystopia that rewards womxn for being pretty and looking fuckable within a fairly narrow scope of what being pretty and looking fuckable could be interpreted to mean.”

“I would like to close by stating that my true gender is a small gnome who controls time and yet is always running late, who lives in a toadstool-shaped cottage and is very, very tired,” Xena writes. May I just say… same.

If you want to keep up to date on Xena’s work, check them out on Instagram and Twitter. You can also check out their OnlyFans for the spicier stuff!

Image Credits

• Poison Ivy: self shoot
• Clowns: feat. nonbinary burlesque performer Eddie Lockwood; self shoot
• Pinhead: photo by Scott Raymer
• Harry Potter group: "...our whole cast is LGBTQ and about half of the cast is trans or nonbinary (fuck JK Rowling, obviously)"; photo by Lush Boudoir Photography
• Jester: self shoot
• Pink look with adorable cat (Doug): self shoot
• Catwoman: self shoot