Interview With A Reluctant Showgirl - Ophelia (Mika's ex big girl)

[Foxxy]

It was her that he kissed?

 

I was about to say "Isn't it a girl that Mika kissed from that famous Mika kiss photo?"

 

Now she's not nice, na-ah

[coolcat]

Does anyone know where can I find this famous photo?

[Foxxy]

[basicamenteyo]

Yup, the one and only.

 

now it´s all clear

 

after that kiss she expected he was going to marry her

 

 

she is just soooo disappointed

 

f*ck her!!

[nico_collard]

Yup, the one and only.

 

Oooooh, righto then...

 

 

Weird... I recognised herr boobs before i recognised her facial features

[Mary]

now it´s all clear

 

after that kiss she expected he was going to marry her

 

 

she is just soooo disappointed

 

 

He was...then he found the wonders of lettuce! Back off, O-f*cking-phelia!

 

 

 

Weird... I recognised herr boobs before i recognised her facial features

 

:floor:

 

 

 

About the interview... Really smart move...really smart! Thank god she was fired, best for Mika who doesn't need people like that working with him, and best for us, we now have a chance of being Big Girls!

 

 

But I'm sure you will be a huge superstar, dear, and Mika will crawl and kiss your feet for forgiveness.

After that, you bump your head and you wake up.

[basicamenteyo]

He was...then he found the wonders of lettuce! Back off, O-f*cking-phelia!

 

 

 

 

:floor:

 

 

 

About the interview... Really smart move...really smart! Thank god she was fired, best for Mika who doesn't need people like that working with him, and best for us, we now have a chance of being Big Girls!

 

 

But I'm sure you will be a huge superstar, dear, and Mika will crawl and kiss your feet for forgiveness.

After that, you bump your head and you wake up.

 

at all your post:

[Mary]

at all your post:

 

What?

[basicamenteyo]

What?

 

nothing

[Mary]

nothing

 

Thought so.

[basicamenteyo]

Thought so.

 

good

[shoni]

Good ridance to bad rubbish!!!!!!!!!!! Her 'lettuce' was obviously wilted

[natacha]

she´s such a bitch why she said that things? mika doesnt deserves that disrespect

she´s is such a disillusion:sneaky2:

[Carlota]

What a bitch.

 

What? only "bitch"? I would say more! she's a idiot, bitch, fu*k for her! i'm so sorry her parents gave her birth!

[Lena]

I can call her just a bitch (I congratulate me with this initiative. This is my first curse word on the Internet. But it's worth it!) Did Mika not wipe with the hand in disgust His mouth after this kiss? I remember how we talked about this in the Russian forum ... And I remember His face contorted in disgust ... Was a photo.

Some people who are anybody, by and large, consider that for them it is to be beneath one's dignity to be in the shadow of Mika ... They hide their true nature and wait for the moment to squeeze everything from communication with Him. Are selfish and far-sighted initially. They want more. Although, thanks to Mika, she "made his way to the people." Now she considers herself a full-fledged personality. Poor woman.Ha!

[RAK1]

I can call her just a bitch (I congratulate me with this initiative. This is my first curse word on the Internet. But it's worth it!) Did Mika not wipe with the hand in disgust His mouth after this kiss? I remember how we talked about this in the Russian forum ... And I remember His face contorted in disgust ... Was a photo.

Some people who are anybody, by and large, consider that for them it is to be beneath one's dignity to be in the shadow of Mika ... They hide their true nature and wait for the moment to squeeze everything from communication with Him. Are selfish and far-sighted initially. They want more. Although, thanks to Mika, she "made his way to the people." Now she considers herself a full-fledged personality. Poor woman.Ha!

 

 

He did wipe his mouth after, it was at Glastonbury, I was there.

A lot of people at the time said how lucky she was, but I pointed out that he wiped his mouth, I think it might more have been to get the lipstick off him, but, he was taken aback a bit when she did it, so who knows.

[Lena]

He did wipe his mouth after, it was at Glastonbury, I was there.

A lot of people at the time said how lucky she was, but I pointed out that he wiped his mouth, I think it might more have been to get the lipstick off him, but, he was taken aback a bit when she did it, so who knows.

I remember) I saw it. It was a little moment to see at the video). toad. Rejected toad. I think Mika started to vomit, but He had to "keep face"

 

 

edit:

The video have the moment where Mika wiped his mouth) It can be seen on the big screen at 4:05)

 

http://www.zoopy.com/video/4ze0/2007-06-24-mika-glastonbury-hd

[funkycowgirl]

He did wipe his mouth after, it was at Glastonbury, I was there.

A lot of people at the time said how lucky she was, but I pointed out that he wiped his mouth, I think it might more have been to get the lipstick off him, but, he was taken aback a bit when she did it, so who knows.

 

really?! well, that says it all, doesn't it. She's really such a nobody.

[natacha]

I remember) I saw it. It was a little moment to see at the video). toad. Rejected toad. I think Mika started to vomit, but He had to "keep face"

 

 

edit:

The video have the moment where Mika wiped his mouth) It can be seen on the big screen at 4:05)

 

http://www.zoopy.com/video/4ze0/2007-06-24-mika-glastonbury-hd

 

cant watch it i wanna see this moment

[SashaX]

I can't open the link of the interview

[Grynposen]

I can't open the link of the interview

 

Me neither

[natacha]

Me neither

 

somebodyyyyyyyyyyyy help us

[Emerald]

It says the website has been closed... can't see the interview

[natacha]

It says the website has been closed... can't see the interview

 

sam here

[Droopsy]

Here's the text:

--------------------------

 

Ophelia Bitz: Interview with a Reluctant Showgirl

 

Ophelia Bitz has been a showgirl, burlesque performer, Mika bitch, songwriter and stand up comic. We wondered what had led her on this whirlwind journey of occupations and so decided to meet up with her before the London previews of her Edinburgh Fringe show ‘It Speaks’, and talk to her about careers and corsets.

 

Squidge Magazine: So you’ve done Burlesque, Showgirl, backing dancer, singer, side show freak and now stand up comedian. Are you calling yourself a stand-up comedian now?

 

Ophelia Bitz: Err no I’m not; simply because I’m terrified of the term, and because I’m primarily interested in being a singer who happens to be funny in between my songs. I realised I don’t have the discipline or the confidence to be a proper stand up comic, so music is very much what’s really working for me.

 

My bread and butter job of choice is to compeer, which involves being very flippant and hopefully funny and singing a lot, and that’s my chosen day job. I’m looking to [my upcoming solo show] with a view to using it as a step along the way to developing my song writing; putting together one woman cabaret shows. Yeah I don’t really have a job title I think is what I am trying to say.

 

SM: And, well I guess you first got into performance stuff through Burlesque, would that be where you would say you first entered into the arena…

 

OB: Erm well I’ve been on the stage since I was four and drama has always been my thing, all through school and I went to university to do drama. I sang quite a lot when I was in secondary school but I wasn’t one of the kids that had music lessons. So I suppose I didn’t really pursue it as much as I should have done. I had a good voice, but I suppose I was probably too busy being neurotic and miserable.

 

SM: Was there a reason that you were particularly attracted to Burlesque?

OB: Well performers are my favourite kind of people, I feel naturally closer to them than to most other people. I love all the dressing up that goes on. I think the more imagination people put into their outfit, their make up, their character for the night, then the better everybody’s evening goes. I really think that punters should make more effort.

 

SM: Interesting way to approach audiences – ‘make more effort’!

OB: Well I just feel like there is no point going out to a night just to consume it. You have to contribute to it.

 

SM: So you like audience participation?

OB: Yes, I really like environments like torture garden, which is the first club I went to when I [first came] to London. Environments like torture garden and cabaret nights and stuff like White Mischief, which is like a sort of punk/cabaret/Victorian type thing [is what I’ve] been involved with since the beginning. I like when the audience is the show as well.

 

SM: So briefly what is the journey of Ophelia Bitz?

OB: Ok well the chronology of Ophelia Bitz is that she was born when I was still at Goldsmiths University studying drama (and not enjoying it that much). A friend of mine organised a charity event for breast cancer research. I’d been trotting around on the cabaret scene for a while, and was working in a corset and fetish shop in Camden, so I knew a few cabaret performers and burlesque dancers. And so it was like, ‘oh yeah it will be great, we’ll bring ‘em all down, we’ll put on a burlesque night – it’ll be huge!’. What happened was; Gwendolyn Lamour, one of the figureheads of the burlesque resurgence, came down to perform for us.

 

And then there was just me, who had and afternoon to make up a burlesque routine and to strip in front of my entire University, to fill in for the other performers. [They] had managed to get themselves gigs that weren’t in scabby Students’ Unions in New Cross Gate, for which I can’t blame them. That was my first ever gig to my Students’ Union. After that I did a couple of trial nights, and [since then] I’ve been getting paid for it

 

SM: You’ve done a lot of stuff since then. You had a period working as a backing dancer for Mika, which didn’t seem to be a happy time for you. Are you glad you did it, or is more that you wish you never went near him?

OB: I think it’s cool that I have a celebrity nemesis before I’m even vaguely famous, and yeah, it was easy work, but it was sort of soul destroying being a backing dancer for a squawking pop gonk…

 

SM: And you’ve done a lot of stuff besides the Mika gig. You’ve done stuff with the Puppinni Sisters and The Dresden Dolls. Was it working with some of these musicians that inspired you to get into the song writing? Or were you interested in it before?

OB: Well it was certainly a thrill to work with musicians whose work I enjoyed so much. The Dresden Dolls are pretty much my favourite band, so getting to work with them so early on was a real fluke, with which my career seems to be littered with. That was absolutely amazing and it was so exciting to kind of witness; the back stage workings of musicians rather than cabaret performers.

 

SM: So it was hanging out with musicians that helped. But it wasn’t that purely got you interested in it?

But it hadn’t really occurred to me to write songs until very recently, because I’m not a musician. I don’t play any instruments. I can’t read music. Similarly to people that don’t draw, that don’t perform or people that don’t sing, it’s very difficult to overcome an early [attitude of]; ‘Oh well you can’t sing and you can’t draw’ and I suppose I have sort of been letting my self be lazy on account of the fact that I don’t play an instrument, so therefore I can’t be musician, which is rubbish and simple not true.

 

So the song-writing thing has come very much from a place where I want to be better at what I do. And to be a better singer, a better compeer, a better performer, I have to be performing my own material. It comes from a very practical place as well. My voice – the unique bit of my voice I suppose – is that I find it very easy to sing very high notes. Realistically there are relatively little songs with subject matter that hit those notes that suit my performance style, so I need to create songs that both suit my voice and my musical preferences

 

OB: I think the most direct influence recently was a musician called Patti Plinko. I went to see her show a little while ago up at the Leicester Square Theatre, and she is just so unique. She looks like this little quirky folk singer, with hiking boots, floral dresses and woolly hats. But then she is this amazing raging tempest – with a screaming, growling, whispering, amazing voice. All of her songs are original, and a lot of the subject matter of her songs really touched me thematically and emotionally. That was the most recent and direct kick up the arse musically speaking.

 

SM: So now you have your first solo show called ‘It Speaks’. We’ve just been doing a photo shoot with some quite exciting looking costumes…

OB: Yes, my monkeys.

 

SM: With everything you’ve done you’ve always had quite elaborate costumes, and I suppose the Showgirl sort of thing lends itself to it. With ‘It Speaks’, was there a particular reason you wanted to do these kind of elaborate costumes?

OB: I have a really funny relationship with dressing up because I do it for work, which is a job that came from being a recreational user of costume. Sometimes I really love dressing up and I want to do it all the time. Sometimes I won’t even leave the house without full stage makeup, even if I am going to the shop.

 

Theatrically I like to have as little stuff on stage as possible. I went through a brief period where I was using complicated props, which is very much a sort of Burlesque convention, but I’ve never been one for props on stage. I like symbolic, physical performance. I like simplicity on stage. Costumes [lend themselves to] cabaret in that it’s so much about the character that you present. Ophelia Bitz is my onstage persona [and] an extension of myself, so the costumes really have to show that.

 

It’s an exercise in branding, it’s an exercise in getting the audience excited, it’s a mask, it’s a character to step into. And I am very lucky in that I have some very creative and talented people around me who are actually good with sewing machines. One of main joys is promoting other people who I think are great, so I really try and work with people I know as far as possible when it comes to getting costumes made. It means it’s unique, and it means I can talk about them and get them more work and that’s great.

 

SM: So in that vein, who made you the monkeys?

OB: Ah yes my new monkeys. My fez wearing, winged monkeys are from the lovely David Curtis–Ring, who is a very talented boy that I met while I was at University. He makes all kinds of wonderful monsters and creatures. He’s making me a two headed fox that’s eating itself and attacking every thing in sight to wear around my shoulders…

 

SM: Awesome! It’s good to represent yourself with slightly deranged beasts…

OB: Well the need to wear slightly mythological animals comes from the fact that I really like wearing real fur, but I know it’s wrong. So I have to have mythological beasts made to satisfy my Cruella de Ville needs – and also to stop me from getting red paint thrown at me on the tube…

 

SM: Has that happened?

OB: Not yet but I am terrified it will, and I won’t be able to argue with them ‘cause I know it’s ****ing wrong…’

 

 

SM: So lets get back to the new show that’s coming it out. It’s called ‘It Speaks: Tales of a Reluctant Showgirl. What’s your inspiration, and is there a reason you wanted to do this?

OB: Well the need to do a solo show was born of sheer frustration. I got really disenchanted [after all the Mika stuff] and wasn’t really putting the effort in. I got a bit pissed off with Burlesque, and realised I can’t just work for other peoples shows, I have to do my own thing – I have to establish myself as an artist in my own right; rather than one who works on other peoples commissions. So ‘It Speaks’ is not strictly narrative, and not strictly stand up. I have a feeling of Ophelia is going to advance as I go through the Edinburgh fringe. So I don’t want to go up there at the beginning of August with a finished thing. That’s not what cabaret is about. Cabaret is about winging it; it’s about adapting, and it’s about changing with your audience.

 

SM: Tell us a bit about Ophelia, and how she has evolved into this new show.

OB: I did my first trial run of this show back in January and February. It was sort of my compulsory, mastabatorial, confession show. Everything in it was true; I told everybody about all of the terrible things that had happened to me. Which really weren’t that awful, considering what goes on in the world around us today. [but] then it was like, ‘OK, so that’s all true, but it’s not necessarily interesting to anyone except for me’ . So now I’ve written a much more interesting story for Ophelia and made her entirely fictional – which means my mother can now actually come and see the show…

 

SM: Which is the main aim?

OB: No, no, no the main aim is world fame and vast amounts of money rolling in. You know cabaret is really good for that, I don’t know any skint performers.

 

SM: I’ve heard it’s actually the best way to make money (particularly in this economy)…

OB: Well I like the cabaret industry for feminist reasons actually. Because cabaret and burlesque is the only industry I know where it’s run almost exclusively by women, they earn more money than men and they control the industry. It’s a tiny little market but it is female run industry and I don’t really see that happening anywhere else.

 

SM: Which is interesting because considering what burlesque is if you strip it down (sorry that is a horrible pun isn’t it), it’s women who take their clothes off. I know there are alternative burlesques were people get dressed up, but the main focus is the strip.

OB: Well that’s striptease; burlesque is [different]. Burlesque comes from an Italian word meaning to parody or to mock, so it’s main aim is to take the piss. So there are some burlesque strip performers that I know who use the sexualised behaviour [of striptease] as a form of comedy, which is what I always tried to do. When I was doing strip tease it was act of taking the piss, or mocking or commenting on something. It’s Klienekunst – small art.

 

 

SM: So where is Ophelia Bitz going now?

OB: First it’s Edinburgh, then I’m going to bring it back to London, then I’m going to take it to Australia.

 

SM: So is it the same show all the time, what are you doing off in Australia?

OB: Well my, plan at the moment is to write my second show when I am up in Edinburgh which will be called ‘songs about sex’, which will be songs about sex mostly. I want to trial that in the Autumn in London, and then I will be going out on a big tour of Australia next year with the four major cities – Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney – and doing ‘It Speaks’ or ‘songs about sex’, or whatever else I have decided to do by that point; at various theatres and cabaret festivals out there. I have a much better idea of who Ophelia is now and I quite like the idea of taking a more fully formed character to a new environment.

 

Many thanks to Ophelia for meeting with us, her show is on in London on the 9th and 10th of July at the Courtyard Theatre School, and at the Edinburgh Fringe from the 6th – 22nd of August at The Newsroom. You can find out more about Ophelia at her website.