Sassy Wendy's: The Story

Gather round, boils and ghouls. Momma's got a story to tell.
If you have been on the internet in the past year, you have probably heard about the Wendy's Twitter account. Just in case you haven't, all you really need to know is that Wendy's Twitter is savage. They've been known to come after competing fast food establishments and their supporters. Naturally, the art side of the internet turned Wendy into a 'Smug Anime Girl' and from there it was only a matter of time until the Cosplayers caught on.
This is where I come in. I've had a long-standing half-joke of a rule that I will do my best to perform burlesque as "all of the redheaded characters". So once Smug/Sassy Wendy's became a thing, I knew that I must. Fortunately, around this time the burlesque troupe I am a part of put up submissions for our 4th of July show.
The costume was commissioned to an absolutely wonderful friend of mine who actually works for 5th Avenue theater. She told me at the second fitting that finding just the right blue and white fabric was a bit of a challenge, so I asked her to pick up a few extra yards when she found it so that I could make a matching bra/thong set. Ultimately, she gave me so much extra fabric that I was able to make a small skirt. The under-skirt took me five minutes and was based off of a YouTube instructional video that was just under 10 minutes long. Seriously, I watched 3 whole horror movies while I measured, sewed, undid sewing, re-pinned, and sewed some more. It took me an entire day and gave me a newfound appreciation for the hard work that goes into costuming. Even the simplest thing takes hours of work. If you follow me on Snapchat you saw some of the silliness that came with covering the bra cups in fabric - I had to glue it piece by piece and hold it together with bobby pins while the fabric adhesive set.
Next came the music. I sat down with a friend of mine (fellow performer Velvet Revulva) and we spent an afternoon going through some of what we considered Wendy's best tweets. All of the ones with sass were responses to people rather than in the main twitter stream, so I got Velvet and her Partner Nikola to record some of the other parts for me to respond to as Wendy in my best Mean Girl voice. We spliced these exchanges with the twitter notification sounds into the Sum 41 song 'Fat Lip' (which seemed to encompass the pop-punk party feel I was going for) to cover up a line I was hesitant about having blasted over the speakers and create a moment where I could pick up my phone and walk through and interact with the audience, sitting in laps and rolling my eyes like any true millennial. 

The only thing that really needs work on this act still is replacing the real food. The venue was not pleased (rightfully so) that I handed actual burgers to the VIP section, so I am currently testing out new cost-effective (but still impressive) ways to include that level of interaction without the health concerns of giving away hamburgers I bought 3 hours before. That being said, I am *very* happy with how this act has already progressed and I'm super excited to bring it to more stages so it can grow and blossom. Stay tuned, I'm hoping to get video of this performance soon!