WIGband’s irreverent, “trashy feminist points” on stage.
WIGband, created by Poethig and Golden in 1985, is an irreverent, feminist cabaret duo that has become a cornerstone of San Francisco’s performance art over the last four decades. Known for political satire and unabashed commentary on women’s issues, WIGband uses several different mediums during their performances, including film, song, slides and props to get their “trashy feminist” points across to the crowd.
WIGBAND: 4 DECADES 5 PRESIDENTS comes with 22 songs, vintage photos and other memorabilia, divided between political administrations from Reagan to Obama. Popular favorites include “Let’s Start a Disease”, “Clit Envy”, “Lick Me to Heaven” and “I Wanna Drive a Car in the U.A.R”.
The show had a number of crowd favorites, like “Trashy Girls”, a video featuring topless women in fishnets and lingerie drinking and smoking in the bathtub; “WIGband Incarcerated,” another video in which Bambi and Silver are locked up in shackles after the Homeland Purity Council accuses them of depravity, heresy, lack of patriotism and bad language.
This wild energy began to wane toward the middle of the show when WIGband turned to their more somber songs about politics and 9/11, demonstrating that perhaps vulgarity and crude humor — rather than political messages — is the real draw to the show. But the ladies strike a careful balance: for every song full of serious political criticism, there is another on the opposite end of the spectrum (where the ladies take every opportunity to yell raucous lyrics like, “Danielle Steel, show your tits!”).
Both women certainly appear to enjoy shocking people with a sort of “women behaving badly” kitsch; I felt that I had stumbled upon some sort of secret club group devoted to progressive performance arts and a boisterous time. But despite the crowd’s cliquey attitude (I was asked by several people “who I knew there”), WIGband has a way of immediately capturing your attention and intimately drawing you into their inner circle.
I left the show feeling uncertain whether there was genuine political sentiment behind WIGband, or if the act was merely an excuse for two women to do crazy things in the name of free expression.
Nevertheless, I found WIGband to be fearlessly over-the-top yet simultaneously intimate; neither Poethig nor Golden are afraid to delve into personal stories or touchy subjects. With this latest show, WIGband acted as a larger example that perhaps the best way to shed light on delicate political issues is to use humor: maintaining a careful balance between the serious and silly.
For more on WIGband, visit johannapoethig.com.
About the Author
Elizabeth Coleman Elizabeth Coleman is an attorney and writer, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA and a law degree from Santa Clara University School of Law, where she received a certificate in public interest and social justice and served as an articles editor on their law review. Apart from her legal career, Elizabeth enjoys writing short stories and dabbling in art (the messier, the better!), and previously was a regular contributor to SWOOP Magazine. She has recently started working on her first book, a young adult fantasy novel about lucid dreaming and parallel realities. Read her blog at www.realitygumbo.com.
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