Stars of the AVT #37 Miss Saturn

This post is one of a series profiling the hundreds of performers I’ve presented through my American Vaudeville Theatre in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Don’t miss the American Vaudeville Theatre’s 15th Anniversary ExTRAVaganzain the New York International Fringe Festival this August!

It took me some time to realize that the planetary body known as Miss Saturn was called that because her hula hoops are kind of like rings. There are times when I operate a beat or two (or a century) behind everybody else. Miss Saturn is the New York variety world’s premiere hula hoop artiste. In the past couple of years I’ve seen a couple of other ladies do a hoop act, and I guess there’s no law against it, but if they’re smart they’ll come up with another gimmick, because this turf is Saturn’s.  (Real name Jenny McGowan). She is one of the few performers on the burlesque scene who’s also a clown — she’s trained with David Shiner, Sue Morrison, Avner Eisenberg and others, and she’s also an actress. I principally worked with her when I was booking/ hosting Galapagos Floating Vaudeville in 2004 and at that time the character rocked a Russian accent. I don’t know if she still does it, but I wish she would, because for me, it added even more vaudeville to what is already a pretty awesome vaudeville act. She can already hula as many as 75 hula hoops simultaneously, but it’s the patter that makes a big vaudeville star. Anyway, accent or no, Jenny is extremely good at ad libbing in front of an audience; she’s an excellent host in addition to her skills as a very thin planet. I just like a little Olga Petrova in a vaudeville turn.  At any rate, she has performed all over the planet (earth, that is), and opened for the likes of Moby, and Reverend Horton Heat.

Here she is hard at work:

And to see a quick-sketch of Miss Saturn drawn during a performance by the Countess, go here.

To learn more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.