Music by Scrumbly Koldewyn
Book and Lyrics by Martin Worman and Scrumbly Koldewyn
Directed by Russell Blackwood

EXTENDED through May 19, 2012!
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8:00pm

At The Hypnodrome
575 10th Street, San Francisco

Tickets: $30 – $35
Online: BrownPaperTickets.com
Phone: 800-838-3006

Thrillpeddlers are proud to announce our Spring Season 2012 production of HOT GREEKS, A New Full-Length, Fully Restored Version of The Cockettes’ 1972 Musical Extravaganza, an original musical by Martin Worman and Scrumbly Koldewyn. This is the 40th Anniversary of the original production. Originally produced as a Nocturnal Dream Show and performed in 1972 at midnight at the Palace Theatre in Chinatown in SF, HOT GREEKS was the fabled & fabulous Cockettes’ only other scripted book musical besides PEARLS OVER SHANGHAI. The Cockettes were a gender-bending theatrical troupe who not only originated these two shows, but also exerted a profound influence on the culture of our times, from the phenomenon of midnight movies to glitter rock stars and their outrageous fashions. In 2010 The Thrillpeddlers mounted a condensed 70-minute version of HOT GREEKS and it was an instant, sold-out hit. This new 2012 production expands the show to a full-length version and restores 3 songs from the original 1972 production.

In HOT GREEKS, college rhythm meets the Peloponnesian War as Athens University takes on Sparta State for their annual pigskin showdown. This musical, loosely based on Aristophanes’ LYSISTRATA, features the Tri Thigh Sorority girls and their hunky footballer sweethearts jiving to the big-band hit parade sounds of the 1940s. The kids sing and dance through the ruins of ancient Greece, on their way to consult the Oracle of Delphi in their pursuit of victory on the gridiron. Dancing columns, vestal virgins, country cousins, and even a pig, all join Lysistrata on her journey to save the day for the Gods and Greece.

HOT GREEKS is directed by Russell Blackwood and original Cockette and composer Scrumbly Koldewyn serves as Musical Director and plays piano for all performances. Thrillpeddler and San Francisco favorites will be featured in this revival, including: Tom Orr (Pendulum), Noah Haydon (Pandora), Rik Lopes (Lysistrata), Annie Larson (Clitoristra), Birdie-Bob Watt (Myron), Steven Satyricon (Doric), Ste Fishell (Corinthian), Bobby Singer (Ionic), James Toczyl (Annie), Russell Blackwood (Mata Dildoes) Joshua Devore (Diameter), Lisa Appleyard (Mrs. Ova), Jan Adrienne Gilbert (Leda) and others to flesh out a cast of 23.

Mr. Waters lives in San Francisco part-time now, but in The Cockettes heyday in the early 70s he was a full time San Franciscan along with Divine and Mink Stole, who were members of The Cockettes and rising Waters cult stars. His interview in The Cockettes documentary joyously recalls those pre-Pink Flamingo days. He said his night at The Hypnodrome gave him plenty of flashbacks and some new visions as well.

When I was 14, seeing “Pink Flamingos” at The Bijou Theatre in Kansas City changed my life. It was so homemade, filthy, audacious … opulent. I walked out into the sun light (yes, I saw a matinee!) utterly dazed and delighted. As I came to realize that he’d gathered a stock company of freaks to make movies with him at “Dreamland Studios” in Baltimore, I got the idea that I’d like to someday assemble a company of my own. Since Thrillpeddlers earliest days, I’ve aspired to do just that and to tap in to what makes John Waters work so evocative and engaging for me. PEARLS is a perfect example of how his influence plays on me. Performing it for him is a night I’ll never forget.

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Thrillpeddlers are proud to announce the first production of their 2009 season, “Audacious Artefacts: Parisian Grand Guignol,” which will include four terror plays and sex farces from the repertory of the famed Parisian Théâtre du Grand Guignol. The show will be presented on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m., March 12 through May 2, at Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th Street, San Francisco.

“The Head Hunters,” a late entry into the genre from 1958, concerns the disappearance of ethnologist Philippe Roujan into the jungles of French Guiana with only an escapee from Devil’s Island as his guide. Alarmed and concerned about his uncertain fate, the young man’s father and fiancée travel from Paris to Amazonia, guided only by the girl’s unfaltering belief in the questionable science of Radiesthesia, a method of locating the missing man through psychic means. Among the formidable obstacles they encounter are a ferocious tribe of headhunters, poison arrows, cannibalism, foul venomous beasts, and the oppressive sights, sounds, and sensations of the South American jungle.

“Private Room Number 6,” a revenge drama from 1907 along the lines of Death and the Maiden, takes place back in Paris at the Rat Mort, a celebrated nightspot with a shady reputation. A sadistic, dipsomaniacal Russian general gets more than he bargained for when he invites a young “working girl” from the Rue de la Paix for a midnight liaison in one of the notorious brothel’s private dining rooms.

“Tics, or Doing the Deed,” from 1906, is a sex farce that draws its humor from a very peculiar premise. Two country gentlemen involved in a bit of illicit wife-swapping, as well as a hapless male domestic, all develop peculiar physical tics after “doing the deed.” An episode of unbridled hilarity ensues, as only the French could envision.

Fleshing out the program will be “The Discipline,” a morsel of eighteenth-century erotica involving two young Catholic novices and the convent gardener, which will feature the Thrillpeddlers’ first-ever erotic spookshow. Due to the adult nature of this presentation, absolutely no one under the age of eighteen will be admitted.