VICE PALACE- BIOGRAPHIES

Birdie-Bob Watt (Vagina Dentata) has appeared as Greta and Deluxe in Pearls Over Shanghai and as Myron in Hot Greeks.

Bonni Suval (Gina) has a severe case of Broadway Tourette's Syndrome and is proud to share it with a willing audience. She has performed onstage in various incarnations since the bawdy age of 4.5! A general in the TAPP ARMY, Bonni can be found saving your animal friends during the day and peddlin' filthy thrills all night long.

Kara Emry (Costume Mistress) has been acting and costuming with the award-winning Thrillpeddlers since 2007. She enjoys spending most of her waking hours in the theatre, loves dancing and being playful, has a
keen awareness for eroticism, promotes positive debauchery, and is a firm believer in good old-fashioned discipline... particularly spankings.

Eric Tyson Werz (Bella) has been a Thrillpeddler for the past five years, having most recently performed in Audacious Artefacts: Parisian Grand Guignol, Hot Greeks, Shockeoberfest 2009!!:Kiss of Blood and as Lili Frustrata in the long-running Pearls Over Shanghai..

Fennel Skellyman (Marco) is an artist of many disciplines. After studying visual arts he became known for his unique brand of wildly provocative performance art. His colorful and often outrageous presence could be found in San Francisco cabarets and theatrical spaces throughout the 80s and 90s. Never forgetting his visual art background Fennel combines photography, painting, textile, and assemblage to create stunning pieces. And his jewelry designs can be found on such notable necks as George Clinton and Justin Bond. Most recently he has received praise for his performances in The Bride of Frankenstein, Caligari, and Pearls Over Shanghai.

Flynn De Marco (Goldoni/Associate Director/Wig Master) has been performing since his star turn in the Cromwell Valley Elementary School production of The Fat Cat. Since then he has performed in many productions in SF with The Sick and Twisted Players, Theater Rhino , Artfull Circle Theater and others. In 2000, He moved to New Orleans to found the Running With Scissors theater company. While with the Scissors he won a Big Easy Award for Best Actor in a musical for his performance as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch as well as a dual Best Director Award for Bad Seed and Sordid Lives with his partner Richard Read. Returning to San Francisco after Hurricane Katrina, he adapted and directed a stage version of the horror classic, Bride of Frankenstein. Soon after he was welcomed into the Thrillpeddlers fold with roles in Pearls Over Shanghai and Shocktoberfest: Kiss of Blood. He is delighted and honored to be a part of this kooky family.

Jim Toczl (Polo) founded the Hypnodrome in 2004 with his partner Russell. His first role at the theatre was as an opium addict in "The Drug" (2005), and most recently he played Shangri La, The Goddess of Opium for almost three years in the lon-running Pearls Over Shanghai.—so he must be doing something right.

Joshua Ryan Cluck Thompson Devore (Ricciolini) has been performing on stage and on camera since the age of five.  He graduated with a degree in music specializing in vocal performance from Southwest Texas State University and have performed with major musical theatre, dance and opera companies literally in all four corners of the US with favorites including the Austin Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Co, Austin Musical Theatre, Lincoln Amphitheatre, San Diego Opera, Performing Arts Musical Theatre Conservatory Dance Company, Houston Ballet, and SeaToSun Recordings in New York City. I'm also a licensed cosmetologist having trained with Paul Mitchell and Toni&Guy in both the US and Europe. A club promoter for over 10 years, he has worked for John Blair; is a featured fire/stunt performer for The Saint at Large (Black Party NYC); and has been associated with IML in Chicago, Folsom Street Events and Folsom East. As an international adult film personality, he's been featured with Joe Oppedisano on Sex and the City, on Kathy Griffin:My Life on the D-List. Joshua was given the first issued Best Fetish Performer AVN owned GAYVN award by Janis Dickinson and then got drunk with her at the after party.  He works with San Francisco and Chicago groups in ritual hook suspension, volunteers for The Otter Project; writes and photographs for Instigator Magazine in LA; is a licensed EMT-B; was ordained as a Baptist Minister; continues to appear as Tober Brandt; and own a pair of boots given to him by Tina Turner for scoring her an ounce and making her laugh.

L. Ron Hubby (Sylva Koscina) was most recently seen in the Thrillpeddlers's productions of Hot Greeks, Shocktoberfest 2010!!: Kiss of Blood and Pearls Over Shanghai, and in Peaches Christ's film The Children of the Popcorn. L. Ron loves fake blood.

Laura LeBleu (Vicci) has been on stage she was knee-high to a grasshopper. It is quite possible that she is the only teenage white girl to play the role of Richie in A Chorus Line. We had to change the name to Nickie and remove the line "…and I'm black." Alas. Such are the artistic compromises of doing theatre in her hometown of El Paso, Texas. After receiving her BA in Theatre Arts, she moved to SF, where she was almost immediately adopted by a roaming gang of miscreant drag queens. Roles in this time included Lavinia and Marc Anthony in John Fisher's Titus! and Cleopatra, The Musical respectively. She also worked with the inimitable D'arcy Drollinger, starring as Lucy in Suburbia 3000, Gewurztraminer in Above and Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Showgirls, and Jacquiline Tilton in Scalpel (NYC). Upon moving to New York, she played Laura Bush in Jane Martin's Laura's Bush, produced and acted in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Titania) and The Country Wife (Lady Fidget), and created multiple cabarets with her theatre group, HoNkBarK!. In her past life as a TV producer, she won a couple of Emmy Awards and in her current life as a writer, she owns Cheeky Monkey Copy . She's got a husband, baby and dog who are all exceptional creatures, and she thanks them for supporting her as she once again is drawn back into the Glitter Mafia.

Leigh Crow (Divina) Hello Darlings! Leigh has toured the world and elsewhere as Elvis Herselvis and has impersonated everyone from John Travolta to Eydie Gorme and dedicates her performance to St. Elizabeth Taylor.

Russell Blackwood ((Producer / Artistic Director / Lucrecia) eagerly produced and directed the first Grand Guignol horror script he laid his hands on, resulting in his 1991 production of the 1926 shocker The Laboratory of Hallucinations.  This production led him to found found Thrillpeddlers with his boyhood friend, Daniel Zilber.  The theatre company went on to produce the American premiere of  Clive Barker'sFrankenstein in Love, Mondo Andronicus, as well as A Crime in a Madhouse and The Medium in South Africa.  Since 1999, Thrillpeddlers have presented Shocktoberfest!!, San Francisco's annual pageant of horror and titillation. In 2004, Russell and his long-time partner Jim Toczyl opened the Hypnodrome, Thrillpedders' own custom-built horror theatre. 2008 began Thrillpeddlers rewarding relationship with Scrumbly Koldewyn and members of the fabulous Cockettes producing Koldewyn's Hot Greeks and Pearls Over Shanghai which ran for nearly two years!  Today, Russ has become the leading authority on the taboo-breaking, blood-spilling theatrical genre, and Thrillpeddlershas become the vanguard of the worldwide resurgence of Grand Guignol.

Scrumbly Koldewyn (Composer/Music Director/Serafina) was a founding member of The Cockettes and composed many songs; for Pearls Over Shanghai, Vice Palace and other shows. In the 80s he performed and composed for The Distractions, and then for 25 years with The Jesters Vocal Trio, touring extensively in Europe. He composed for approx. 36 original theatrical productions, including the Jesters' Singing Fools and has been an accompanist/musical director and performer in theater and cabaret since the mid 1970s. Shows he created include The Untamed Stage (1920s Berlin Cabaret) in 1999 and Wilde Boys at NCTC in 2007 (BATCC awards for musical direction and best production-musical). Awards include the BATCC for original music (1981) two S.F. Bay Area Cabaret Gold Awards with the Jesters ('91 & '92) and the Dean Goodman Choice Award 2000 for Cabaret performance (Goldfield & Koldewyn). Currently, he is music director at Stagebridge in Oakland, and New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco.

Ste Fishell (Tonio)has been Thrillpeddlin' with both Pearls Over Shanghai and Hot Greeks and is so excited and grateful to be in Vice Palace, the last Cockette Musical. He hails from Kansas City, Missouri where he worked with The Evaporated Milk Society, an award winning avant guard theater troupe, in such productions as Hamlet (on stilts!) and Animals (a story in dance), and Clutch, an improvisational comedy troupe, which brought him to San Francisco. Ste has performed in Queer Nightlife in many various and unmistakably tragic endeavors such as, but not limited to; drag, nightlife promoter, columnist, and stand-up comic/story teller. In local theater he has worked with We Players as a gay-er version of Prince Sebastian and  co-stared in Tiny Dionysus with Trixxe Carr. He took his shirt off in the audition and said he knew how to pull ribbons out of his ass so we've all been saying "Ste Fishell" ever since. He really auditions well.

Steven Satyricon (Niccolini) is a go-go dancer, burlesque performer, genderfuck artist, and generally a load of fun (or a shit-ton of trouble).  He is grateful to Thrillpeddlers for validating his life-long belief that he'd eventually find somewhere he could be pierced, tattooed, and also sing show tunes; his mother is smiling proudly at him, somewhere beyond.  Besides originating the role of Captain Eddy in both the 2008 New York workshop version and the San Francisco revival of Pearls Over Shanghai, Steven has also played roles at the Hypnodrome in Hot Greeks, Theodora: She-Bitch of Byzantium, Charles Ludlam's Jack And The Beanstalk, and Shockoberfest 2009!!, and in Impact Theatre's recent production of The Play About The Naked Guy (yes, he was the title character).  When he isn't peddling Thrills at the Hypnodrome or elsewhere—or perhaps even occasionally sleeping—he's serving your morning coffee at Maxfield's House of Caffeine.

T.J. Buswell ( Paulo) has been an integral part of Thrillpeddlers for three years and has, on numerous occasions, saved the Western World from utter annihilation. TJ played the role of Chop Chop in the long-running Pearls Over Shanghai and is also our Master Carpenter.

Tina Sogliuzzo (Lola) is a vampy, campy bombshell who also performs burlesque under the name Ruby Vixen Tina made her musical debut at Mimi Mozerelli in Pearls Over Shanghai and cannot wait to vamp it up as Lola Ginafrigida in Vice Palace! When not singing, dancing and taking her clothes off, she can be found behind her sewing machine whipping up fabulous creations for the stage.

Tony Wichowski (Fellatio) made his Thrillpeddlers' debut as Chang in the final weeks of Pearls Over Shanghai, but refuses to see a connection between joining the cast and that show's closing moments later. Tony has been fortunate enough to make his living singing and play acting for longer than he cares to admit. Lowlights of a long career include singing cheesy crap in the Catskills, enduring a nude scene in a terrible gay bedroom farce, hawking Christmas cheer at the World Trade Center, and a certain production of Man of La Mancha where the producer asserted that Tony's motivation was "his paycheck". Tony has a BA in Music from Chico State, and is a personal and professional failure. Pretty eyes, though.

Zelda Koznofski (Rosella De Nero) loves the stage, more in a gay way than a platonic kind of way. Having come to us by way of the NJ/SF Thruway, Zelda K will argue with anyone over the credibility of a west coast bagel. Favorite things include: tight harmonies, sarcasm, bacon, major nines, a booty-shakin' bass line, and inappropriate touching. First time on the Thrillpeddlers's stage, Zelda K would like to remind everyone that quotation marks can be used to indicate another sense of meaning of words or phrases by which one wants the reader to interpret the statement or text other than the one initially suggested, such as to convey irony.