This September, puff up your poodle skirts, don your leather jackets and above all slather on buckets of hair gel as Dumpster Raccoon Cinema is going BACK TO SCHOOL with a full-blown GREASE SINGALONG and SHADOWCAST screening – featuring the fabulous talents of drag performers the NOTORIOUS GENDER MAKERS!
It’s 1958, and Greaser DANNY (John Travolta) and good girl SANDY (Olivia Newton John) had a picture-perfect summer meet-cute at the beach (even if they don’t quite agree about the details) – but now class is in session at Rydell High, and the social pressures of high school are pushing the once-doting lovers apart. As Sandy joins the wily and knowing Pink Ladies and Danny struggles with the leadership of the riotous T-Birds, can Danny find a way to be a little more wholesome…and Sandy go a little bad?
A firecracker of a hit both in theatres and on the music charts when it debuted, GREASE was dismissed by critics, who derided its 70s cynicism inflecting the “last innocent decade” of the 50s (LA Times), and whose spirit was closer to the “New Tastelessness” of Ken Russell, replete with “ugliness” (Washington Post) and which saw “its material as silly camp” (Roger Ebert). In the decades since, GREASE has become an unabashed beloved classic to many – a film whose scepticism about the gee-whiz 50s reflected a smart willingness to be nostalgic without being absolving. With star turns from a cast of generational talent (if unconvincing as teenagers), it remains one of the greatest film musicals of all time.
And to celebrate, Dumpster Raccoon is pulling out every stop – with a fully captioned singalong screening that is teaming up with the talents of the NOTORIOUS GENDER MAKERS company of performers for a fully shadowcast evening of song and screwball drag extravagance! With video singalong preshow, cocktails by the Shameful Tiki Room and media from our sponsors Bay Street Video!
So practice your hand jive, gas up your t-bird, and get stitched into your greaser makeover final reveal because THIS FLYING CAR IS LEAVING THE GRADUATION CARNIVAL and YOU’RE THE ONE THAT WE WANT!