fantastic, gleeful terror: why performing is cool and weird

By Adjani Poirier aka Miner Celebrity  

July 2016. A light mid summer breeze blows through the air, the leaves in the trees rustle, a quick melodic birdsong drifts by as I settle in to lovingly craft true to scale human intestines out of dirty stained nylons and old cotton balls. 

I’m ecstatic because I’ve been asked to be a manager. I know what you’re thinking, wow she’s climbing the ladder of corporate success! It’s even better, I will be managing Rot the Roadkill Dirtbag (née Werewolf) of Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers fame. The best part? I get to dress up as a literal WEASEL for the role. My job during the Northend Knockout match will include general hype man ring-side responsibilities, as well as the casual act of being dramatically disemboweled and offering my 15 foot intestines to defeat Rot’s nemesis, Femme Freon.     

I sit with Rot as we construct my costume, perched on the rock pile tailings that make up the backyard of the Hobo Mansion, a ramshackle two story cabin we’re living in this summer that also happens to be the site of the first ever Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers event, the wonderfully infamous 2013 Hobo Showdown. Dawson City was still but a twinkle in my eye when this brilliant, beautiful and bloody inaugural match took place, but I can feel the spirit of the showdown sparkle around me as I imagine how it will feel to step foot into the ring. 

As a kid I was painfully shy. I prayed not to be called on to speak, would try to disappear myself and hope no adult would ask something of me that would force my little voice to escape from my tiny body. And yet, at 8 years old I step out onto the stage that is my shiney wooden floored elementary school gymnasium to perform in front of a live audience for the very first time. 

I play a princess in some sort of comedy of errors involving a wishing well. As I recite my carefully memorized lines my heart drops into my belly, and then my belly drops into my knees, my eyes blur before coming into stark focus. It’s a sensation I’ve never felt before: the rush of adrenaline, the feeling of holding the singular attention of an anticipatory audience, the intentional act of being seen. I’m overcome with a feeling of fantastic, gleeful terror. 

I forever think about the phenomena of what it means to be witnessed as a performer. How so many are a Shy-Reserved-Quiet-Person in their day to day and then become a Big-Loud-Look-At-Me-Person when they choose to be watched by an audience. What enables this, at least in my own experience, is how performing offers a kind of permission to take up space and be listened to. There is an agreed upon intention that the audience is here to see what the performer has to show them, and generally both parties are eager to enjoy the shared experience.  

There’s no clearer example of this than the Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers. The league embraces a true spirit of in your face spectacle with a clear intention: the ring is a place to be witnessed as loud, strong, dirty, crazy, silly, rude, sexy, gross and unapologetic. It’s very nature is to invite people who have experienced gender based oppression to enact creative ways of saying F*CK YOU to the patriarchal systems that have dictated so much of their lives and attempted to steal their joy. 

Creating this kind of space is a radical act that’s facilitated some of the most fantastic and wonderfully unhinged performances I’ve ever seen in my life. This includes wrestlers drinking piss, throwing bloody tampons, writhing and screaming in mud puddles, and wielding a red hot flaming axe atop a pile of dirt. Performing in the ring gives you permission to be perceived in any way you want to be. It’s an invitation to subvert expectations of how society believes you should act, with the clear caveat that you will be supported, celebrated and CHEERED THE HECK ON as you do it. 

August 2017. A light mid summer breeze once again blows through the air and I am standing in the bucket of an excavator, clinging to the greasy metal for dear life as the arm of the snarling yellow beast lifts me high up into the air, above the cheering crowd. I think, “I could die, but it would be worth it.” The feeling: fantastic, gleeful terror. 

THUNDERDOME, the final DCLOLW Showdown is in full swing. One year after I dipped my toes into the league as a weasel manager, I’m introducing my brand new wrestling persona to the world: Miner Celebrity. My heart races as I enter my match against the notorious Bob aka The Holland American. I ungracefully hop off the excavator, my fans and foes cheer and jeer, I enter the ring, the ref blows the whistle and…

To try and describe the fight would do it a disservice, as the very nature of the event is that you kinda had to be there. Instead I can offer the fight blueprint, transcribed from the carefully preserved dusty scraps of paper I happened upon in a drawer just the other day. Enjoy.   

Bob vs. The Miner Celebrity 

(Entrance Music)

• M enters, staking - realizes RING can be made into DREDGE

• M assembles dredge

• Bob enters, climbs into ring for autograph with Yukon Gold poster, fucking with boom & camera 

• M *move: TBD* at Bob 

• Bob *move: “flash photography, blinding stupidity”* 

• M blinded, comes to and notices GOLD WATCH

• M goes for gold watch 

• Aubyn reveals Miner Celebrity is in fact fueled by Gold D’or 

• B drops more gold 

• M on all fours EATING GOLD 

• B *move: Ice Cream “Klondyke Creamery”*,  leaves M on floor 

• B questions to crowd 

• M BELL RINGER: 

-  Manager produces Bell 

-  Party Boys crew RING BELL 

- Tilly (ask her) brings trays of shots 

- M throws shots @ B 

-  B recovers with crowd 

- M *move: “Million Dollar Dredge Takedown”*

- Trip on pamphlets 

- GRAND FINALE: MYSTIC GOLD DOUBLE DEMISE 

Xoxo, Miner Celebrity