In Conversation with Delaney Burke – Leg Business
In this edition of In Conversation, we shine a light on Leg Business—a new show by Delaney Burke, premiering at The Blue Room Theatre from 16 September – 4 October. Leg Business reveals the relentless politics of empowerment, queerness, and identity that bodies in perpetual performance face … with a healthy splash of striptease. Featuring live music and guest performers from Boorloo’s rich nightlife scene, Leg Business will have you laughing, dancing, and dreaming of what our bodies could become. We caught up with Delaney Burke to dive into the creative process behind the work and what audiences can expect from this thrilling new production.
What motivated you to apply to be part of The Blue Room Theatre’s 2025 season, and what drew you to this project?
Leg Business was a perfect match for The Blue Room Theatre. An indie experimental theatre production programmed at THE indie theatre in the heart of the cultural centre, bringing this raucous show to Blue Room audiences, old and new!
Leg Business dives headfirst into the deliciously messy questions surrounding the performance of femininity, sexualisation, and agency. A key example of the kind of discourse that energised this project is the reaction to Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend album cover, where she posed on all fours, a man (presumably) gripping a fistful of her hair. Critics condemned it as anti-feminist, regressive, even dangerous. But others argued she was fully in control, weaponising the aesthetics of submission in a knowing, kink-positive way. That tension, between empowerment and exploitation, between control and objectification, is precisely what Leg Business explores.
This project is very personal to me: as a queer person who lives in a female body and who identifies as a feminist, I have a personal stake in the politics of the female body on stage. Creating a work that grapples with the social discourse of female & queer bodies allowed me to delve into
How has the creative journey been so far—from concept development to rehearsals?
The creative journey for Leg Business has been dynamic, joyful, and deeply collaborative. From the outset, we’ve centred curiosity and joy. The seed of the idea came from Eliza Smith, who initially pitched to Lucy and I a work exploring nightlife spaces as sites of both celebration and protest, a place of both party and political action. That concept sparked something powerful, and the three of us spent two weeks in residence at Walyalup Fremantle Arts Centre, writing, researching, and talking through the big questions at the heart of the work.
We investigated how female bodies have been portrayed & written about in the past, and how we can stage our bodies in ways that reject or rewrite the harmful narratives and presumptions that have come before. This research went hand-in-hand with exploration into the neo-burlesque and nightlife community, as spaces where performers circumnavigate and reclaim their bodies. As a striptease performer myself, I see the cabaret club as a crucial space for this kind of embodied politics, a space where agency, subversion, and spectacle meet.
Our third development of the work took place in April of this year at The Blue Room Theatre, where we spent a week both revisiting content created in Walyalup and in my Honours and further devising and writing. The rehearsal process has consisted of taking inventory of all of the performative possibilities we have created; myriad scenes, images, dances, strips, jokes; and picking what we think is most interesting to an audience and to us, and then structuring these moments into a ‘script’.
It’s been an incredibly rich process, one that’s embraced both rigorous inquiry and joyful experimentation, and we’re excited to share it with audiences.
What has stood out to you during the rehearsal process—any unexpected discoveries or moments of growth?
The creative process for Leg Business was built on a strong foundation of friendship & camaraderie between the devisers Lucy Wong, Eliza Smith, Naoko Uemoto, and myself.
Sometimes the silliest games and devising exercises led to artistic gold. Sharing our lived experience of empowerment, misogyny, and performance alowed us to explore this work through a personal lens.
An example of this is during our creative development in April this year, we began each day with a check-in over coffee, and one morning Lucy shared with the group a sexist, rapey comment that had been made to her the night before. Sharing the frustration and fury she felt detonated a discussion of female rage, and led to seeds of some of the images and moments in the show.
Sharing our authentic selves and experiences in the creative process has allowed us to develop a work that audience members can relate to and enjoy catharsis with us.
How has the collaboration with your cast, crew, and creatives shaped the work and your vision for it?
Leg Business would be nothing without the cast & crew and I am eternally grateful for all of the hard work, passion, and care that each person has poured into the project.
I have been lucky enough that every person that I approached to be a part of this project has brought their a-game and enthusiasm and gone above and beyond in their roles. From bedazzling every last inch of props, to sewing costumes, providing personal stories, this team truely is a powerhouse of creativity and passion.
The ability to also work with 5 of Boorloo’s most exciting queer and femme nightlife performers and for them to generously give their love and time to the show has been a highlight and created true cross collaboration between the nightlife and theatre industries.
What does having your show programmed in The Blue Room Season mean to you as a lead creative?
The Blue Room Theatre’s annual season is such a vital platform for emerging artists and original, experimental work. It fosters bold creative risk-taking, and as a team developing a hybrid performance like Leg Business, blending the forms of nightlife performance and theatre, this felt like the ideal environment to premiere the work. The Blue Room offers not only resources and support, but also an audience that’s ready to engage deeply with new ideas.
As you move closer to opening, what are you most excited—or even nervous—about sharing with audiences?
We are so excited to invite the audience into the space. The Studio has been transformed into club Leg Business with Will Gammel’s immersive set and Jolene Whibley’s transformative lighting design.
I am personally most excited to bring our guest performers from the wider Boorloo nightlife community and show Blue Room Audiences what Boorloo really has to offer
Attempting to bring the energy of an 18+ “nightlife” performance based show to an early (6.30pm) theatre audience, is a little nerve wracking. We want to challenge audiences but ultimate we want to bring together those who would watch a 11pm act with a traditional theatre audience. We have our fingers crossed that we can pull this off given the time of the night we are inviting people into this deboucherous space.
As my first time being a lead creative, I have a healthy amount of nerves about everything. I just want everyone- audience and artist alike – to have a good time.
Image courtesy of Artists