Slather It Up!

Slather It Up! is a full-fantasy introduction to the technicolor world of trans-artist and visionary Love Bailey and the Slather Family, where a heart full of love is the currency and everyone can be filthy fucking rich.

We meet Love Bailey wandering the streets of China Town Los Angeles; a crimson character with frustration smeared across their face. Puzzled onlookers assess what he or she is doing. Walking from window to window, searching for meaning: a little cash, a little hope or, maybe, one small taste of the not-to-distant luxuries just beyond her grasp. The hectic soundscape overwhelms Love as she finds her way inside the momentary safety of the market. The laugh of an unexpected friend plunges Love and her audience into a world between dreams and memory, where she and her beloved Grandmother, former show girl and personal sage, Betty Bailey, dance across time.

This momentary reprieve from her reality is cut short when we enter the home of Love; a crimson boudoir filled with nostalgic ephemeron that give us a glimpse into the evolution of our protagonist. This peaceful moment quickly comes to a halt as we hear the recorded rantings of Love’s harshest critic, her Aunt, exclaiming that she “[doesn’t] want to touch you, you might have AIDS!” Her words echo over Love as she reclines in her bath, adorning herself and burning an Eviction Notice, the latest symbol of her continued alienation from the “normal” world.

Despite her outward defiance, fear overtakes her dreams. In a flurry of ecstatic nightmare visuals, Love meets an alien creature (Edward Vigiletti) who awakens her dormant strength and tells her to “Slater it on thick!” This becomes the battle cry of a newly liberated Love. Unable to sleep, she ventures back out into the streets of Hollywood and into the car of a waiting stranger. Their wild ride ends at a vibrant diner where Betty Bailey awaits her granddaughter.

The two dine and laugh with one another as a bevy of colorful customers pour into the restaurant. The frenzy escalates as everyone writhes together and Love truly learns how to Slather it Up! Suddenly, the crowd is gone and Love is left is alone, dancing in a silent soliloquy of peace and understanding. Her fears washing away. Her dreams coming true. It’s showtime, honey...

A glitzy audience awaits the impending performance in a warm, velvet theater. Before it can start, a spotlight halts on an incomparable Silver Screen Starlet (Yasmine Petty) and two policemen question her sexuality and identity. She scoffs at their advance and is immediately escorted to the stage in a strange form of public harassment. Yasmine quickly turns the moment around, ripping down a pink veil of Shame, and casting it into the audience. Behind her, Love is revealed center stage in a tableau of holy freaks and Slatherists.

Returning to her male incarnation, Love recites The Invocation of the Scarlett Women, hypnotizing the audience with her chant and a small television with subversive images of Shame and carnage. Finally, under her spell, Love invites her audience to "Slather it Up!" With that, she hurls a sledge hammer at the TV and sets off a chain reaction of hysteria and performances to Vigiletti’s infectious track, “AM I WILD!”

Love re-emerges in this moment as her transcended self, the show finale building into a frenzy of burlesque and vaudevillian stunts. Sharp choreography mixes with pure bacchanalia as she implores the cast of freaks to unleash their inner wilds. By then end, the performers, audience and Love are liberated at last. Wholly transformed, Love greets a Venus-like Goddess (Domonique Echeverria) in a cloud of purple smoke. Love paints her with red slather as the Goddess anoints this holy awakening. We see Love embraced by the spirits around her as she disappears into the smoke. At last, she reemerges in the quiet ocean alongside of her Grandmother, Betty. Together again they sit; fully realized in the sands of time.

Slather it Up! takes you through an endless and indefinable world of self-exploration and total acceptance. Love breaks down the binary standards set by today’s society and asks us to reconsider what has been ingrained in our hearts. Accompanied by Vigiletti’s eccentric and evocative original score, the duo challenge our mind, body and spirit to evolve and remind us the importance of “Slathering it on thick!"