The Tassel Ten- Pip Stachio
5 March 2026
Your February edition of the Tassel Ten is here, slightly delayed but here none the less.
When we decided to start the Tassel Ten it felt right to start with our two winners from 2025, Winter Greene Mx Burlesque Victoria 2025 being our first and here for February we bring you Pip Stachio, The Apprentease Victoria 2025. Offering us a different perspective on burlesque, masculinity and performance.
This delight of a pintsized human waltzed into our lives as part of the Tit Witchez trio in the very early days of Tassel Thursday. The Tassel team howled with laughter as the trio danced about and twirled ties as makeshift members and swept the floor. showcasing silly camp chaos that we didn’t know we so dearly missed. Flash forward more encounters of them on stage and as the resident stand in man when a man was required for an act, when Domino got the message that they wanted to work on a solo, overjoyed would be an understatement.
On more than one occasion we have uttered praises to the clown gods, not those that twist balloons at birthday parties, or live in sewers but those who study human behaviour and interaction and work on how to portray this on stage in ways that feel absurd yet so intrinsically linked to our shared humanity. Pip is one such clown. There is a level of discipline, knowledge, care and generosity that sits behind the performances of this tiny drag king. Captivating feels like an understatement to their stage presence. It’s training, its dedication and its continuous practice and its damn good. Curated chaos in the best possible way. If you have seen Pips award winning Vampire act you will know what precision in performance is and its impossible not to loose your breath in laughter. Its not just laughter though, its a play on gender, on pop culture and society at large and an important one to make in these current times. As artists we should look at how we connect with and audience, what are we saying but also are they entertained. When Pip Stachio is on the stage … you damn well be you are.
Photo credit Shannon J Shaw, The Apprentease Victoria 2025
1. What was the moment you realised burlesque had its hooks in you?
There was some point when working with The Titwitchez where we realised how important burlesque was to our creative, ridiculous, queer expression. For a show in 2021 my dear friend and fellow titwitch encouraged me to ‘play to my strength’ and create a boyband act. I was a boy possessed, making costumes, listening to music on repeat, dancing at bus stops and that thing flowed out of me like hot lava. This was the moment I realised that burlesque could be playing with gender, crescendoing stupidity and taking off my clothes all at the same time and it was something I wasn’t going to stop doing any time soon.
2. Who is your stage persona, and what parts of your every day existence get to be louder onstage?
Pip is someone I am still getting to know as I spend time with many other characters but I like to think of him as a chameleon with some key parts : big heart, big bulge, big play! I am a drag king, a clown and a burlesque performer which means I perform masculinity and boylesque with an eye to finding jokes, theatricality and connection with audience.
My masculinity gets to be louder as Pip. As a small, mostly femme-passing non-binary person in everyday life, playing with masculinity on stage is freeing and cathartic. I get to take up big space, make fun of power structures that I am disadvantaged by and revel in looking silly, something that people raised as women are often taught not to do. Who knew being gross and hilarious publicly would be the thing that gave me gender euphoria? Himbo rights!
Photo credit Shannon J Shaw, The Apprentease Victoria 2025
3. How do you create your acts, what's the starting point of knowing you are onto something?
I always know I am onto something when I can’t stop giggling at what I am creating. I also work very collaboratively so know there’s juice if I am seeking out people to tell what is on my creative mind.
When working on solo, I mostly work from a costume piece and create from there. I analyse how the costume moves, the colours, the way it makes me want to move, the character it evokes and all the ways that character may move. Character, or form as it might be called in clown, is extremely important to what I create and if there is a strong form, it often demands, with great urgency, to be put on stage. So, I know I am onto something when an act starts urgently pounding on my brain.
4. What are the three integral parts to you creating art?
Clown, drag and tease. In the last six months, I have come to realise these are indivisible for Pip, everything the Titwitchez made and most of the other creative work I do. The contact and play of physical comedy and clown is essential in how I connect with an audience and how an act is built. My art is theatrical and often it is deeply foolish. I experimented with making something that was not about gender, and I FAILED. It was an interesting failure and a helpful one because it taught me gender fuck and drag are integral to the art that I love to make, watch and perform. Tease to me is about building tension and having a good payoff whether or not it's about taking clothes off. Tension and release is deeply important to my creative expression across art forms.
5. Costume is power in burlesque, how do you choreograph a reveal that *means* something?
One of the beginnings in my performing career was in standup comedy which means a sense of tension, timing and punchline was there from the beginning (guess who watched Nanette in 2018?). Additionally, in clown and physical comedy we talk a lot about building to crescendo and timing - this is absolutely linked to how I choose to execute reveals. I am always hunting for the choreography and timing that will bring the biggest comedic payoff. In clown, when something just works, or feels right we often use the French word ‘juste’- it is undeniable that the thing must happen, at that time, in that way. I experiment and rework until I find the most ‘juste’ and silliest reveal possible. I ask others to watch and feedback on this too.
Photo credit Shannon J Shaw , Tit Witchez at Tassel Thursday
6. Which act has changed you the most — and why? (can be your own or others)
In 2018 I saw Dudebox by PO PO MO CO and friends in Melbourne Fringe and it was the first time I was introduced to fierce, feminist, queer clowns and physical comedians. There was drag, character comedy, nudity, feral queer madness and big play. I laughed, until I cried. I had never seen anything like it and I knew immediately I just HAD to do that too. This urgency led me directly to learning from PO PO MO CO legends Kimberley Twiner and Lily Fish and seeking out ways to take my clothes off on stage (here entered burlesque). I have not looked back and am so glad that show entirely renovated what I thought comedy and performance could ever be.
7. How does your work challenge ideas about bodies, sexuality, or who gets to take up space?
Being a trans performer, with a body that has not undergone medical transition, that is often read as feminine, there are certain expectations and pressures I face on what I put up on stage and how I present myself. These pressures are indivisible from the hetero-patriarchal capitalist hellfire in which we live. I have written myself a sort of manifesto to ensure I challenge what I am told and continue expressing myself freely, queerly and openly on stage even when it's tough.
Here is some of it :
There are pressures to shave and not have hair. Pubes are essential to my artform and my queer, trans body. I will not remove hair- this is challenging to some.
There are pressures to perform work that is about my trauma or queerness. I fundamentally refuse. I make work that is about gender euphoria, joy and feeling connected. I make work for queer people that is not necessarily about our queerness but about the joy of the body, dance and naivety. If others have fun too, they’re welcome.
I am allowed to be masculine on stage, even if it is not exactly the norm in burlesque, especially in a body that was not assigned it at birth. If I'm feeling down or stuck, I look to drag kings and things. (Eg There is a great zine just published by drag king Johnny Cocksville that addresses the challenges of masculine performance in a much more articulate way than I can here.) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VKdbubTeiGoO9vOy_4_KsK9LpYfOcSXv/view?usp=sharing
There are pressures to change or obscure the shape of my body more than my dear body can stand. I have tried to bind and strap and tape my massive honkers down. They refuse and I must agree with them, a big titty drag king is hot. Got a problem with boy boobs? Grow up.
Further to the above, there are pressures to conform to ideals of what my body should look like as a non-binary person. I am trans and I am non-binary no matter what my body looks like and putting it on stage and showing this unapologetically is something I will continue to do even if my relationship to physical/ medical transition changes.
I see my duty as a performer, whether as Pip or in my other work (check out the Brunswick East Entertainment Festival! ), is to ensure my body is fully in play and taking up big theatrical space. Doing this feels radical in our current time. When I watch work like this, I forget about the passage of time, I am immersed and my body dances along with the performer. It is an ancient ritual, it asks us to see each other in the present moment. We are in the sacred relationship of audience and performer, we are in community. We are being asked every day to disconnect from each other, to compete, to compare. The act of storytelling with the body is connective and moving and expressing freely as a performer, allows others to do the same.
Photo credit Shannon J Shaw for Tasselmas
8. What’s the hardest truth burlesque has taught you about yourself?
I simply cannot do it all alone as much as I have tried and I actually don’t need to. A dear mentor, Kimberley Twiner, often says ‘we cannot make this work alone’ and she’s right. I actually need people, I need community, I need to ask for help. Collaboration is everything to me. Ensemble is where I began and what I love. Working alone is fundamentally bad for my brain and I make better art with people, with their support around me and mine around them.
9. What are you itching to create next?
As a multi-genre, multi-arts-practice little fool I am itching to create so many things!
More spaces that drag kings and things can find community, opportunity and solidarity.
New acts! The op shop gods have been delivering some truly wild finds recently so there are some interesting and ridiculous things in the pipeline. A filthy mime pasta-making chef? A ballet boy? A jockey? Lets gooooo!
I am really hoping to create something longer form that pushes my theatrical skills - an hour long narrative vampire mime show is feeling particularly itchy right now!
Photo credit Lord media , Whoop Dee Doo Revue
10. Lets end on inspiration, words of advice for those who might feel a little lost in their art at the moment?
I am saying this as much for myself as others but making things that you want an audience to like, that aren’t for you, will always be unsatisfying. Be undeniably yourself and be a little freak about it, you never know where that will take you.
Photo credit Shannon J Shaw at The Apprentease Victoria 2025
If you are not following Pip Stachio you can on instagram HERE