Erin Markey is a Brooklyn-based writer/performer who creates musically theatrical events. Her solo musical, Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail, toured nationally with the 2008 Sex Worker’s Art Show and her blues opera, Looking for Limbo, co-written with Joseph Keckler, was included in the 2007 Lincoln Center Director’s Laboratory. Her work has appeared at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Joe’s Pub, Performance Studies International, Leslie/Lohman Gallery, Here Arts Space, Galapagos Art Space, Club Wötever (London), and frequently at Dixon Place. She is currently developing a new telemusical, Dardy Family Home Movies by Stephen Sondheim, and is in the process of making Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail into a screenplay.

Press:

“Performance artist Erin Markey started out with comedy, talking about trying to support herself after college by becoming a stripper. Markey had a cloud of puckish hair and dark-painted eyes, and she explained that the strip club had asked her to pick a stripper name. What she chose, she explained, was Bridget, her sister’s confirmation name and the patron saint of childbirth. At first this seemed a little sacrilegious. But then Markey started to sing. ¶ She was topless, in gold panties and leather boots, arching her body around the golden pole. It was incredibly sexy, but it was more than that. She was singing about Bridget, the saint of childhood, and how she spread her legs, as Markey, too, slid up the pole and spread her legs wide. She kept climbing higher, looking at the audience with that sultry exhibitionist gaze but also reaching up, aiming for something more. ¶ It was thrilling and thought-provoking and beautiful, and it was pushing beyond all these into something else, a kind of constant striving. ¶That didn’t just count as art, I realized, spellbound; it embodied it.”  –The Harvard Crimson

“Erin Markey gets guffaws on virtually every line…” –Backstage.com

“Every single one of [Markey's] lines received a huge laugh from the audience. Silly voices are a dime a dozen, but this was a real performance worthy of the warm response.” –NY Theatre

“wickedly funny” –The NY Blade

“There are probably no envelopes Ms. Markey hasn’t pushed to the tearing point, but the effort always seems to come out funny and strangely beautiful.” –Grand Street News

“But perhaps the very strongest and most truly Brechtian moment comes at the hand of Erin Markey… fiercely eccentric, almost androgynous roughness…indulges in some very low comedy indeed.” –KDHX

“The standout performance is by Erin Markey…” –TheatreMania.

“Lovely” –Gay City News

“Vampy” – SPIN

“Brave” –Artforum

“Art Sexpot” –HX

photo: Kristyn O’Reilly