At 5 p.m. on a Sunday, Ditto is standing at the bar hunched over half a sandwich and a plastic container of pasta salad — a “late breakfast” he says. The stage manager at John Henry’s has been there for at least an hour rearranging chairs and setting up lights and sound for the night’s revue.  
He lights up a cigarette. 
“Bar rules don’t apply when we’re closed,” he says, obviously put off at having to explain this. “I’d kill myself if I couldn’t smoke in here.”
Ditto has been essentially producing the show since its conception six years back, taking on all roles from stage prop to emcee. 
“I wish you could come next week,” he says.  “That’s when all my girls are going to be here, but a few should be here any second for rehearsals.”
Ditto ditches his flat bill, t-shirt and jeans in the evening for a pinstripe waistcoat and a slick comb-over — a host’s ensemble.  Even his gauges have been steezed up with blue and crystal rhinestones.  
Despite his apprehension, the show turns out fine with a good portion of Eugene residents coming out to supplement their weekend debauchery. The show isn’t what one might expect from either a burlesque or a straight-up strip show. Calling it a combination of the two wouldn’t even be appropriate.
“I’m one who does all kinds,” says Dani, aka Sin DeVil as she sips on a shot, beer back. “So I’ll do the ‘old school’ classic strip and I’ll also do very modern songs. So there’s a very wide spectrum.”
 Loki, another performer, is up on stage with a mouthful of fake pills as Queens of the Stone Age singer Josh Homme drones through the speakers,  “We get these pills to swallow/ How they stick/ In your throat/ Tastes like gold.”
She doesn’t take her top off, to her boyfriend’s relief. 
“They make us keep our bottoms on,” says DeVil.  “I like that; it distinguishes us from a strip tease.”
In this tenuous middle ground between performance art and a strip tease, the girls have an opportunity to create something entirely different from traditional burlesque. 
“I do a lot of shows up in Portland and I get a lot of ideas from them,” says Kittie Katrina, the longest standing performer at the show. “They’re mostly classic burlesque, though, and they really focus on a lot of the costuming, where I think we stick to having the songs be a lot more modern.”
That modern twist is what’s known now as “neo-burlesque.” It includes anything from the classic strip tease to mini-dramas or comedies. 
Taylor, a performer with a background in theater at the University, incorporates her interest in musical theater with her Sunday night performances.   
“I finally found a way to take my favorite parts of theater and throw away the shit I don’t like,” she says.  
Brooklyn Jay Liota, bartender and regular emcee who looks something like a Viking metal frontman, also thinks the program deviates greatly from traditional burlesque.
“(The show is) definitely not what the definition of what burlesque would be,” he says, his bear-paw of a hand thoughtfully stroking his beard. “It’s totally not that. It’s more of our version of it, more of what the crowd would want to see.”
By this time, Kittie Katrina is performing the last part of the final set to Marilyn Manson’s “The Beautiful People,” waving a white boa around to the heavy guitar distortions and fast drum track. For the performers, their time on the stage means freedom: freedom from day jobs, obligation and even persona. After all, burlesque is an art form and a mode of expression. But it’s the uniqueness of the stage that adds a different dynamic.  
“It’s a way to let your alter ego out.  You get to be a whole different person. You get to portray yourself as you want to be seen,” says Meridian.  “When it comes down to it, most of us are taking our clothes off up there, so the more interesting we can make it the better.”
DeVil, who’s also a tattoo artist at Area 51 Tattoo and Salon, finds using the show as a creative outlet is much different than skin art.
“It’s a night where I can be myself. I can be rude. I can be whatever I want,” says DeVil. 
The freedom of the stage is also shared by the emcees who play an equal role in the shows; sometimes, as Ditto mentioned, they even serve as props for the girls or assist in their performance.  
“As an emcee it’s definitely different. I’m more of a character I guess. Or a train wreck, one or the other,” Liota says with a hearty chuckle.  
The night ends with Katrina’s dance and people begin leaving or crowding the pool tables and bar to get their last kicks in. A belligerently wasted chef wants to check his kitchen knives at the back coat check, but finds they take cash only in the back.  He puts up a verbal fight, but shrinks away as the burly figure of bouncer J. Wynn Cronk approaches him.  
“Just a normal night,” Cronk says.   
Soon the lights go down and everyone begins to mosey out. After six years, Liota is still shocked at how many people make it out and that it’s been able to continue and grow. “Everyone keeps coming back,” he says. 
But as he reminisces, he laughs and asks, “What else are you going to do on a Sunday in Eugene?”
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