By Dave Dakota

There is a new craze in the underground theater scene in New York! If you are a fan of strippers and Phantom of the Opera, then this is a must see for you. This new underground version of Phantom of the Opera performed by some of New York’s most well-known female strippers has a huge buzz surrounding it! The shows have been popping up on social media at different theaters around the city and have that Rolling Stones type mystique when they play a club on a Tuesday. Somehow, every show ends up sold out. People who have seen it have gone back numerous times! I talked to one of the founders of the show who did not want me to print her name. So we will call this Boston native, Phantom Girl for the sake of this article.

DD: So why do you not want to go on record and let me print your name in this article?

PG: We decided when we started this show to keep the mystique. As soon as people get too many details then the show is not as special. With zero marketing or promotion, the grass roots movement has gotten this show to become the hottest play in New York City. We are so excited. We are grossing more money than a lot of Broadway plays. So we prefer to keep this thing underground.

DD: Was the vision to make this an underground thing or did it kind of just happen?

PG: It kind of just happened. Our first few shows were promoted and we started noticing that I Twitter page was getting thousands of new followers every week. So one night we tried something out and did an impromptu show at this old theater in Tribeca. Doors were at 11PM. By 9 we had a line around the block. It was crazy! The next night we were having some problems with the theater that we originally did the show in, so we decided to move the show to this old theater in Tribeca. A friend of mine was the booking agent for a theater in Brooklyn and asked if we wanted to bring our show there. We did the same vague tweet mentioning the theater and we had another huge line. So we have been doing 3-5 shows a week at different theaters all around New York. It’s really exciting.  The formula seems to work. People like the cat and mouse game.

DD: Well I saw one of your shows in Manhattan and I must say that I get why it has drawn such a fan base. This is like no other play I have ever seen. There are some graphic sexual scenes and of course a ton of nudity. Is that the reason that you keep it underground? Because this thing has Broadway or Vegas hit written all over it!

PG: Like I was saying earlier, we are more profitable than a lot of Broadway shows and by doing it on our terms; we are able to get a bigger piece of the pie. Also keep in mind that we spend zero dollars on marketing! Most plays take into account millions of dollars to market their show. All of that money we are able to put back in our show. Not to mention it is expensive to keep moving such a huge production to theater to theater. We aren’t complaining. If the people keep coming out then we will continue to make the show bigger and better! The minute we become mainstream, we will lose our appeal. We don’t want people from Cleveland visiting New York to come see our show on a whim. We want the taste makers of New York to come out and have an experience like no other. We are truly a show like nothing else they will ever see!

DD: Hopefully the ride doesn’t stop! This is a really exciting show, and I am glad that I got to see it live!

PG: That is the plan! Thank you for your support!

Exotic dancers are more popular than Luke Skywalker, that according to a survey for the most popular conventions in the country. I talked to Lizzy Cordovea who is the organizer for one of the biggest Exotic Dancer conventions in the country.

VL: Wow! Bigger than Luke Skywalker! You must be proud

LC: Ha! Yeah I was shocked. I figured that we had no chance of beating the nerds, but I forgot that we have a lot of nerdy fans too (laughs).

VL: Your conventions average four hundred thousand fans a weekend. With your $20 entrance fee, that is 8 million dollars a weekend. Why didn’t I think of this!

LC: Yeah but we started out very small, and it has gotten bigger and bigger each year.

VL: How did you take this from a VFW hall to a huge convention center?

LC: Social media has really taken us to the next level. Each of the Exotic Dancers has their own followers, so getting all of their thousands of followers in the same place has made this thing huge! Also we are by far the best convention around! Our people actually come back. We provide an experience like no other!

VL: I have talked to a lot of the performers, and they seem to really enjoy your convention. What do you do differently?

LC: Well you mentioned how much money we made earlier in the interview. We believe that putting money back into our conventions is what will make them successful in the future. We pay all of the Exotic dancers a large fee just for coming that they get on top of whatever merchandise they sell. Other conventions don’t give them that money up from. A lot of them actually charge people to set up their tables. We would rather pay more money and have the best here than have a second rate convention. It is an investment the way we look at it. We want the performers, and the guests to leave wanting more! We also provide free meals and lots of special V.I.P events. We have really created the convention that we always wanted to go to.

VL: You guys have Exotic Dancers dancing for the entire weekend. Explain how that adds to the popularity!

LC: Well we have a full blown strip club at our convention. That completely separates us from all of the other conventions. Some guys just hang out there all day. And since we have the best Exotic Dancers in the country, we have the ladies rotate as feature performers. It’s like taking all of the traveling exotic dancers and having them in one place! It is also a good break in the action. Sitting at a table for eight hours taking pictures and signing autographs gets very boring, so it gives them a good chance to break it up.

VL: I must say that this is the best convention that I have ever been to. I wish you nothing but success in the future.