Never Mind the Sequins

What the hell are the Space 1026 kids doing in the Mummers Parade?

by Ryan Creed

Michael T. Regan LIFE IS MUCH BETTER DOWN WHERE IT'S WETTER: Aryon Hoselton (center) and the Vaude-Villains get their sea legs at a December choreography session/sew-a-thon. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

The Space 1026 Mummers brigade is in trouble. It's only their second costume-sewing meeting, but they've already broken two sewing machines and are working on their third. Hillary Rea, a 24-year-old artist, stands over a scrunched wad of fabric trying to salvage her costume after the old Singer she was using mysteriously died.

"I don't know how to sew collars," she cries. "I don't understand!"

"Don't worry!" comforts Sonja Trauss, the brigade's captain. "Every day is a learning day!"

The sewing session takes place on June 3 in Space 1026's Chinatown gallery around an installation of potted, neon-colored cardboard marijuana plants ("a garden of weedly delights"). Eight brigade members, some artists and others employed as "miscellaneous" attempt to stitch costumes using four temperamental sewing machines. The group is breaking needles, cutting fabric incorrectly and accidentally sewing pieces backward.

Every New Year's Day, between 15,000 to 20,000 Philadelphia Mummers march up Broad Street to City Hall wearing ornate, intricately designed costumes. Trauss didn't anticipate that having little to no knowledge of sewing would be a problem; normally it wouldn't be. The Space 1026 artist collective has become the flagship destination for Philadelphia underground art, in part because the artists openly embrace disorder. Their group's installations — which sometimes involve up to 30 artists working in different styles and media — thrive on the often anarchic intersection of collaboration and do-it-yourself ethos. But today it's clear that their experimental artistic methods could make forming a Mummers brigade at best challenging and impossible at worst.

Trauss holds up the first completed costume. Shapeless, oversized and mismatched, it epitomizes the Space 1026 DIY aesthetic, but it is also a tangible contrast to the sparkling, professional outfits expected of a traditional Mummer. Aryon Hoselton, the 1026 brigade's co-captain, sums up the sewing group's reaction:

"They're going to laugh at us! We're the Bad News Bears of the Mummers!"

The New Year's Day Mummers Parade is one of Philadelphia's oldest and most popular traditions, second only to Independence Day. Despite its size, familiarity with the parade is still largely confined to the Delaware Valley. Having roots dating before the Civil War, the parade was officially recognized by the city government in 1901, and its present-day incarnation still shares much with the past: Members of Mummers brigades (largely South Philadelphia men of European descent) wear flamboyant costumes and perform choreographed dances with a rowdy, public drunkenness akin to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Pairing a fringe collective of liberal artists with a group associated with the unionized working class is an unusual combination, but one that parallels other trends from the ongoing reurbanization of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia is in the middle of a nationally publicized urban renaissance. Since the 1950s when the city had about 2 million residents, the population decreased approximately 25 percent to today's 1.5 million, leaving the Center City district with rising unemployment rates, high crime, and deserted buildings and storefronts. But Philadelphia has changed, transforming its gritty urban decay into an idiosyncratic nightlife and arts culture. The Mummers Parade, once exclusive to South Philadelphia, now has a bigger, younger and more diverse audience. The 1026 Mummers — named the Vaude-Villains — are bringing this new face of Philadelphia to a beloved tradition in their own ragtag, seat-of-their-pants manner.

Trauss brushes aside the idea that the Vaude-Villains' involvement in the parade is peculiar or special: "It is an obvious thing to put together. We are people who do crafts and art projects, and then here's a completely other sector of Philadelphia that also has a huge art component, but it's a sector you don't normally think about. We all have art as huge parts of our lives, and we might as well make art together."

Art has defined the Vaude-Villains from their conception. Through New Year's Day of 2006, Space 1026's members created and installed a sprawling Star Wars-inspired Ewok Village at the Institute of Contemporary Art. The two-story, rainbow-colored installation was a massive success for the collective, receiving accolades from The New York Times and Art Forum. Trauss, a friend and unofficial member of 1026, saw the work of her colleagues at the turn of the new year and made a connection:

"I got to see close up that people working together can finish a giant project. My friends and I were at the Mummers parade, and we were like, 'I want to be a Mummer.' And I said, 'Honestly, we can!'"

Trauss, a 25-year-old Germantown native, operates with the conviction and unpredictability made possible by either total self-confidence or utter obliviousness to societal norms and expectations. She is fitness-obsessed, dressing almost exclusively in fluorescent unitards and windbreakers from the 1980s; she performs in high-concept art productions throughout the city; and she is often seen at the Last Drop coffee shop studying advanced calculus to complete her prerequisite classes for a Ph.D. program in economics. Trauss couldn't start a brigade alone, and she found a partner in Hoselton, a 31-year-old graphic designer at 1026 and the straight-man complement to her unconventional temperament.

"Aryon wanted to do it, which really ended up being the most important thing."

"Trauss is crazy," laughs Hoselton, "but only she could pull this together."

With the collective's experience creating art installations, the Vaude-Villains knew they could put something together in time for New Year's Day, but their initial ambition and enthusiasm didn't take the realities of forming a Mummers club — whose upstart requirements were beyond the means of working artists — into consideration.

First, one must decide which of the four types of Mummer clubs to join. In ascending order of costume and choreography complexity are the comics, fancies, string bands and fancy brigades. The more advanced Mummers require ambitious time commitments and financial resources, so the planning, recruiting and fundraising must begin almost immediately after the club is formed. The Vaude-Villains chose to become comics, the least demanding division.

The organization and vocabulary of Mummer divisions are arbitrary and convoluted. Comics are organized by club, and then subdivided into separate brigades. Each club must have at least two brigades, and brigades must have at least 25 Mummers dressed either as the traditional wench — a skirt, wig with ponytails, and gold shoes — or in costume for a one- to two-minute dance routine to be performed at the designated performance space. The comics are the original Mummers and march first in the parade. They hold a unique position as the least popular Mummers, taking a backseat to the performance bombast of the fancy brigades and string bands, but they are also the most omnipresent. After their performances, the colorful mobs of comics roam the streets as spirited symbols of New Year's revelry.

The obstacles to starting a Mummers brigade are not only practical, but also psychological. In their hundred-year history, the Mummers have earned a reputation of aggressive racism, misogyny, homophobia and classism. The criticisms are not unfounded. Black-face was a popular costuming theme until it was banned in 1964, and women were barred from performing until 1975. However, it is the intimidation resulting from "ownership" of the Mummers Parade by mostly straight, white, blue-collar men — many of whom are carrying on a decades-old family tradition — and a legacy of the small-but-vocal minority of threateningly intoxicated, slur-throwing Mummers let loose in the city streets that keep most Philadelphians as onlookers instead of participants.

Taking an iconoclastic perspective, the Vaude-Villains saw through this aspect of the Mummers to find an abundance of untapped irony.

"The machismo that goes along with wearing dresses, and in reality some of those people are absurdly homophobic," explains Kate Legere, an elementary school art teacher and new brigade member. "I walk out of my apartment last year on New Year's Day and there are these two guys dressed as Mummers holding parasols yelling, 'You faggot!' and I'm like, 'You're wearing a dress!'"

That sense of absurdity carried over when it came time to choose the Vaude-Villains' theme.

"Our theme was going to be 'Eaglize It,'" said Trauss. "It was going to be all Eagles stuff combined with all pot stuff. But there'd be a lot of families, and we decided we probably couldn't talk about pot."

Instead the group settled on "Philadelphia 2025," a faux commentary on global warming. By the year 2025, the rising sea levels will flood Philadelphia, and Mummers will have to parade up Broad Street with fish, penguins, beavers, otters and mermaids that have overrun the city.

Trauss originally wanted to form a comics club and expected little, if any, help or advice from other Mummers — the clubs present themselves as secret societies closed off to the public. Her experience was just the opposite. When she called Murray Comic Club President Rich Porco looking for information on how to begin, he invited her and her brigade to join his club rather than be burdened with the costs of forming an entirely new club herself.

The Murray Comic Club is the city's largest and most renowned comics club, winning first place in the parade's comics division for the last nine years. Captains of the club's 11 brigades meet the first Thursday of every month in their South Philadelphia headquarters to discuss parade requirements and plan upcoming events. It's a boys club of archetypical Mummers — tough-looking, white, middle-aged men — and throughout each meeting they sit in the pale blue multipurpose room loudly ribbing each other.

"We don't trust this one," yelled one Mummer, pointing at Hoselton from across the room. It was the club's kick-off meeting and he sat isolated in the corner away from the other members. The room howled at the new kid. "We think he's a narc!"

The Vaude-Villains lack an organized protocol for their brigade meetings. They are disorderly, sparsely attended, and they usually begin with a rundown of the previous night's drunken mischief. The Murray Club meeting was run tightly. Once the brigade captains were seated, Porco called for silence and the club stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance. There were announcements of recent deaths, a donation drive for service men and women in Iraq, and an information run-down of recent parade developments.

Hoselton quickly scribbled down notes, trying to understand the rules behind parade badges, starting times and general conduct.

Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"They have so much history and experience with this," he threw up his arms. "No one is coming to our meetings, and we have no idea what the fuck we're doing."

Some Mummers sitting nearby saw his anxious note-taking and offered their counsel in thick, South Philadelphia accents.

"You may not have enough time to doos what yous want to do. So just go and get your feet wet. Make sure you guys aren't showing your dungarees ... that looks ridic-a-lous!"

"Ha, and good luck getting people to come," chimed in another. "It's just us doing it until the December rush."

Hoselton needed to hear that the Vaude-Villains weren't hopeless. Even established brigades have ongoing trouble with attendance, and while the myth of Mummers spending a full year planning their performances is mostly true — at least the theme is chosen a year before the parade — most comics are like the Vaude-Villains and don't start preparations until October. Hoselton's biggest concern, though, was still the costumes. Pinned to the front wall of the Murray Comic Club is a wench costume and parasol. Its tailored pleats and glossy fabric contrasted the dowdy pastel pink cotton robe the Vaude-Villains completed the week before. Hoselton was told that the use of professional costumers and tailors is common, but he and Trauss knew they would never be able to raise the money necessary to make 25 custom outfits.

Most Mummers brigades raise money with formal dinners and parties, but to fund the fabric and materials needed for their march, the Vaude-Villains did what they do best: make art. The first art event took the form of a 1960s Dating Game. The show was not billed as a fundraiser; it was "A Mummer Happening," with performance artist Rose Luardo dressed as a Groucho Marx-esque host who led two contestants — strangers the collective fished from myspace.com — each through a round of questions to eligible fixtures of Philadelphia nightlife, including musicians Amanda Blank and Mike Robinson. The next fundraisers were a food exhibition of edibles created using mythical creatures as ingredients, such as unicorn burgers and gnome gnoshes, and the 24-hour sew-a-thon where Space 1026 members webcasted musical and art performances while various Vaude-Villains sewed costumes in the background.

The Vaude-Villains first used the raised money to learn how to sew, and they hired Carrie Collins, a seamstress for the R.E.Load custom messenger bag company and Fabric Horse proprietor, to teach a series of four classes. From their novice beginnings, the Vaude-Villains began working the machines without breaking them, they had a system for cutting fabric, and they started putting together recognizable outfits using vintage McCalls patterns of penguin, fish head and mermaid costumes. They weren't perfect — the first completed penguin costume had legs sewn too close together so that the wearer would have to waddle the parade's two-mile route taking 6-inch steps — but with a few quick fixes, the costumes looked finished and professional.

"Attendance is still a problem, but we have some pieces that are getting people really excited," said Hoselton one week before the 24-hour sew-a-thon fundraiser. "Everyone wants to be a fish head!"

Next on the Vaude-Villains' list was to nail down their parade performance. Trauss enlisted the help of underground dancer Daniele Strawmyre to choreograph the routine, and she held a series of "Mummer Movement Workshops" of quirky dance exercises such as throwing an invisible dodge ball and PG-13 rhythmic pelvic thrusts.

"Before I map out the dance," she explained, "I want to get an understanding of how they move: to develop a theme based around their own natural movements."

The performance was then set to a musical mash-up created by Brian Curtis of the DJ duo Caps & Jones of summer pop classics like "Cruel Summer" and "Summer in the City" to fit with the brigade's post-apocalyptic theme of global warming.

"I had him replace the Fresh Prince's 'Summertime' with an Animal Collective song so that the mix is more 'us,'" said Hoselton. "The whole thing is coming together: the costumes with the dance with the music. I think we might actually have a chance to win a prize!"

On New Year's Day 2001, the anarchists at Spiral Q Puppet Theater set the precedent for left-of-center comics brigades: They marched up Broad Street protesting the new McDonald's franchise openings in West Philadelphia and were disqualified for including in their skit the corporate logos they were mocking (corporate sponsorship is barred from the parade). However, the Vaude-Villains' involvement is not about making a statement; it is instead a way to artistically bond to a folk tradition.

"This is our tradition as Philadelphians," said Trauss. "I don't care what we add to it.I care about what it adds to my life."

The Vaude-Villains aren't as contradictory to the Mummers Parade as one would expect. In many art circles, appropriating working-class styles of old T-shirts and tattoos has become so de rigueur that any Vaude-Villain could fit seamlessly into another Mummer brigade; but the Vaude-Villains have a much deeper connection to the Mummers beyond attire. Space 1026 members, like the members of other Mummers brigades, have created their own community through which they define themselves. The collective has 32 members of artists who work on their own projects and have their own personal lives, but they build a sense of identity by sharing values with other members and participating in the artistic process together. Their manifesto: "for each other, for our own kind."

"1026 has this galvanizing energy for us," said Vaude-Villain Taryn Hickey, an employee at Urban Outfitters. "It is more than just a physical space."

Similarly, the Murray Club has 11 independent brigades; however, the monthly meetings for the parade are a pretext to express their own shared ethnic, social and familial traditions. They tell stories together, laugh about past Mummers events, and show support in times of tragedy. For some Murray Club members, the parade is all they've ever known. Chris Moscatelli, 45, of the Golden Slipper New Years Brigade, has paraded for 35 years.

"I went up with my father. You know I've been doing the parade my whole life. It's something me and my friends do every year, it's something now that I enjoy taking my son up with. It's a family thing."

Jerry Murray, 56, of the Wild Rovers brigade, started strutting when he was 10. "What's funny is that kids start marching in the parade, and then college comes and they stop. But they always come back and march with their family."

"It's a Philly tradition but it's still a family tradition," said Bob Trama, 53, who is celebrating his 50th year in the parade. His brigade's theme is "50 Years of Mummery," and the performance will be almost a live scrapbook of his family history. But in his 50 years, Trama's enthusiasm has changed as comics clubs, who are first to march, progressively lose their audience of South Philadelphia neighbors.

"We don't get to see nobody. We put a lot of work in our show. Keep it the way it was. It's the city. They bring it down. I enjoy doing it, but they took the fun out of it."

Comics are nostalgic for the old days, when brigades marched through crowded streets, popping in and out of house parties and getting in the occasional fist fight. Television is often blamed for keeping people indoors and for systematizing the rowdy, free-flowing nature of the parade to fit within the program schedule. Some Mummers blame the shorter parade route, which now starts north of South Philadelphia on Washington Avenue, while others resent the popularity of the string band competition as overshadowing the comics' existence.

"The first thing [people] ask you is what string band you're in ... and it pisses me off!" said Mike Stermel, the Murray Club vice president.

The parade's dwindling audience is most likely an inevitable consequence of the city itself shrinking. In the 1950s when Philadelphia's population peaked, an impressive, though most likely overestimated, 1 million people attended the parade. Gradually the numbers dropped with the city's population to an all-time low in the 1990s of 70,000. Recent estimates put the audience at a healthy 130,000 to 150,000 — attendance reached 250,000 in 2006 due to the unseasonably warm weather — but the parade lost its edge.

"The city's changed so the crowds have changed," reasoned Moscatelli of the Golden Slipper brigade. "People who were living here moved away, so there's not as many people. It's a much cleaner parade. Overall I think it's a nicer parade. It's a little more family-friendly and friendly for outsiders for the people who come in and watch."

According to Leo Dignam, Mummers Parade director, "It's getting larger — part of that is the gentrification of South Philadelphia. More people are moving in and more families are moving in. It's a great family tradition to walk up Broad Street to watch the parade."

How the Mummers Parade adapts to the changing cultural landscape of Philadelphia is still unclear. In her book The Philadelphia Mummers: Building Community Through Play, Patricia Masters writes about the challenges of adaptation: "New immigrant groups and distress neighborhoods that lack both a tradition of parading and the organizations required to raise money may see the barriers to joining the Mummers as insurmountable. They are also likely to share the perception that the Mummers are a closed community. The Mummers themselves ... they have yet to take on the responsibility for sharing their expertise in organizing and performing with other groups."

The fancy and string band divisions do require steep start-up requirements, but Trauss explains that was not the Vaude-Villains' experience with the comics.

Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

"They were really helpful and really nice. I think Mummers are really psyched when people want to be Mummers because it's kind of a dying tradition. They really do want us all to succeed."

Murray Club members were enthusiastic about the Vaude-Villains joining, heartened at seeing a new generation taking the parade into the future.

"I think it's great that they're starting a group," said Stermal. "Maybe the tradition will come back. Their group has family and this'll become their tradition."

Hoselton hurries around Space 1026, hopping back and forth between clearing out tables for the dance rehearsal space and fixing the "media center" for the live webcast of the Vaude-Villains' 24-hour sew-a-thon. The event is the group's last fundraiser before Christmas to raise money, and it is also a show of Vaude-Villain solidarity to finish costumes and to tighten the dance performance. Nerves are running high.

"The Internet is down, the power is down," mutters Hoselton, still fidgeting with three iBooks to fix the webcast's technical difficulties.

Outside, Trauss airs her concerns over the performance to Strawmyre, the choreographer, over a midafternoon cigarette break.

"We're all amateurs! Don't do anything complicated!"

"Don't worry. My approach? Easy! Easy to execute, but awesome to see!"

"And the songs. The mix has five songs and that's too many! I like 'Octopus's Garden,' but I hate that Nelly song."

"You're golden. A lot of cheerleading half-time performances have songs mashed up together."

"Yeah, but those suck!"

Trauss was right about her brigade being amateurs. Strawmyre stands in front of 10 point-people, many of whom were complaining of hangovers moments earlier, trying to teach them the basic choreography so that they can lead the remaining 20 Mummers in the routine. She tries to make it simple — she describes the moves as "the lasso," "the Nu-Charleston" and "the don't kick the baby" — and the Vaude-Villains stumble, trip and run into each other. Their bumbling performance keeps with Space 1026's disheveled reputation, but it doesn't bode well for their New Year's Day première.

One cause for concern is the Vaude-Villains' place in the parade. Murray Comic Club is the first club to march in the parade, and as a new brigade, the Vaude-Villains will earn their stripes by marching very early in the parade (they're scheduled to go fourth). They'll have less time to prepare, fewer spectators on the street watching them, and their performance will help set the judging standard for the remaining comics.

At 9 a.m. the following day, the sew-a-thon is still going apace, with 15 Vaude-Villains hand-sewing octopus tentacles, ornamenting fish head costumes and tailoring wench outfits.

"Last night was awesome," says Vaude-Villain Tip Flannery, circles under his eyes from 18 consecutive hours of sewing. "A lot of people came to show their support and the webcast shows that we have a huge Internet following of one person!"

"Failure is NOT an option! Everything is going exactly as planned!" cuts in Trauss, the previous day's dread transformed into go-get-'em creativity.

She and Hoselton are finally seeing the result of 11 months of planning. The Vaude-Villains have 32 members committed to march in the parade, 25 costumes complete, and the seemingly impossible feat of walking side by side with a community always rumored to be impenetrable becoming a reality. The two captains wouldn't say that the Vaude-Villains found inspiration in tradition or that the Mummers Parade is their chance to participate in the evolving legacy of Philadelphia, but as artists they both agree that the process of being Mummer is as important as the parade.

"We really just wanted to be a part of something special with our friends," said Hoselton. "We've been saying this at 1026 the whole time: Do it yourself, but with other people."

(rscreed@gmail.com)

The Vaude-Villains will line up at 8 a.m. to march in the New Year's Day Mummers Parade, Tue., Jan. 1, 9 a.m.