Death Cabaret for Cuties

Swellco & Swellco are biting chickens and killing hookers at the end of the world.

by Holly Otterbein

Neal Santos

How do you still shock people, when 9/11 and the Holocaust, rape and murder, have become clichéd joke fodder? When John Waters has conceded that he's too tame for today's 9-year-old? When a thing like the Internet exists?

You throw a bestiality-themed party. You install two stripper poles, a swinging trapeze and some blood-splattered shower curtains in your house, the same house you presumably invite your parents to for the holidays. You do a number at Bob & Barbara's wherein you gnaw on a cow's actual heart. You do another in which you tear off a dead chicken's head with your mouth. You make a website catering to "can," a fetish that celebrates "a damsel in distress being prepared as a meal." 

That's the road Swellco & Swellco has taken, anyway.

"We thought: What do people never joke about? We want to do a show about it," says Swellco & Swellco member Meagan Rumberger. "And of course, that's bestiality."

Rumberger is lounging in the Kensington headquarters of Swellco & Swellco, a one-year-old troupe of clowns, burlesque dancers, puppeteers, hypnotists and filmmakers, which includes everyone from drag cabaret veteran Needles Jones to taxidermy artist Beth Beverly. Robert Brown, the group's leader, is wearing a sober black suit and a starched red button-down, but manages to still look odd. A blonde on the ground next to him is buttoning up her bustier. On the wall, there's a rasterized image of the famous photograph of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl running naked from a napalm attack. A fat man in the kitchen is dressed like Elvis.

And Brown is musing, as he often does, on the decay of man.

"I generally feel like things are really miserable out there," he says, sneering. "Life has gotten really, really shitty. The empire's burning. Things are falling apart. And if that's the case, you might as well just have fun and indulge all your urges."

Indeed, that's Swellco & Swellco's credo: The world is ending, so throw a party. Though the group has held only three events thus far — the aforementioned bestiality bash, an amateur go-go contest raising awareness about "puppet persecution," and a screening of the film Dead Hooker in a Trunk — it's already developed a reputation befitting people with such a hedonistic philosophy. At the "Anti-Bestiality Educational Awareness Outreach Charity Mixer," a fight broke out among the security guards themselves. Tables and microphones were demolished. One performer whipped out his penis, which was covered in fake blood.

There are high hopes for the upcoming events, too: For an October birthday soirée, the troupe is planning to obtain a petting zoo — or at the very least, a "furry zoo," says Rumberger. Also, as part of its monthly movie series headed by former TLA manager Greg Christie, Swellco & Swellco will be screening exploitation films like Stingray Sam and another by the makers of Tokyo Gore Police and The Machine Girl.

This is all good fun, but does it mean anything? Is Swellco & Swellco nothing but grown-up Suicide Girls and gothic Merry Pranksters? Or does it portend something that so many people are signing on to the troupe's doomsday worldview? Swellco & Swellco already has 800-plus Facebook fans. They've broken attendance records at Bob & Barbara's, and are, as a result, on the lookout for a new venue. Recently, some members were even in talks with A&E about filming their own reality show. (That fell through, however.)

Christie, the film programmer, argues that the group is popular because it can wake people up from modern life's funk. Perhaps such extremism is what it takes these days.

"In the wake of Netflix, it's been nearly impossible to get people away from their laptops," he says. "But if something's going to get them away, it's going to be a topless burlesque dancer biting off a chicken's head."

He also believes there's a reason that Swellco & Swellco is catching on in Philadelphia, specifically.

"When you look into the history of the city, it's really a dark history. There's a lot underneath the surface," says Christie. Likewise, the group attracts Philly artists who are "involved with more mainstream performance acts, but underneath it they have a burning desire to go a little bit more extreme. I program films. Normally I would be a little nervous about showing Dead Hooker in a Trunk and all the potentially misogynistic connotations of it ... but when I work with Swellco & Swellco, I'm free to be myself."

But is Swellco & Swellco misogynistic? On its website swellco2000.com, there are countless images of bloody, scantily clad girls. At the most recent film screening, they held a dead hooker look-alike contest. On their Facebook page, a Swellco & Swellco fan reports, "I LOVE girls pumped fulla' formaldahyde!!!! [sic] they don't ask questions and they can't say no!"

Jim Black, a hypnotist and Brown's right-hand man, denies it. "If Greg came to us with Dead Construction Worker in a Trunk, that would be great. ... We would exploit anyone, regardless of sex, regardless of religion."

Perhaps. After all, there are a million ways to construe Swellco & Swellco's work, not the least of which is that it's all one giant mindfuck.

Another widely held interpretation is that the troupe is a parody of a sinister corporation, with artists referring to each other as "board members" and fans as "customers." "Corporations are a lot more evil than they present themselves to be. This is a corporation that's evil to the extreme," says Black.

Without skipping a beat, Brown asks me, "Do you want mushrooms?"

I decline, but stick around for a while. A lot of wine is drunk. People play with animal masks and balloons, and smoke cigarettes on the deck. A few girls take off their tops, as does one guy. Funny photos are taken. There's cake. At the very least, Swellco & Swellco knows how to throw a party. I'd swing by if the world were ending.

(holly.otterbein@citypaper.net)

To learn more about Swellco & Swellco, visit swellco2000.com.