The Ruby's Pop-Up Peepshow Project

-INTRODUCTION-

We are so excited to announce the debut of the world’s first-ever mobile Peepshow! Ruby’s Pop-Up Peepshow is an amazing new concept and the perfect way to bring sassy and classy entertainment to the masses in a neo-COVID world. With its unique design, the mobile Peepshow can travel to any location and provide a safe and socially-distanced experience for everyone. It's the perfect solution for enjoying some much-needed entertainment in times of uncertainty and mystery. Expose yourself, risk-free, to our cheeky performances. We need your support to help us create this one-of-a-kind experience!

This Go Fund Me is to support Ruby’s Pop-Up Peepshow Project, an idea lovingly fostered for many years. This project is brought to you by the same woman behind Ruby Entertainments and Events. As Ruby, Sarah is an innovative visionary who has owned her own Entertainment company for more than 10 years... fearlessly recreating the ritual of Bachelor Party Culture by combining sex positivity with consent through a playful platform of dance, connection, and touch. We believe that sexy, light-hearted, body/skin/age/gender/positive performances deserve a platform… and we call this “practicing radical joy”.

Music is medicine. Dance is medicine. And celebrating the beauty of diversity has the power to call us all back home to our own bodies with self-love.

-THE NEED-

We are looking to raise enough money to cover the start-up costs of Ruby’s Pop-Up Peepshow and include the first year of annual operating costs that will usher us into a new era.

Paying performers is important to Ruby and valuing the people who put themselves “out there” has always been a top priority. Additionally, being a company that strongly believes in sex worker rights means we honour the time and efforts of our performers and the diversity of experience they bring to the table.

Your generous donation will be used for the expenses involved with performer fees, liability insurance, costumes, festival admissions, media and marketing, recruitment, professional development, team building, transportation (truck rental and fuel), and more.

We are currently in the works of scheduling performances across western Canada but our ultimate hope is to take the Peepshow coast to coast! Project manager, finance manager, tour director, and media team are all roles we want to fund with this campaign.

Furthermore, we want to recruit an auditions panel of diverse backgrounds to ensure our shows are hitting all the marks of representation, as well as consultants, choreographers, dramaturges and designers. Those are just some of the department heads we require to knock Ruby’s Pop-Up Peepshow Project out of the park!

Lastly, we want profits to take a backseat and to make our performances easy to access and low barrier. For this inaugural year, we will be performing at The National Sex Work Assembly in Edmonton May 2-5th, with possible pop-ups in Kelowna and Kamloops on either side of the conference. We are also pleased to announce our involvement with Victoria’s epic July 1st event “Drag Ball”, where we will help kick off Pride and pop-up to benefit Hustle, a support group for masculine-identified sex workers. Our dance card will continue to be a veritable mix of municipal Pride celebrations, music festivals, and events that benefit and bring public awareness to non-profits that support sex workers and other marginalized groups.

We need your help to make this dream a reality! Your generosity will ensure we bring our unique message as far as we can imagine.

-MEET RUBY-

Sarah Smith, Bimbo with multiple personalities.

View Sarah's Spoken Word Performance Bimbo >

As an advocate and activist for sex workers' rights, she worked for over 8 years at Peers Victoria Resources Society, doing everything from coordinating the Drop-in Centre to various leadership roles to speaking about services and stigma through public education.

As Ruby, Sarah is an innovative visionary who has owned her own Entertainment company for over 10 years... fearlessly recreating the ritual of Bachelor Party Culture by combining sex positivity with consent through a playful platform of dance, connection, and touch.

But that’s not all! With a BA in Gender Studies, she is the perfect mix of tits, wits, and glitz. As Ginger Kittens, she is an accomplished burlesque dancer in an award-winning troupe, The Cheesecake Burlesque Revue. She is also an accomplished spoken word poet and playwright.

Sarah believes sex work is a noble calling and will continue to fight for the decriminalization of the trade and the human rights of its workers until all sex workers feel safe, heard, understood and valued in our society. No Justice no peace.

-ARTIST STATEMENT-

People are pleasure! Ruby's Pop-Up Peepshow Project is about practicing radical joy in a world that often leaves us feeling sad, afraid, and overwhelmed…

Community, celebration, empowerment, passion, positivity!

Ruby’s Peepshow is a sophisticated pop-up for the senses, a petite carnival compelling viewers to interact with sex(y)work, activism, and a diversity of performances by immersing them in our kaleidoscopic experience.

Innovative and interactive performance art such as drag, burlesque, and erotic dance all share a common thread: in essence a cathartic and therapeutic experience for the artist and audience alike. It is about revealing more than skin and body parts, it is about the stripping away of layers of social mores and expectations. It is about truly living in the moment, repealing taboos and rebelling against norms. It is about wrestling guilt and shame away from the public imagination. Peepshow performances will be advantageous for not just individuals, but also couples, communities, people of many backgrounds and yes, even families.*

*We aim to be considerate and respectful of family-style events. As such we are committed to featuring non-stripping performances that still seek to engage people's understanding that “all bodies are good bodies” and people need not feel shame around the skin they are in*

-SOCIAL JUSTICE-

Sarah has a long-standing relationship with Peers Victoria Resources Society, an innovative grassroots organization that serves current and former sex workers in a myriad of ways for over 25 years. Safersexwork.ca

Sex(y) workers' rights are human rights! And what we have to share offers so much to the social and political fabric of life. The personal is always political. Moreover, part of our mandate is to benefit non-profit and grassroots organizations along our travel route. We want to bring awareness and celebration to the work these organizations do and the unique people they serve.

We support decriminalization and we listen to sex workers real lived experiences, employing such stories as part of the Peepshow narrative. Our pop-up prides itself on being fiercely activist and advocating for the normalization and de-stigmatization of the sex trade and all its participants. We intend on impacting sex work and non-sex work communities across Canada with this message.

- BUDGET -

An estimate put forth by a financial advisor set the annual operating budget at $62,000 a year, including fuel and transportation, performance wages, and management expenses. We recently did up a budget for a typical music festival and the cost estimation was $6,959.50

Single Travelling Show Estimate: $6,959.50

Ferry for vehicle plus trailer and 8 passengers - $721.50

3-Days Food and Accommodation for 8 - $3,500.00

Hourly wages for performers: 1pm-3pm / 3pm-5pm/ 8pm-10pm 450x3 $1,350.00

Gas for generator rental - $50.00

Truck rental and insurance -$900.00

Gas $288 oversize plus 150 reg - $438.00

Production Costs: $13,387

Trailer and Awning

Games/Props/Signs

Costumes

Furniture and Tarps

Mirrors

Lights

Stanchion Rental

Banner Stands

Paint

All of these costs are necessary for the project to be successful and to ensure the enjoyment, safety and comfort of all involved. With your help, we are confident that we can bring this project to life and provide a unique and exciting experience that truly brings people together in practicing radical joy. Thank you for your support!

- HONOURABLE MENTIONS -

We've received and managed Arts Grants (you can trust us to deliver on our budgets!)

In 2012/13 Sarah co-wrote (with Sadie Forbes) and co-produced (with Rosie Bitts), the interactive theatre experience The Ghosts of the Plaza. Made possible by a municipal arts grant, the play was an historically researched account of the Westholme Hotel, established 1910. The play was an immersive work in which audience members travelled through time and place, experiencing the lives of the women who had lived and worked in the hotel (many of them sex workers). The play was held at The Oddfellows Hall and partial proceeds went to Peers Victoria Resources Society, an organization that supports current and former sex workers in southern Vancouver Island.

In 2021 Sarah was granted a humble amount by the City of Victoria to put on a grief retreat. Grief Through Poetry: A Retreat by Peers, was held over 3 days and focused on connecting community members with themselves and one another by gently providing the space and intention to confront and process long-standing grief experienced by folks who had suffered loss.

Accomplishments with Peers include coordinating and facilitating the Small Business Training Program, the Peer Health Advocate Training Program, and the Sex Worker Activist Training School.

Sarah was also selected to attend festivities includes in the 2022 Montreal AIDS conference as a performance artist with her spoken word-singing-stripping act titled Roxanne Reimagined.