Meet the woman behind Sydney's most successful dinner shows: Talk and Tease's creatrix and founder, Scarlett Furi.

Hi, I'm Scarlett. I'm a performance artist, vaudevillian show producer, and published poet. After starting my path as a professional performer in the disciplined art of aerial acrobatics, I inevitably slipped, tripped and fell into a career as a burlesque and striptease artist. The rest is history!

Apart from making shows and getting to work with my favourite performers every day, my favourite career highlights include: shooting a fetish calendar in a mansion in the Italian Alps for a Danish lingerie brand; acting in multiple projects including a speaking role in award-winning Sci-Fi film “Risen”; and my most recent (and perhaps favourite), becoming a published poet. 

Born of bohemian parents in Paddington, Sydney in the 80s, I grew up on the Persian rugs of artists, drag queens and fallen socialites, in a haze of second-hand smoke.

Some of my earliest childhood memories were listening to my mother and iconic adult entertainer Elizabeth Burton gossip in Elizabeth's Surry Hills kitchenette. They would roll smokes and talk about "the Universe" and their tribulations and traumas while I marvelled at Elizabeth's striptease promo shots and her impressive lounge-room jungle of houseplants.

At 10 years of age, I began trapeze training with close family friend Chiquita the Fire Eater in her warehouse home. This ignited my love of aerial acrobatics. 

My first taste of the artistic power of nudity came at 16, performing to 700+ oldies, deep in the suburbs, as a fill-in backup dancer in a popular Cher Tribute show. In the song "Half-Breed" I was to gracefully parade the stage in an extravagant white headdress and a long flowing white robe. 

Moments before I was due in the wings, the stage manager realised they had forgotten my costume. All they had was the headdress. In a panic, the (ridiculous magnetic) lead singer fashioned me a "costume" one piece of string and a strip of shimmering, mildly opaque material, torn from the side of the headdress. I now had a clitoral covering and what could only be called a "nipple tube". 

Too naïve and rushed to know better, I emerged on stage as rehearsed, but now in the most scantily clad culturally appropriated costume the world had ever seen--the wisps of see-through material powerless to hide my melanin-rich features. 

The silence was palpable and unexpected. Mid number, I had a thought: "Maybe it's because I'm naked?". This realisation that the huge crowd was frozen silent in presumably a mixture of confusion and awe, gave me immense satisfaction. I was probably never the same.

At 18, I again found myself as a back-up dancer (back-up dancing is clearly a gateway profession), this time in a raunchy "Fever Revue" at the Summer Nats-Car festival in Canberra, under the notorious guidance of D'Anne Ryall. My big performer moment was dancing to 'Car Wash" in a one-piece swimsuit whilst spraying the crowd with soap suds.

On the finale night of the festival, our troupe was to perform a feature show on the elevated main stage, televised on towering screens to the ten thousand punters ogling from below. Two of the stars didn't turn up backstage after partying all night with what were surely very quality men. The troupe was down an act, and young, green, Scarlett was all they had. 

So I performed my first ever strip tease with about 10 minutes to prepare. It was a completely improvised topless routine for a small stadium worth of men who had been inhaling booze and petrol fumes in the dust for four days without a woman in sight. I was given a cryptic crash course in the "art-of-tease" by the producer (something like "give them what they want but keep them wanting more") before being shoved out on stage.

I did my "big reveal", right at the end of my routine. As I was exiting the stage, a "boo" like thunder erupted, and the crowd began hurling a cascade of tinnies at me. All I had taken off was my top and my top hat. And the masses were enraged. A rush of satisfaction arose inside me as I had a taste of having the ultimate last word. It was an impact of the flesh that most performers will never experience. I wanted more.

After the birth of my son, I made my first feature-length burlesque show producer debut in the Adelaide Fringe. Despite a successful, sold-out season, I soon renounced the Sydney burlesque scene. As a single mother, I wanted to focus on "something stable" so I enrolled in Law School.

Upon realising I prioritised dance tours over university exams, and spent more time drawing pin-ups than taking notes in lectures, I dropped out. 

That same year, I turned my focus to creating Sydney’s premier burlesque dinner show experience in Kings Cross--during the height of Sydney's shameful lockout laws. I pressed on, persevering through the COVID-19 lockdowns.

After spending my early adult years pursuing serious aerial acrobatics, it is no wonder I would eventually fall back into a burlesque career, with so many formative experiences in the hands of such ride-or-die women.

After a few more character-building s**t-storms...I emerged in 2025 as the sole owner and producer of Sydney's longest-running, regular burlesque cabaret dinner show. Just like Talk and Tease, I still call Kings Cross home, and we have no plans to leave.