Tamale moved to Chicago to explore comedy, and discovered the wonderful, wide world of performance. Soon, she was working with various performance circles outside of the world of comedy, creating and playing with new ways to entice audiences. Gender performance, like drag and burlesque, began to expand her world, which then widened to include belly dance, fire and grinder performance. All of these skills and more found their way back into her comedy, as seen in her solo shows.
Tamale performed with the legendary Chicago Kings, and numerous troupes all over the US, Canada, and Europe. Some of her favorites included the D.C. Kings (Ken Vegas of Washington, D.C.), Dangerous Productions (Gavin Danger of Columbus, OH), The Shamcocks (Dublin, Ireland), The Berlin Kings (Berlin, Germany), and more.
She was a staple of the long-running traveling Drag Conference, the International Drag King Extravaganza (IDKE), often hosting the Saturday showcases, and culminating in the delivery of the key note speech at IDKE XIV. She was honored to consistently perform with The Great Big International Drag King Show at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. and to push the boundaries of performance to sold-out shows, year after year.
Through these explorations came international touring opportunities, where Tamale served as a producer and performer for the Chicago performance troupe, the Windy City Blenders. Growing out of one of the WCB acts from a European tour, came a full-length performative experiment called The Lola Project. Tamale now performs with her interdisciplinary performance troupe Tamale and Safety Third, showcased at the Austin International Drag Festival.
