How did a burlesque performer get a real-estate agent fired? By being the same person.

Earlier this month, real-estate agent Sarina McDonald was fired from Windermere Real Estate in Kingston after being outed as Ravenna Black, a performer with Seattle's Sinner Saint Burlesque. Kelly Muldrow, the Windermere Kingston sales manager, dismissed McDonald the day he discovered she was a performer, saying her burlesque work was "incompatible with the culture of Windermere Kingston."

"Kelly is a very nice, very helpful person," McDonald said. "But he completely flipped out. I couldn't get him to understand it wasn't sleazy."

Burlesque hasn't been sleazy for roughly a lifetime. It's a main attraction at Teatro ZinZanni and gets photo spreads in milquetoast magazines and family-friendly dailies. Even the Kingston school system is burlesque friendly: Earlier this month, McDonald performed a (tame) striptease and choreographed a chorus line for a public-school fundraiser. So why did Muldrow fire McDonald for it? He answered, via e-mail: "I'm not able to discuss personnel-related details."

McDonald, who lives on the Kitsap Peninsula, earned her real-estate license in November and (as is common for new agents) was scrambling to make ends meet, cleaning houses and performing burlesque on Thursday nights at Noc Noc. McDonald doesn't know how Muldrow found her stage persona, but thinks she logged on to the Sinner Saint's website to check a calendar date and left the page up on one of the office's shared computers.

According to McDonald, Muldrow asked if she was "Ravenna Black." She said yes. He mailed her license back to the state a few hours later, both firing her and legally revoking her credentials. (In Washington State, agents are not allowed to practice unless they are affiliated with a broker.) "I'd poured so much into this," she said. "Months of time and energy and to have the rug pulled out from me in one day..."

Two weeks later, McDonald was hired at Ewing & Clark, a Seattle-based luxury agency. When she asked if her avocation in burlesque would be a problem, the CEO (John Brian Losh) bragged about seeing Sally Rand, the famous exotic fan dancer, years ago. "That doesn't surprise me at all," said Merrily Jacobs, McDonald's new manager. "And you know what? He's also a conservative Republican. But he's an appreciator of the arts."

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What the press release says: Susan Trapnell is stepping down as managing director at ACT Theatre. What that suggests: that ACT is finally feeling financially secure. Trapnell had been the managing director at ACT from 1982 to 1998. When the deficit shit hit the fan in 2003, they called her back to save the day. We can infer that, four years later, the day has been saved. Now Trapnell is going to work on building ACT's endowment fund from $2 million to over $10 million. Her successor, Jolanne Stanton, has worked with nonprofits, including Princeton, but has little theater management experience.