Finito

The final production of Cabaret was this evening. I realize that for all the ups and downs, I will walk away from this experience with a hundred more thoughts in my head than I had when I started. This show got me thinking about many issues that arise in the theatre. We talk a lot about ethics at the university, and am of the mindset that an ethical relationship with the world is a relationship in which I, you, or anybody remains cognizant and aware of the actions we take each step of the process, every second of the day. I believe that many people involved with this show have recognized what they could or could not contribute and then acted to make the experience the best it could be. Below, I have pasted the information that I wrote for the audiences of Cabaret. Please read it and give me any suggestions or criticism that you may have.



The production of Cabaret you will see tonight is a distant cousin of the Weimar-era Berlin cabarets that captured the attention of author Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) in pre-WWII Germany. Isherwood penned two semi-autobiographical short stories based on his experiences in Berlin as a young man, which transformed over time into the spectacle playing for you this evening. Along the way, from 1930-2006, Isherwood’s stories took on multiple forms. In 1951, English dramatist John William Van Druten (1901-1957) created the stage play I Am a Camera, the title for which came from Isherwood’s thought-provoking introduction to story Goodbye to Berlin in which he writes, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.” The significantly more well-known 1966 Broadway musical found inspiration in Van Druten’s play, and it is this production that begins to capture the public’s attention. This production starred Joel Grey as the Emcee and, interestingly, the late Kurt Weil’s wife, Lotte Lenya, as Fraulein Schneider. (Weil is, perhaps, best known for the music he wrote while collaborating with Bertolt Brecht on the 1928 theatre experience, Three Penny Opera). There have also been two major motion picture adaptations of the musical.

Cabaret has won numerous awards, and one reason for its success in undoubtedly the invitation it extends to its audiences to enter into the world of 1930s Berlin. Isherwood’s fictional representation may have described himself as a “camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking,” but you as audience members have the opportunity to enter our cabaret and become something much greater and more active. I offer you the opportunity to step into the theatre and become patrons of the Kit Kat Klub.

In the Klub, you will enter into the polyvalent and decadent world of Camp. Camp is, more than anything, a way of seeing, and it is Camp that most adequately defines the aesthetic of Berlin’s cabarets. Susan Sontag offers a concise explanation of Camp: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It is not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman’. To perceive camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-playing-a-role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theatre.” Thus, there is never one meaning to a joke or to a song. There are always multiple meanings making statements on many levels. Several actors in the Berlin cabarets were deported to concentration camps in the early 1930s for parodying the Nazi party in their acts. Camp is both sensational and socially critical. There was plenty of laughter at the cabarets, but, in a very real way, the content of the cabarets was not a laughing matter.

With eyes and ears open wide, as an active audience member, you will discern the many complex layers of the characters you will meet in the Klub. Who, for example, is Sally Bowles? Sally is the crux of several complicated social issues: abortion, feminine rights, and political apathy at the time of the Nazis’ rise to power. The woman that Isherwood based the character of Sally Bowles upon was an Englishwoman named Jean Ross. Jean Ross’s parents were both liberal, anti-Tory political activists and later in her life she herself was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. This is a side of Jean Ross that we never see in Sally Bowles. One of the many reasons we don’t see this is that Sally is a fragment of Jean Ross, a life-like dancer in a life-like, but mythical, Berlin cabaret. It is this pastiche of fictional and non-fictional people that makes up all the characters in this captivating musical. Isherwood himself only knew Jean for a short period of time before he immortalized her as Sally, and the Jean he knew existed within the incredibly fast-paced, politically and socially tumultuous times of Berlin in the late 1920s and 1930s.

Inside the cabaret, your senses will be assaulted. As you absorb the sights and the sounds, and as you interact with the singers and dancers, remember that there is also a world outside of the Kit Kat Klub that we never get to see clearly. Outside the walls of the club, many people suffered and the country of Germany was driven into the ground by an inhumane dictator. All of this, the highs and lows, await you beyond the doors to theatre. Get ready for a truly historic evening.