Note from the Director

Cabaret has always been a very special show to me. It’s very unique in a lot of ways, it feels like a golden age show but came a little too far after to count, yet still holds the charm and style of one. It really splits its time between the real world and The Klub life. This show has been a bucket list show of mine before I knew I wanted to be a director. I remember watching it for the first time and remembering how powerful the messaging was, how much it stuck with me and how effectively it really brought to light how propaganda is just the first step to slowly infecting a country. Every time I direct a musical I think about what number in the show means the most to me, some have had very shallow reasons but this show the number that I never stop thinking about is If You Could See Her. If that number proves anything it's that the sheer magnitude of a bait and switch can really leave an effect. Watching Garrett and Julia perform each night together with the nuanced movement and acting choices just hit home to me how much of a part art really played into the destruction of Germany in the 30s and not just then, how politically it has always played such a major role in the pursuit of pushing hateful ideals.

When I was in college it was 2014, my senior year. I was a young Political Science major who was quickly losing faith in American Politics. I watched the election that we can now look back on as Hilary vs Trump unfold in real time before my eyes. The candidate debates, the primaries. Politics was slowly devolving into personal attacks rather than policy, and scandals and taglines over anything that would actually make America great at all. I looked at my minor in theatre, sure they were supportive and really wanted to be politically active but didn’t have any information past a headline and it killed me. I realized I spent years working on a degree I didn't want anything to do with. I was now in debt, losing faith in making a difference as a politician and never felt like it was worth even talking to my fellow actors at the time about anything because they simply couldn’t hold a conversation, they knew it was important to vote, sure, but had no knowledge of the issues. I was drowning in a useless futile existence where I truly felt like there was no way to make a difference, no chance at inciting positive change. At this point I'm months away from graduation and highly considering dropping out, but kept on going through the motions of my classes. I ended up in a class that was just a one on one independent study with Dr. Fistek. She had always supported me in both my major and my minor and encouraged me to dig into the depths that theatre really had to offer in the form of political art. If not for her, I would have packed up my dorm and hit the road. The most stand out moment to me was presenting to her classes on art and politics, showing clip after clip of musicals and leading discussions with the class of what they meant and why they were so impactful, and then we got to cabaret. We spent so much time looking at very short clips. Sometimes I would forget I lived in two very different worlds in college (politics and theatre) but when I saw we could have spent weeks discussing that show it's not an exaggeration. Watching these people who had never sat through a full musical in their lives diving deep into the meaning was so eye opening and it was in that class, in that presentation watching If You Could See Her, and Money with a class who thought musicals were stupid that I realized this is how I can make a difference.

As a politician I couldn’t be myself, I couldn’t say what I wanted, I had to play the game. In art though, there are no rules. Art is simple. Art is inciting a reaction. This show taught me all that and more. How to make a difference, how I can make a statement without making a speech and I hold that with me in every single show I direct. Sharing this show with the world reminds me that everyone really can make a difference, sometimes you just have to find your own way of sending that message.