From the time second-century Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” to Childish Gambino’s recently released single “This Is America,” art that calls attention to humanity’s tendency to fall prey to the distraction of scandal, gossip, and entertainment rather than facing societal problems has yet to go out of style (or fade in resonance). The UCSB Department of Theater and Dance brings this idea to Santa Barbara stages with Joe Masteroff’s 1967 Tony Award–wining Cabaret, the iconic musical about surviving life in 1930s Berlin amid a crushing economic disaster and the rise of the Nazi Party. The musical invites audiences into the Kit Kat Klub, a nightspot offering an escape from the bleakness of reality with the illicit delights of the cultural underworld. The floor show stars the Kit Kat girls, international sensation Sally Bowles, and the slyly subversive Emcee, who tempt audiences with diversion while reminding them of the dangers of complacency.
“Cabaret is a masterwork and a genius mix of spoken and sung text,” said director Julie Fishell. “The world of the Kit Kat Klub … is a place to ‘leave your troubles outside’ [as the song lyric suggests] …. [It] serves up raucous, boozed-up, irreverent, sexy, and politically sharp entertainment.” Based on John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera, which is based on Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, Cabaret, according to Fishell, is “a manifesto to the horror of the Holocaust as a direct product of social apathy, denial, or willing participation. At every turn, the play confronts us with the direct question, ‘What would you do?’”
In preparation for the production, Fishell, who teaches acting and directing, prompted the student actors to consider this question and to project the implications into their performance to pay the question forward to the audience. “What would we have done?” Fishell asked. “What do we do today? What principles would we abandon in a heartbeat to save our hides?”