Cabaret

CABARET
“We want pure art,
beauty, beauty, and more
beauty. We want pure
morality, ideal pleasure,
the imminent aesthetics
of the feminine body. Our
highest aim is to procure
for our downtrodden
people the pure ideal of
beauty and to ‘upraise it
in need.’”
Actor Packet by Brittany Squier and Faith Glendenning

Table of Contents
DRAMATURG’S NOTE
THE CABARET
History of the Cabaret
Berlin Cabaret
“The Lavender Lay”
Cabaret Artists and Clubs
“The Machines”
The Emcee: The Conférencier
Anita Berber
THE POLITICS
Timeline of Early 1900s Germany
Germany Post WWI
The Weimar Republic
The Rise of the Third Reich
THE CULTURE
Art in Weima:r: Bauhaus, Otto Dix
Food and Drink
Music
Dance
THE SEX
Sex and Prostitution
The Modern German Woman
THE THEATRE
Bertolt Brecht
Satire
THE STORIES
Production History of Cabaret
The Original Stories
PHOTOESSAY
Quotation on title page said by emcee of Felix Langer’s “A Naked Dance Club”
2

Welcome to Berlin
It is Germany, 1929. Raucous laughter from the cabaret seeps outside as you pass in the shadows of the
cold Berlin night. The streets are sexually charged, your head clouds with a heady concoction of
prostitution, homosexuality, eroticism and drugs. Still spinning from the collective lust roaring unashamedly
from each open cabaret door, you head now for the café bar at the hotel where you live. Jostling with leggy
glamour girls as you take your drink, you settle your trouser-suited body into the deep folds of an armchair
and smile provocatively as you light a cigarette.
Such was the nightly life in the Weimar Republic, an era that seemed to fly under the radar of organized
society. Sandwiched between two World Wars, the Weimar Republic gave to the people of Germany what
they hadn’t had for years (and wouldn’t have again for decades): the power to revel in what it means to be
human. Citizens of Berlin in the late 20’s experienced a time of utter freedom: of speech, to love, of
expression. A time of complete governmental upheaval bred a brief moment of creative clarity. The
legacies of the artists and intelligentsia of Weimar Berlin can be seen in every art form: in jazz and
burlesque halls, popular dance beats, on the walls of museums, on the clothing racks of H&M.
It is easy to compare 1929 Berlin to today and quickly dismiss any and all similarities. Playwright,
producer and drama translator, Roger Pulvers states, “one country’s naturalism is another country’s
surrealism”. But upon closer inspection, the cabarets and dance halls of Berlin are not so far from the
basements, storefront theatres, and loft spaces frequented by young Chicago adults every weekend. The
vigor for life post-WWI pulses through our veins again today with the reworking of our current
government. As artists, just like in Weimar, it is our duty to relish in the ever-present power of art and its
ability to comment on and affect society. Whether it be a realistic portrayal, a biting satire or a simple story,
the desire to express ourselves is an urge that spans location and time.
As artists, I created a sourcebook to immerse you into the world of the cabaret, Berlin and it’s underbelly.
I have included a brief history of the cabaret, examples of cabaret artists and clubs as well as various songs
popular in 1929-1930 Berlin. Since art and current events go so closely hand in hand in Weimar, I have
included a history of the period between WWI Germany and the rise of the Third Reich. So that you can
get a taste of Weimar culture, there are separate sections on food, music and dance . A description of
Berlin, a city known for its scandalous ways, would not be complete without a look into the sex industry.
Rising rates of prostitution caused a skewed perspective of women, and different ideas about what the
modern woman should be; included is a section describing some of the expectations women faced in
metropolitan Berlin. The theatre of Weimar Berlin survived on a mix of satire and Brechtian-style theatre,
and there are sections on both.
Cabaret is one of the first musicals to find success without a “happy ending”. It’s production history, a
series of successful revampings, is included along with descriptions of the stories Cabaret was created from.
Lastly is a photo-essay, branching the world of the Berlin with other artist Mecca's of the last century,
showing that life really is a cabaret.
If you have any questions or concerns, Faith and I are here to offer you any and all assistance.
Brittany Squier (Dramaturg)
Faith Glendenning (Assistant Dramaturg
3

History of The Cabaret
The history of cabaret culture began in 1881 with the
opening of Le Chat Noir in the Montmartre district of
Paris. It was an informal saloon where poets, artists and
composers could share ideas and compositions. Other
cabarets soon sprang up all over Paris, and by 1900 similar
establishments appeared in several French and German
cities. As time went by, many of these rooms featured
scheduled entertainment, ranging in size from a few
musicians to full floorshows.
Cabarets brought a new intimacy and informal spirit to
public performances. Audiences sat at cozy tables
consuming food and drink while performers worked right
in their midst. Inevitably, audience members became part
of the show, interacting with performers -- and even each
other. After World War I, cabaret enjoyed even greater
popularity all across Europe, but particularly in Germany,
where the Weimar government essentially ended all forms
of censorship.
These shows had an intellectual punch which, with a few
drinks, helped audiences push the harsh realities of life
aside for a few hours. Within a few years of Hitler's rise to
power in 1933, the Nazi's effectively suppressed all hints of
cabaret subculture in Germany.
--Cabaret 101: A History of Cabaret by John
Kenrick(Copyright 1996-2003)
Conférencier
Cabaret Poster, 1929
4

After Germany’s loss in WWI, the collapsed
Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs, and Romanovs were
supplanted by governments in central and eastern
Europe which, at least at first, permitted broad
latitude of expression in the performing arts. Longdamned-up
protest and dissent spilled over into a
waterfall of political satire. During the war itself, this
dissent had taken shape in the cabaret as Dadaistic
anarchy; but with the new order in Europe, Dada
seemed too cryptic and irrelevant. Cabaret audiences
demanded and got direct reference to current events.
The excitement of what was happening in the streets
was mirrored on the cabaret stage not as abstract
opposition but as specific and circumstantial
criticism.
Berlin Cabaret
As cabaret shifted from an underground or avant-garde form to a genuinely popular entertainment, the heterogeneity
of its audiences compelled it to dilute its message. The twenties was a period of considerable instability in Europe,
and the larger public, wanting to forget its troubles in the theater, preferred satire glancing and sarcastic; the more the
political situation became embroiled, the more the public sought light entertainment and diversion in the cabaret.
While left-wing cabaret moved increasingly towards agit-prop to counteract the rise of fascism, the run-of-the-mill
cabaret offered witty song-and-dance, tinged perhaps by liberal sympathies but by no means doctrinaire in its form or
content. This enabled the mass audience to feel au courant but basically unchallenged. And gradually censorship
resumed, in the form of libel suits instigated by indignant private individuals, obscenity prosecutions by state’s
attorneys, and harassment by the right-wing governments that came to power in the 1930s.
The cabaret was, moreover, omnivorous. It
shoveled in great helpings of whatever was
exciting and innovative—North American jazz
and South American tango, “expressive” and
undraped dancing, cinematic and radio
techniques, the latest literary fashions—and
regurgitated them, often in an only partially
digested form. This led many cabarets to
adopt a revue format, a well-organized
sequence of acts ostensibly grouped around a
given theme.
Photo of the infamous WinterGarten, one of Berlin’s most popularWeimar
Cabarets
WinterGarten
5

Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel
Despite the growing attendance of mainstream members of
society, the performers and creators of cabarets continued to be
drawn from peripheral groups whose viewpoint remained ironic.
The proliferation of cabarets allowed minority concerns to
infiltrate popular entertainment. Throughout central and eastern
Europe, many performers, composers, authors, and impresarios
were Jews; and although there were only a few exclusively Jewish
cabarets, comedy and political commentary were permeated with
Yiddish rhythms, attitudes and words. Outside views on national
concerns were provided by Hungarians working in Austria,
Germans working in Czechoslovakia, and émigré Russians
working in Germany and France.
In general, the inter-war cabaret was less venturesome and formally experimental than its
precursors, but its slicker techniques enabled its messages to be more easily absorbed by the public.
As the pressures of Nazi involvement forced cabaret out of its usual venues, the irrepressible urge
to fight against the government and its rule thrived among émigrés, fugitives, resistance workers, and
even in concentration camps.
Weimar Berlin quickly gained the reputation of having the most conspicuous gay subculture in Europe.
Despite a law against homosexual activity between males, by the late 1920’s, a saunter through the gay clubs
was a standard item on the sightseer’s agenda. Many of these clubs hosted their own cabarets.
Lesbian clubs were slightly more exclusive.
The singer Claire Waldoff described the
Pyramide in Berlin’s West End in her
memoirs: “One had to go through three
house-doors before arriving at the clandestine
Eldorado of Women, admission 30
pfennings. Four brass musicians were playing
the proscribed Club anthem. A room
decorated with garlands, peopled with famous
painters and models. Famous male painters
from the Seine were to be seen; beautiful,
elegant women, who wanted to learn just a
little about Berlin’s seamy side, infamous
Berlin; and amorous little secretaries; and
there were petty jealousies and tears nonstop,
and the loving couples always had to
disappear to settle their conjugal differences
outside. Every so often in the course of the
evening, they would strike up the famous
‘Cognac Polonaise,’ which was celebrated by
kneeling on the dance floor with a full glass of
cognac in front of one. My pen quails before
the unparliamentary verses of this Polonaise.”
Bertolt Brecht and Karl Valentin (with tuba) and
friends at the Munich Oktoberfest
6

Poster for “The Lavender Lay”
The “proscribed anthem” to which
Waldoff refers was the so-called
“Lila-Lied,” or “Lilac Song.” Lilac
refers to the English lavender for
the gay color, because of its
muted, in-between nature; “Lilac
Nights” alluded to the round of
pleasure to be had in Berlin.
Marcellus Schiffer (1892-1932)
composed it for Wilhelp Bendow
to sing at the Untamed Stage, and
promised the performer that his
tuxedo, the band around his straw
hat, and even the bar would be
lilac to go with it.
Marcellus Shiffer
The Lavender Lay (Das Lila-
Lied)
by Marcellus Shiffer
1928
How civilized
That we’re despised
And treated as something taboo,
Though wise and good, ‘cause our selfhood
Is special through and through.
We’re classified
Fit to be tried,
For the law forbids us too.
Since we’re of different stripe,
They malign and fine our type.
REFRAIN:
After all, we’re different from the others
Who only love in lockstep with morality,
Who wander blinkered through a world of wonders,
And find their fun in nothing but banality.
We don’t know what it is to feel that way,
In our own world we’re sisters and we’re brothers:
We love the night, so lavender, so gay,
For, after all, we’re different from the others!
Why, the quarrels
Others’ morals
Foist on us, torment bringing?
We, near and far,
Are what we are.
They’d love to see us swinging.
But still we think
Were we to swing,
You’d soon hear them complain,
For, sad their plight,
In just one night,
Our sun would shine again.
For equal rights we fought our bitter war!
We will be tolerated, and never suffer more!!
REFRAIN (repeat)
7

Kurt Tucholsky
Cabaret Artists
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1933): Probably the best known outside of Germany,
he was primarily a journalist, contributor to the militant review Die
Weltbuhne. He was also a leading proponent for a political cabaret whose
every song would be a Gebrauchslyrik (an “applied lyric”) satirizing modern
life. Under various pseudonyms he attacked nationalism, militarism,
philistinism, organized religion, the bureaucracy, the blindness of justice, the
wishy-washiness of the liberal press, and the opportunism of the Social
Democratic party.
Deemed “The Good Gay Comic of Weimar Berlin” by Laurence Senelick,
Willhelp Bendow, gained much praise for his fine-tuned character acting.
Most famously, he portrayed an outrageously camp performer and was
ground-breaking for the time. Using the vehicle of this outlandish character,
his lack of sexual threat allowed him license to mock prominent names and
current events and was a huge hit with audiences. Laurence Senelick, author
of Cabaret Performance states, “His exaggerated intonations turned
everything into a double-entendre, and yet his pudgy, prissy exterior played
down any sexual threat by suggesting an hermaphroditic neutrality. Moonfaced,
nasal-voiced, bespectacled, he delivered his commentary in a
languorous sing-song that was the oral equivalent of a limp-wrist. He
became a great favorite of both heterosexual and homosexual audiences”
One of his most popular characters was named Magnesia, The Tattooed
Lady. “Wearing an illustrated body cast, ‘she’ pointed to various pictures on
her body, and made comments with sexual overtones about political figures
and other celebrities of the day – the assembled impotencies of Europe”.
Kurt Valentin
Karl Valentin (1882-1948) was probably the greatest clown
Germany ever produced. The grotesque nonsense of his
routines mirrored all of life’s perversities. Valentin’s satire,
though often set in proletarian or petit bourgeois milieu,
was not political or social so much as phenomenological:
he protested everything.
Described as “The Mother Courage of the
Literary Cabaret”, Kate Kühl, was famed for
her interpretations of the works of some of the
greatest songwriters of the period. She was also
highly regarded by writers such as Erich
Kästener and Bertolt Brecht. So much so that
she was cast as Lucy in the premiere
production of Brecht and Weill’s ‘ Die
Dreigroschenoper’ ( The Threepenny Opera)
in 1928.
“Kate Kühl, with her dumpling cheeks and big, amusingly startled eyes, and
with a voice that sounded like a scratchy clarion. She could trumpet straight
into people’s hearts. She sounded so full of optimism, with a lovely, severe,
and terse freshness… A queen with her hands on her hips.”
- Friedrich Luft
As a female martian As Magnesia
Wilhelm Bendow
Kate Kühl
8

Popular Cabarets
Apart from the vast stages like The
Wintergarten was the tingeltangel which often
was no more than a raised platform in a bar or
restaurant. It featured both those at the very start
and those at the very end of their cabaret
careers. The scenes featured in the Marlene
Dietrich film of 1930 The Blue Angel were
typical of a tingeltangel, The material wasrisqué
and the female performers acted as hostesses
mingling with the audience encouraging them to
buy drinks and other services on offer. The
name is derived from the sound of the coins
landing on a plate as it is passed around the
audience.
Cabaret act at Le Boeuf sur le Toit
Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel
In 1922, Le Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the
Roof: The Nothing-Doing Bar, as it was known
in English) opened in Paris with Jean Cocteau’s
(a famous novelist, dramatist and filmmaker)
blessing, became the fashionable watering place,
where Tristan Tzara read poetry and virtuoso
pianists played Mozart and Gershwin. It was
closed by the Germans in 1943, but reopened
after the war.
1920’s Berlin was filled with Russian refugees. I.
E. Duvan-Tortsov, a former Moscow Art
Theatre actor, created a cabaret, Der Blaue
Vogel (The Blue Bird, named after a play by
playwright Maurice Maeterlinck famously
produced at the MAT ), an imitation of the
Russian cabaret, The Bat. The Blue Bird
recreated picture-book scenes from Russian
folklore, heavily stylized and picturesquely
costumed. Toy soldiers and idealized peasant
girls were stocks-in-trade. It was “An enchanting
cabaret, but rather too harmless.”
Cabaret act at Der Blaue Vogel Program from Der blaue Vogel
9

“The Machines” by Walter Mehring
Walter Mehring, one of the most prominent satirical authors
in Weimar, later banned during the Third Reich wrote the
lyrics to this riling anthem, “The Machines”.
With the last stanza, “The Machines” was a popular hit
amongst Berlin’s Cabarets, without it, it was sung at the first
Nazi mass meeting and helped rile the Third Reich to
power.
(To be sung by a chorus of men and women.)
(As dawn breaks, a perspective of dingy, eroded firewalls
and smokestacks emerges. The sky is striped pink and
mouse-gray. The factories suck in the work force while the
hooters shriek.)
Without sleep, repose, or dreams,
Round the world and through the dark
Where no daylight ever gleams,
Man is hurried, harried, stark!
Where the falling hammers pound,
Iron shrills its hate-filled song—
Ever ringed by deaf’ning sound
The machines keep moving on!
When the final door is sealed,
When the final cheer grows still,
Fearful must the work force yield
To hooters shrieking from the mill.
Pained to earn his daily crust
Man crawls forth diseased and wan:
Through the poverty and dust
The machines keep moving on.
Of a sudden in the night
That gives neither sleep nor balm
As awakened unto life,
Iron stretches out its arm,
From the cannons murders flash,
See! Death’s scythe is clashing yon.
While the human race goes smash,
The machines keep moving on.
Walter Mehring
From the deepest slavery,
Panic stricken, near to drop,
The last mortal shouts a plea,
An order: Everything must stop!
Things stop! Yet even at the last,
When blood fills earth’s greedy yawn,
Still across your graves they pass,
The machines keep moving on!
Round the earth no sleep, no dreams,
Through night’s everlasting reign,
Where no daylight ever gleams,
Brightly blazes human pain!
When the last bombardment booms
And dead iron’s strength is gone:
New-awakened from the tombs
Human life keeps moving on!
(While the last ones march by outside, the song rings out
and the factory hooters answer.)
10

The Emcee: The Conferencier
Paul Morgan
The Kadeko
As a result, the conférencier dwindled into a mere master of ceremonies. What was lost was the
amateur or bohemian atmosphere of the cabaret, which grew ever more professional in its
slickness and appeal to a more broad-based audience.
Fritz Grunbaum
The character of the Emcee in Cabaret is based on the role of the
conférencier in Weimar cabarets. These conférenciers served the role of
introducing cabaret acts, but they were also known for their political and
social commentary. Once the Third Reich came to power, the role of the
conférencier became controversial, many were banned from clubs across
the city. The term emcee in place of “Master of Ceremonies” began to be
used in place of conférencier in 1938.)
Paul Morgan was one of the biggest stars of the Weimar era. Born Georg
Paul Morgenstern in Vienna in1886, he came to Berlin in 1917 to perform at
The Lessing Theatre. By the 1920’s he was a well-known conférencier
(emcee) on the Cabaret circuit and in 1924, together with German director
Kurt Robitschek, he founded the 900 seat Kabarett der Komiker
(nicknamed the Kadeko), Berlin’s famous Cabaret of Comedians.
The Kadeko hosted some of the sharpest and wittiest conférenciers of the
day, most regularly, popular satirist, Paul Nikolaus. By 1929, the necessity
to fill the gargantuan theatre caused Robitschek to adopt a more cautious
approach. The conferencier still told political jokes, but the rest of the
show remained a mélange of songs, vaudeville acts and comic one-act
plays.
The inexorable rise of the Nazi’s, and the now ever-present threat of
street violence had a dramatic effect on the Kadeko, as patrons
became afraid to venture out, especially into the neighborhood it was
in.
Other Popular Weimar Conférencier
Karl Jöken (2nd from the left), Max Hansen (front), Paul
Morgan (far right) and the Weintraub Syncopators in “Das
Kabinett des Dr. Larifari” (1930)
11

Anita Berber
Expressionist exotic dancer and actress in German silent
movies, Anita Berber epitomized for many the decadence of
Weimar-era Berlin. he brought flamboyant eroticism, exotic
costuming, and grotesque imagery to performances danced to
the music of composers such as Debussy, Strauss, Delibes,
and Saint-Säens. A pioneer of modern expressive dance,
Berber was at first taken seriously as an artist, but soon
became better known for her scandalous personal and
professional life.
“Anita Berber’s dances are living fervor, nonetheless
cold, unapproachable…Something wild and essentially
solitary surrounds her creations, one feels the
compulsive destiny…and finally she dances alone, still
not with hopeless courage for her passions. In the short
period of time her performance lasts, she has mounted
a revolt.”
-Max Herrmann-Neiße (German writer)
Through sympathetic portrayals of emotion while remaining
cold and solitary, Berber represented human isolation in the
modern world. In “Absinthe” (1925), she performed drinking
the drug, she evoked death and miming a dark and solitary
end to life. Some of the emotional and psychological
underpinnings of her performances described by Herrmann-
Neiße are captured in Dix’s portrait (see pg.17).
New laws allowed for total nudity on stage if the performer
was immobile, in a tableau, or far in the background. For
women who dared to dance, covering the genital region was
required. Most nude dancers performed only bare-breasted.
Berber, dancing completely nude, challenged these laws, a
rebellion some viewers may have interpreted as an indication
of her sexual freedom or scandalousness.
One song exclaimed,
What does the audience want to see?
Starving millions and misery
Thousands in prison going rotten?
Is that what the audience wants to see?
Alas, Anita Berber’s naked bottom
That’s what the audience wants to see.
Anita Berber
Anita Berber most frequently performed
at The Weisse Maus (White Mouse)
which opened in 1919. It is rumored to
have acquired its name as it was across the
street from the cabaret Chat Noir (The
Black Cat.) It is described as a “beautiful
98-seat cabaret venue with a curtained
stage” and was frequented by travelling
salesmen, criminals, alongside elderly
couples from the provinces and a
smattering of Berlin intellectuals.
In addition to the standard cabaret fare,
naked ‘beauty dances’ were staged after
midnight. The proprietor insisting before
each performance that there was no
pornographic content. “We come here
for beauty alone”, though not everyone
complied. Customers who wished to
conceal their lecherous ways were given a
choice of a black or white mask to wear.
Attendees of The White Mouse in mask 12

Germany: The First Thirty Years
1914-1918 The Allies defeated Germany in World War I, and the German
Empire ended.
1919 The Weimar Republic was established.
1919 Adolf Hitler joins the German Worker’s Party (GWP) September
February 24, 1920 National Socialist German Worker’s Party publishes
its first program
October 1920 The Sturmabteilung (also known as SA, a paramilitary
organization of the Nazi Party) is formed.
November 9, 1923 Adolf Hitler attempts Beer Hall Putsch (an unsuccessful attempt
to seize power. Putsch is German for coup d'état.
December 20, 1924. Hitler leaves Landsburg Prison (where he wrote
Mein Kampf)
December 1924. The Nazi Party wins 24 seats in the Reichstag, the
German Parliament .
June 1925 The Schutz Staffeinel (also known as SS, the Nazis main
organization responsible for many of the crimes against humanity perpetrated) is
formed
July 1925 First volume of Mein Kampf was published
July 1927 The Nazi Party holds its first Nuremberg Rally (annual rally of the
Nazi Party held on Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg).
May 1928 The Nazi Party wins 14 seats in the Reichstag.
November 1928 Joseph Goebbels takes over as Reich Minister of
Propaganda in the Nazi Party.
December 1928 Second volume of Mein Kampf is published
August 1929 Over 60,000 members of the Sturm Abteilung attend
Nuremberg Rally.
December 1929 The Nazi Party has a membership of 178,000.
January 23, 1930 Wilhelm Frick becomes the first Nazi to become a
minister in a state government.
September 1930 The Nazi Party wins 107 seats in the Reichstag
December 1930 Unemployment in Germany reaches nearly 4 million
13

After the War
“At the end of World War I, Germany was in the midst of crisis. The country suffered economically not
only from the international depression, but also from heavy war debts and reparations imposed by the
Allies following the war. In addition to the economic woes, the loss of the war and forced demilitarization
resulted in a lack of national pride and a longing for a restored Germany, reflected in the multiplicity of
parties represented in the Weimar parliament and society at large. The tension between the hardships of
life and the escapism of the theatre was characterized as a “dance on the volcano”; live life to the fullest
because one could never be sure what tomorrow would bring. “
-Katrina Dettmer (dramaturg of Brown University’s 2009 production of Cabaret)
“The overthrow of the kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in the establishment of a Social-
Democratic republic, and the hardships of the inflation period were the troubled waters in which
cabaretists could fish with spectacular success. Berlin became a maelstrom, sucking in the energies
and talents of the rest of Germany. . . What New York in the 1920s was to jazz and speakeasies, Berlin
was to cabaret.”
-Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance
Workers in the Kruegerman factory
yard, 1929
Female farmers harvesting hay
Tiller Girls in Berlin 1920
“We stand alone in the world. Let us
not forget one thing: Any recovery of
Germany must and will arise from the
moral experience of the German
people.”
-Chancellor Stresemann. 25 Oct 1923
Chancellor Stresemann
“Berlin transformed itself into the Babel of the world. Bars,
amusement parks, pubs shot up like mushrooms. [It was a veritable]
witches’ sabbath, for the Germans brought to perversion all their
vehemence and love of system…Amid the general collapse of values, a
kind of insanity took hold of precisely those middle-class circles which
had hitherto been unwavering in their orderliness”
– Stefan Zweig (Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and
biographer)
14

The Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given to Germany during the
years between the end of WWI (Germany bearing the brunt of
the loss to the Allies) and the ascension of Hitler. The Social
Democratic Republic created a constitution that was signed in the
city of Weimar. Under the Weimar Constitution, Germany was
divided into 19 states. All citizens had the right to vote, electing
members of the Reichstag or German Parliament and the
President. The President appointed a chancellor and cabinet
members. As many historians have noted on paper the Weimar
Constitution was a brilliant document, and Germany under the
Weimar Republic was a true democracy.
However, even from the start, the Weimar Republic was deeply
troubled. When the constitution was first established, many
Germans were suspicious of the new government. Extremists on
the left and right rejected the authority of the Weimar Republic.
The Weimar Republic also faced serious financial challenges.
Inflation skyrocketed in the 1920s, and at one point, six million
Germans were unemployed.
Chancellor Stresemann’s death complicated the power hierarchy
of the Weimar Republic. The stock market crash in late October
1929 affected the entire world. Germany had lived off foreign aid
far more than many Germans knew or were willing to admit.
Exports dwindled, foreign loans were not renewed, tax income
dropped, bankruptcies multiplied, and unemployment grew
inexorably. It was the extreme right alone that benefited from the
condition of Weimar Germany.
September 14, 1930 marked the death of the Republic. Through
1931, Paul von Hindenberg, second President of Germany, signed
one emergency decree after another, controlling the price of food,
regulating bank payments, reducing unemployment compensation.
When three lieutenants were tried for treason—they had sought to
enlist fellow officers in the Nazi cause—Hitler testified for them
and predicted that if his movement was victorious, then “heads
will roll in the sand.” Nazis began vandalizing Jewish stores and
properties, often burning them to the ground and raping and
killing Jewish citizens. The Nazi press, skillfully led by Goebbels,
preached action against republicans, democrats, Jews,
Communists, etc. In the 1930 elections, The Nazi Party won 107
seats in the Reichstag.
Between the elections of 1930 and 1932, Germany’s politics
were full of under-the-table dealings and secret ploys. The
1932 elections ended in a stunning victory for the Nazis: they
got over 13.5 million votes and 230 seats in the Reichstag.
The opposition to the Nazis remained numerous but
disunited; the Nazi leadership was confident. On January 30,
1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany.
Adolf Hitler took advantage of the social discontent once he was
sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Less than a month
later, the Reichstag building was gutted by a fire of mysterious
origin, and Hitler effectively took control, suppressing
oppositional political parties under the guise of public safety.
The Reichstag
Flag of Weimar Republic
Map of Weimar
Nazi Party propaganda posters
15

Art
“The overthrow of the kaiser, the revolutionary tumult that resulted in the
establishment of a Social-Democratic republic, and the hardships of the
inflation period were the troubled waters in which cabaretists could fish with
spectacular success.Berlin became a maelstrom, sucking in the energies and
talents of the rest of Germany. . . What New York in the 1920s was to jazz
and speakeasies, Berlin was to cabaret.”
-Laurence Senelick, Cabaret Performance,
After World War I, Weimar democracy unleashed freedom in Germany.
In 1929 an umbrella group called the Union for Human Rights claimed
48,000 members. Berlin, the homosexual capital of the Roaring Twenties,
boasted a gay and lesbian bookstore, scores of bars, and more than 25 gay
publications.
Architecture: The Bauhaus School
The Bauhaus School was an academy of art and design founded in 1919 by
Walter Gropius. Bauhaus is a German term that means "house for building."
The Bauhaus school was founded to rebuild the country after the
devastating war and also to form a new social order. As a social program, the
Bauhaus’s ideals were that the artist must recognize his social responsibility
to the community and likewise, the community must accept and support the
artist.
Fine Art: Otto Dix
More than almost any other German painter, Otto Dix (1891-1969) and his
works have profoundly influenced societies impressions of the War and
Weimar society. He paintings depict mechanized warfare and life in postwar
Berlin. Three themes dominate the majority of his work: The First
World War, it’s aftermath, and the lives of femme fatales. His paintings
were among the most grotesque visual representatives of that period,
exposing with unsparing and wicked wit the instability and contradictions of
the time. Refuting the Romantic ideas of beauty, Dix instead painted gritty
portraits that reflected the difficult economic times of Weimar. He chose to
paint the underbelly of Weimar society, famously portraying the likes of
Anita Berber as well as doctors, various women, and several other Cabaret
stars.
Susan Funkenstein, professor of art history, notes, “Otto Dix’s Portrait of
the Dancer Anita Berber captures the complexity of an expressionist
performance artists whom many saw merely as a depraved vamp. In a skintight,
fire-engine-red dress that reveals every curve of her body, she
accentuates her sexuality by caressing her hip with one hand and gesturing
toward her genitalia with the other; her modified Venus pose is anything but
modest. Intense, vibrant reds pervade the composition—her dyed hair,
bright lips, tinged hands and the monochromatic background further
emphasize a red-hot, exaggerated sexuality”.
Portrait of Cabaret Artist,
Anita Berber 1925
Reclining Woman
on a Leopard Skin,
1927
16

How to make a Prairie Oyster!
1 whole egg
1 oz. vodka
2 dashes of vinegar
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp ketchup
2 dashes of Tabasco csauce
Pinch of salt and pepper
Carefully crack the egg into an oldfashioned
glass, taking care not to break
the yolk. Add the remaining ingredients
and drink in one gulp.
Black Forest Cake Makes 10 to 12 servings
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate
½ cup (1 stick) butter, cut into tablespoons
6 tablespoons water (divided)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup almonds
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar (divided)
8 large eggs, separated
Food & Drink
A drink typically served the morning after a night of hard
drinking, the Prairie Oyster is enjoyed by Sally Bowles in
Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories (see p. 25) as
well as Back to the Future Part III and in the James Bond
movie, Thunderball.
According to The Gourmet Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin,
2006), from which this recipe is adapted, Black Forest Cake
was invented in Berlin in the 1930s, where it was known as
Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte. With all of that chocolate, kirsch,
cream and cherries, this cake does seem to personify the
excess of the Weimar Republic.
½ cup flour
6 cinnamon graham crackers, ground into fine crumbs
½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup kirsch (cherry brandy)
3 cups cold heavy whipping cream
1 ¼ cups (16 ounces) sour cherry jam or preserves
Chocolate curls for garnish (optional)
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter bottom of 10-inch springform pan and line with parchment cut to fit. Butter
parchment.
Melt chocolate and butter with 2 tablespoons water in a double boiler set over slow simmering water, stirring until smooth.
Cool to room temperature. Stir in vanilla.
Grind almonds with ¼ cup (4 tablespoons) sugar in a food processor or blender until fine but not a paste. Transfer to a
large bowl, wide enough to allow for the incorporation of beaten whites at a later stage. Add egg yolks, and beat with an
electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale, thick and almost doubled in volume, about 5 minutes. Reduce to low
speed and beat in chocolate mixture.
In separate bowl, beat egg whites on high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in 6 tablespoons sugar and continue
to beat until whites are just stiff and peaks stand up when you remove the beaters.
Whisk about ¼ of the whites into the chocolate batter to lighten it, then gently fold in remaining whites.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, cocoa and salt. Fold into batter in 3 to 4 batches.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake in preheated oven 30 to 35 minutes, until a wooden skewer tests clean. Cool in pan 5
minutes, then remove from pan, invert to remove parchment, then turn right side up on a rack and cool completely.
Combine remaining 4 tablespoons (¼ cup) water and ¼ cup of the remaining sugar in a small saucepan and heat over
medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and stir in kirsch.
Beat cream with remaining ¼ cup sugar in a large bowl until just stiff.
When cake is completely cool, cut it into three layers. Put bottom layer on a serving plate and brush with one-third of the
kirsch syrup. Spread half the sour cherry jam or preserves over the layer, then cover with about 1 cup of whipped cream.
Top with middle cake layer and repeat steps. Top with third layer, brush with remaining syrup and cover with remaining
whipped cream. Garnish, if desired, with chocolate curls.
17

Dance
In Germany, the postwar need for expression found release in the form of dance. Dance halls were full of
couples dancing tangos, foxtrots, one-steps, and Bostons were introduced weekly; and the frenzy of the
inflation period worked itself out in complicated steps imported from America. One private citizen, driven
frantic by the fluctuations between civil war and everlasting carnival, plastered the advertising kiosks with a
poster reading “Berlin, your dance is death.”
Certain progressive groups sponsored nudism as a healthy way of life; others vaunted vouyerism as a
legitimate activity of the modern-city dweller. And finally, at a time when maimed war veterans were to be
seen begging on every street and prostitution of all kinds throve as an economic necessity, the body
objectified was regarded as a fitting medium of entertainment.
Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau (1891-1963): Famous French poet, novelist,
dramatist, designer and filmmaker was challenged by Russian
ballet dancer, Sergei Diaghilev challenged Cocteau to write a
scenario for his ballet Parade. Produced by Diaghilev, designed
by Pablo Picasso, and composed by Erik Satie, Parade was a ht.
Cocteau had already written his scenario for the ballet Parade
(1917) when he conceived the idea of a dance pantomime set to
classical ballet music . The theme of the pantomime was a
publicity parade in which three groups of circus artists try to
attract an audience to an indoor performance. The jerky poses
and slow-motion slapstick borrowed from the movies gave
Cocteau’s pantomime a dreamlike quality.
Albertina Rasch Dangers, 1929
The Ausdruckstanz, or Expressive Dance, developed by Rudolf Laban and
Mary Wigman, is one of the major movements in modern dance history.
It’s German cousin, the grotesque dance-pantomime was created by a
cabaret performer, Valeska Gert. Gert declared that when she asked
Brecht what he meant by epic acting, he replied, “What you do.”
Valeska Gert
18

Sex and Prostitution
Many factors attributed to Berlin's unique status as the sex Mecca of Europe during the Weimar
period. Germany's recent defeat in World War I did its part, encouraging general disillusionment
and leaving behind thousands of war widows in Berlin's populace of 4 million with no means of
realistically supporting themselves other than by prostitution. Gone were the Kaiser and the old
morality, and in their place was a new liberal republic. And then there was the general economic
collapse and inflation. In October 1923, German currency traded at the astronomical rate of 4.2
billion marks to the U.S. dollar. Ben Gordon, Cabaret historian, points out that "the most exquisite
blow job" to be had in Berlin never cost an American tourist more than 30 cents. Berlin even had
its own urban myth to explain the city's frenzied, oversexed atmosphere. They ascribed it to the
Berliner Luft, the "amphetamine-like air" of the city that made their hearts beat wildly at night and
reinvigorated them at dawn.
A snapshot of Berlin between the
world wars includes nudist magazines
devoted entirely to children; glittering
cabaret shows parading acres of
sweaty, perfumed female flesh; and
an endless supply of cafes, bars and
private clubs catering to gay men,
transvestites, lesbians and
sadomasochists.
Inflation is so rampant that the local
paper currency is good only for toilet
paper. Cocaine, morphine and
opium are peddled on every street
corner. And more than 120,000
desperate women and girls of every
age and stripe sell their bodies for a
pittance, including mother-daughter
prostitution teams and brazen
streetwalkers well into the third
trimester of pregnancy.
Such was the glory that was Weimar
Berlin, a burg American writer Ben
Hecht called the "prime breeding
ground of evil.
Tauentzielgirl team in
Weimar, Berlin 1920s
Cartoon depicting the model
of “assertive female”
“...Fears about the loss of a stable sexual and moral order played a key role in Weimar
democracy’s fall. The decriminalization of prostitution in 1927 entailed vital gains in prostitutes’
rights and marked a radical break with their precarious legal status under the old system of
police-controlled prostitution. Despite certain limitations,the 1927 reforms represented a major
political victory for liberal feminists, socialists, and sexual reformers. This explains why
prostitution became such a central target of right-wing (and ultimately Nazi) attacks...”
-Weimar's Crisis Through the Lens of Gender: The Case of Prostitution. Julie Roos, Fritz Stern
Dissertation Prize Presentation, Princeton University, November 15, 2002).
19

The Modern German Woman
Group of German female
athletes, 1929
In 1929, the popular magazine,
Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung
published an article about leg
posture.
“The person…who grows up in
the milieu of high metropolitan
culture keeps a tight rein on her
or his bodily gestures and controls
the expression of her or his
movements as well as her or his
facial gestures; she or he “wears a
theatrical mask.” …Only the legs
have thus far escaped this already
unconscious restraining
compulsion. The practice of
crossing the legs below the knee
indicates quarrelsomeness, but
ready appeaseability, hot
temperement and volatility. Must
be led by a strong hand…Legs
held in a rigorously parallel
position speak for particular
suitability for marriage,
adaptability, inner restraint.
In 1927, the Berlin bourgeois newspaper, the 8-Uhr-
Abendblatt, claimed,
“Today three women stand before us. The three types:
Gretchen, Girl, Garçonne. The Gretchen type is not
only the young naïve German girl with braids and a
knitting-needle horizon, it is also the heroic and
militaristic ranting fascist woman. …Sexually powerless,
personally passive, this type as a group is a historical
hindrance, is the stumbling block of every historically
urgent development. Allied with the church and
reaction, she has an optimistic attitude toward life, that is
not, however, productive. …The Girl, originating in
America as the child of pioneers and immigrants, is
aware from the beginning that you can rely only on
yourself, and that getting ahead is the sole guarantee that
you won’t rot. …A daring athlete, sexy but without sizzle
—rather cooly calculating—she succeeds whenever she
encounters the sexually bourgeois man of the old
school. …The Garçonne type cannot be grasped by
language… [Her] combination of fifty to fifty [percent]
sexual and intellectual potency often gives rise to
conflict…[T]he most significant one in this group: the
business- and life-artist. Uniting a sporting, comradely
male entrepreneurial sense with heroic, feminine
devotion, this synthesis—if successful—often makes her
so superior to the man she loves that she becomes
troublesome”
Maurice Tabard, Hand and
Woman, 1929
Maurice Tabard: French
photographer known for his ability
to create highly complex images. In
1928 he moved to Paris, intending
to work as a fashion photographer,
and met Man Ray, who taught him
the technique of solarization. He
also became a friend of Ren?
Magritte and the French Surrealist
writer Phillipe Soupault
(1897-1990).
20

Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht, one of the most famous political satirists and theatre theorists of the 1900s, had a major
influence on Berlin Cabaret. Brecht created the Berliner Ensemble, a post-war theatre company that
included the actress Helene Weigel and toured many successful productions internationally, including the
premier of The Threepenny Opera in 1929. His legacy includes such greats as Dario Fo, Augusto Boal,
Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill.
Epic Theatre Basics
• Audience members are constantly aware that they are watching a production; they never lose the reality of
their role as spectators. The design of the production excludes all illusion, providing each spectator with the
ability to think for his or herself without becoming lost in a theatrical world.
• Brecht drew from the Chinese theatre for inspiration for his acting technique, Verfremdungseffekt, or the
Alienation Effect. It is essential that actors maintain some sort of disconnect from their characters in order
to allow the audience to see the character with a critical eye. This disconnect is often accomplished through
breaking of the fourth wall, and direct address of the audience out of character.
• To avoid all aspects of escapism, Epic theatre is full of public announcements, signs or captions, and
comedic techniques to distance its audience from the events of the play.
• Brecht saw little importance in pointless spectacle and biased plotlines, thus he created a theatre where the
audience can be struck with a presentation of issues as they are, broken down and simplified.
• In order to support non-realistic anti-melodramatic epic productions, Brechtian stage designs take an
abstract and unrealistic form, and are sometimes paired with more appropriate and traditional costume and
prop designs.
Gestus
Gestus is an acting technique that carries the sense of a combination of physical gesture and "gist" or
attitude. It is a means by which "an attitude or single aspect of an attitude" is revealed, insofar as it is
"expressible in words or actions.” Gestus, as the embodiment of an attitude, carries at least two distinct
meanings in Brecht's theatre: firstly, the uncovering or revealing of the motivations and transactions that
underpin a dramatic exchange between the characters; secondly, the "epic" narration of that character by the
actor (whether explicitly or implicitly).
Dramatic Theatre Epic Theatre
Plot narrative
Implicates the spectator in a stage situation turns the spectator into an observer, but
Wears down his capacity for action arouses his capacity for action
Provides him with sensations forces him to take decisions
Experience Picture of the world
The spectator is involved in something he is made to face something
Suggestion argument
Instinctive feelings are preserved brought to the point of recognition
The spectator is in the thick of it the spectator stands outside, studies
The human being is taken for granted the human being is the object of the inquiry
He is unalterable he is alterable and able to alter
Eyes on the finish eyes on the course
One scene makes another each scene for itself
Growth montage
Linear development in curves
Evolutionary determinism jumps
Man as a fixed point man as a process
Thought determines being social being determines thought
Feeling reason
21

Rudolph Nelson
Kurt Tucholsky
Satire
Berlin cabaret provided the artistic link between nineteenth-century comic
opera and the political song-plays of Brecht and Weill. This new genre
generally followed the musical and theatrical patterns fixed by Rudolph
Nelson, the composer-pianist, who cast the traditional conferencier in the
novel role of intermediary between stage and audience. The attitudes and
techniques developed by Nelson and his increasing competitors affected
Berlin operetta and the lavish Broadway-type shows of the later Twenties no
less than the political theatre of the artistic left.
Kurt Tucholsky, a leading exponent of satire in song, espoused the
adoption of the word Kabarett. Unlike cabaret, whose prime function
was to entertain, the Kabarett, in Tucholsky’s view, had a duty to
maintain an adversarial stance in order to change society: “Nothing is
harder and takes more character than to stand in open opposition to
one’s time and loudly say: No!” (“Political Satire,” Weldthüne, 9
October 1919). In his view, there were no bounds to satire, whose
mandate stretched to everything under the sun.
Lotte Lenya, wife of composer Kurt Weill, once
noted “I think cabaret satire is more a European
than an American form. Americans have a great
sense of humor, but…I think television has taken
part of the snap out of satire, because it has to
appeal to more of a varied audience. In Berlin in
the Thirties, the audience was presold. They knew
what to expect. The audience was won over from
the beginning. And it was more than just gags”.
The Threepenny Opera, one of the most famous works of satire written
by playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) and composer Kurt Weill
(1900-1950), was first performed in its original German as Die
Dreigroschenoper at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on August
31, 1928, with Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, in the role of Jenny Diver.
Commenting on The Threepenny Opera in the program notes of a 1928
performance, he said that the work confronted “the same sociological
situation as The Beggar’s Opera: Just like 200 years ago, we have a social
order in which virtually all strata of the population, albeit in extremely
varied ways, follow moral principles—not, of course, by living within a
moral code but off it.” On the other hand, as Weill scholar Stephen
Hinton observes in his book Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera, “If the
work exerts any socio-polemical impact, which [Ernst] Bloch and
[Theodor] Adorno claimed, it is at best indirect. Unlike in The Beggar’s
Opera, the outrage expressed in The Threepenny Opera is general, not
particular … Gay’s satire contains scarcely camouflaged barbs against the
Walpole administration, whereas Weill and Brecht’s satire lampoons
conventional bourgeois morality, both in and out of the theater.”
Lotte Lenya
Poster for “The Threepenny
Opera”
22

Cabaret: Production History
1966 – Hal Prince Original Production
1967- National Tour
1968 – London Production (Judi Dench as Sally Bowles)
“Cabaret is often cited as one of the first major 'concept musicals', where the direction, design and
symbolism of the piece can be just as important as the plot. The images evoked of decadent Berlin and the
ways in which it bows to the rise of Nazism are powerful and disturbing, able to affect multiple generations
of theatre-goers. The piece was conceived by producer-director Hal Prince, who worked closely with
librettist Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb to shape both the general outline and
the specific details of the show. The show opened on Broadway on 20 November, 1966, where the
opening-night cast included Joel Grey, Jill Haworth and Lotte Lenya. The production ran for 1,165
performances and won 8 Tony Awards. A subsequent London production included Judi Dench, Peter
Sallis and Barry Dennen in the cast. It opened on 28 February, 1968 and ran for 336
performances” (BBC).
1972 – Film Production (Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles)
1986 – London Revival
1998 – Mendes’s Broadway Revival (Alan Cummings as the Emcee, Natasha Richardson as Sally)
“The thrusting, angular Bob Fosse moves that are so inextricably associated with “Cabaret” lent an
atmosphere of dancing on the edge of a volcano. This time around (Mendes’s 1998 Broadway Revival), the
volcano has caused chaos even before it fully erupts; the dancers look wounded, their stockings are ripped,
and they seem eager not to entertain but simply to survive. The fact that they all have imperfect bodies (clad
in dingy underwear) makes it even harder for us to distance ourselves from their fate; they’re not that
different from us. “
-Nancy Franklin (The New Yorker)
“Mendes’ Cabaret could, I suppose, be described as a betrayal of what Prince and the show’s creators—
librettist Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander, lyricist Fred Ebb—had in mind. The original made a very
careful demarcation between the real world of the two central romantic plots and the limbo world of the
Emcee, interrupting the traditionally-styled book scenes and songs with numbers that functioned as
commentary on what surrounded them. For this reason, the original Cabaret was a show that
simultaneously looked back and ahead, one that made tantalizing shifts from the ‘40s to ‘60s mode of
conventional musicals to that of the conceptual musical that Prince would go on to champion and triumph
with in the next decade...The new Cabaret mixes the two worlds right from the beginning; the Emcee is
allowed to disturb the real world throughout, and the real characters are drawn into the stage show. “
-Ken Mandelbaum (Playbill)
“George Grosz once said of his art, “I felt the ground shaking beneath my feet, and the shaking was visible
in my work.” The same might be said of the work of Cummings and Mendes in their dazzling reinvention
of “Cabaret”—the difference is that they make it impossible for the audience not to feel that shaking, too.”
-Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times)
“Theatre is not about illustrating, not about decorating. It’s about building images from the inside out. It’s
become a cliché, you can’t act the beginning of Nazism with a knowledge of the ending. The point (of
Cabaret) is to show how seductive it was, to draw the audience in.”
-Sam Mendes (Director)
“The carnal, gyrating chorus of men and women look ill and spent, like denizens in an S-and-M bar who
have already let the games go on too long.”
-Ben Brantley (The New York Times)
1999- National Tour
2006 – London Revival
23

Christopher Isherwood’s
The Berlin Stories
"I am a camera with its shutter open." There is
something unmistakably 20th Century about
this, the opening line to Goodbye to Berlin. In
their coolness and clarity and melancholy
detachment these words express more about a
moment in time than most entire novels do.
Berlin Stories is not quite a novel; it's actually
two short ones stuck together, The Last of Mr.
Norris and Goodbye to Berlin. But they form
one coherent snapshot of a lost world, the
antic, cosmopolitan Berlin of the 1930's, where
jolly expatriates dance faster and faster, as if
that would save them from the creeping rise of
Nazism. One of Isherwood's greatest
characters, the racy, doomed Sally Bowles,
took center stage in the book's musical
adaptation, Cabaret, but the theatrical version
can't match the power and richness of the
original. – TIME Magazine
The Stories
John van Druten’s
I am the Camera
Adapted from Isherwood’s “The Berlin Stories” for
the stage, “I am the Camera” follows the life of
Chrisopher Isherwood as he moves into Fraulein
Schneider’s flat in Berlin (the setting of the play). “I
am a Camera” was adapted into a film and then later
adapted into the musical “Cabaret”.
Sally. …Oh,
Chris, am I too
awful—for me I
mean?
Christopher. No,
Sally. I’m very
fond of you.
Sally. I do hope
you are. Because
I am of you.
“If Mendes’s production is the perfect ‘Cabaret’ for the 1990’s, the show’s evolution serves as a
glittering mirror of the theatre’s changing Zeitgeist—of how both our esthetic tastes and our attitudes
towards sex and history have grown tougher and more explicit over the last half century. Each version
of the material was considered startling in its day; each version, in turn, was superseded by one that
was more radical and harder edged. Isherwood’s 1930’s Berlin stories aspired to transparency: the
narrator was a dispassionate observer who described himself as “a camera with its shutter open.” The
1951 van Druten play based on these stories took a Chekhovian stance toward the material: it was less
a story about pre-WWII Germany than a gently comic portrait of Holly Golightly who happened to
find herself in Hitler’s Berlin. Prince’s 1966 production brought the Nazi menace to the foreground,
and suggested, as Prince once put it, that “what happened then in Berlin could happen here now.”
Now only did the show’s dark subject matter—Hitler, promiscuity, abortion—mark a departure from
traditional Broadway musicals, but it’s innovative staging also pointed the way to the “concept”
musical that Prince would soon bring to full fruition. In keeping with the times, the 1972 movie and
the 1987 Broadway revival grappled more directly with both the hero’s bisexuality and the Nazi’s rise
to power. Mendes’s production of “Cabaret” recaptures the shock those earlier versions had for
theatergoers of the day. It is darker, raunchier and more disturbing than it’s predecessors, and by
turning the entire theatre into the Kit Kat Klub (many theatergoers actually sit at café tables), it
implicates the audience in the frenetic escapism, and coming horror, of 1930’s Berlin.”
-Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times)
24

“Art…more effectively
than alcohol or love.
enables humans to forge
reality. through
immersion in the dream.
Standing above the
multitude. the artist has
limitless power to express
the inexpressible. reveal
the unknown. and escape
the mediocrity of life”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
(German philosopher)
25

“Leave your troubles outside! So—life is disappointing? Forget it! In here life is beautiful- The girls are beautiful—even the orchestra is beautiful!”
sex
allure
lust
vitality
pride
exuberance
diversion joy
26

Art…has existed in every known civilization, accompanying man’s steps from the early hours of his prehistorical dawn, earlier than the birth of
written language. – Ayn Rand
Art is inextricably tied to a man’s survival—not to his physical survival, but to that on which
his physical survival depends: to the preservation and survival of his consciousness.
creativity
– Ayn Rand
beauty power
truth
censorship
expression
“The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.” – Henry Miller
“Just doing something where play is at the heart of every interaction is implicitly political.” – Russel Wilcox, laser engineer for music festival,
Burning Man
27

Ideal Pleasure
Beauty
“There was a
Cabaret and there
was a Master-of-
Ceremonies and
there was a city
called Berlin in a
country called
Germany and it was
the end of the world
And I was dancing
with Sally Bowles –
and we were both
fast asleep…”
Pure Morality
28

Bibliography/Webliography
29