Cabaret is an intensely personal evening of song and stories, delivered in a simple,
honest way, in an intimate space that shatters the “fourth wall,” a term
actors use to describe what’s beyond the footlights.
– Andrea Marcovicci, American cabaret singer
Success in cabaret is measured by how well you break down the fourth wall.
Singers and comics in cabaret are not just performing, they’re relating.
And they’re skating close to the edge. – Bob Harrington, former
cabaret critic for Back Stage & The New York Post
Cabaret is a form of entertainment that combines song, comedy, storytelling, dance and theatre. The art form has its roots in the informal saloons or ‘cabarets’ of Paris at the turn of the last century, where poets, artists and composers would share their ideas and creations. Cabaret also has its roots in the dark social and political satire of ‘kabarett’ in Berlin in the ’20s and in the cool jazz of the mellow, smoky nightclubs of New York in the ’50s.
Pioneering French cabaret artists include Jacques Brel, Edith Piaf and Léo Ferré. In Germany, the art form was advanced by the great Marlene Dietrich and more recently by the sensation Ute Lemper. Veterans of American cabaret in the ’50s who still grace our stages include Julie Wilson, Eartha Kitt and Barbara Cook.
Cabaret in the United States began to disappear with the rise of rock & roll and television variety shows in the ’60s. The art form survived, however, through stand-up comedians and performers such as Bette Midler whose campy cabaret acts made her a New York sensation in the ’70s. The success of the 1974 film version of Kander & Ebb’s hit Broadway musical Cabaret helped to draw a wider public to Manhattan’s small clubs. In the ’80s, many of the small clubs disappeared and the larger clubs began to only book big names — local and national. The experimental and community roots of cabaret were deeply effected. However, cabaret was given its due in the ’80s and ’90s in clubs in New York’s Greenwhich Village neighborhood such as the legendary Eighty Eights and The Duplex, the latter of which is still in existence and still committed to booking known, lesser-known and debut acts.
Today, even top artists cannot make a living engaging in the cabaret art form. In fact, most debut and many lesser-known artists self-produce their shows and feel lucky if their abaret acts leave them no more than a few thousand dollars in the hole. As the great Erv Raible, former owner of Eighty Eights, once said about cabaret: “If you have the money for a cab ride home after paying for your music director, arrangements, and outfit — you’re doing well.”
So why do cabaret artists bother putting a show together? Cabaret is still a movement as much as it is an art form. And, it is currently undergoing a renaissance of sorts as new generations of performers reinterpret the old forms in both music and spoken word and strive to “rediscover the passion, the artfulness and the engagement of when cabaret had an edge” (Barry Singer, The New York Times, 2/27/00).
Thank you for supporting CABARET in Washington, DC. If you want to follow and contribute to the local cabaret scene, please join the D.C. Cabaret Network and/or sign up to receive the Network’s monthly newsletter.
