Cabaret (musical)
Cabaret to Kabarett - from the program notes
In the '20s Berlin roared louder than most capitals. There were 120 newspapers -- left, right or indifferently popular or pornographic. The number of theatres and cabarets escalated, but the new cabaret forms had little in common with their artistic forebears. Some were strip clubs, just dives and dance halls marketing sex. However, a new style of cabaret developed as an outpost of dissent, bridging the gap between high and elitist art and consumer entertainment for a mass market.
With its mixture of sex, smoke and jazz; song, skits and stinging satire, it seemed the perfect medium for an art seeking popularity. Known as Kabarett to differentiate it from the purely amusing cabarets, this form was associated with the most radical artistic movements and experimenters. Taking in the most skilled participants of the German Dadaist movement, Kabarett refused to define the limits of art and cultivated the possibilities of protest and provocation. Satire was its weapon: in song, poem and monologue.
Of all the great writers for the Kabarett, like Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring and Eric Kstner, only Bertolt Brecht is known widely today. Their amusing bitterness guaranteed that they were among the first victims of the Nazi terror.
While the movement flourished between the still active interventions of the constabulary, venues like Die Katakombe, Brecht's Red Grape, the Schall und Rauch and Rosa Valetti's Cabaret Grossenwahn secured a huge following among burgher and worker alike with a menu employing eroticism, a touch of sentimentality, music with contemporary words, a strong rhythm, melody to be whistled, jokes and wit. The cabaret chanson, much loved by the French, found a new home on this rough stage as much to harness the articulate protest of an angry writer as to allow Marlene Dietrich to lament in song about "falling in love again".
Our preoccupations with a strictly rehearsed theatre make the improvisational ambience of the Kabarett seem distant. While many writers and performers collaborated in molding the material for the cabaret stage, the real essence of the performance lay with the conferencier. Basically a conferencier was a master of ceremonies who introduced the acts and set the tone of the performance to draw out the spectacle. They would provide quick repartee to any challenge emanating from the audience and, as masters of improvisation, they acted as antennas of the day's events. It was a complex role. Most were men, but conferenciers like Rosa Valetti were renowned for their ability to work an audience. Today the tradition of the conferencier lives on in the best of the stand-up comedians.
Source: Green Left Weekly
Photo:
Nancy Prebilich and Greg Grabow, photo by Jeff
Thomas.
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