They brought a woman from the street And made her sit in the stalls By threats By bribes By flattery Obliging her to share a little of her life with actors
But I don't understand art
Sit still, they said
But I don't want to see sad things
Sit still, they said
And she listened to everything Understanding some things But not others Laughing rarely, and always without knowing why Sometimes suffering disgust Sometimes thoroughly amazed And in the light again, said
If that's art I think it is hard work It was beyond me So much beyond my actual life
But something troubled her Something gnawed her peace And she came a second time, armoured with friends
Sit still, she said
And again, she listened to everything This time understanding different things This time untroubled that some things Could not be understood Laughing rarely but now without shame Sometimes suffering disgust Sometimes thoroughly amazed And in the light again said
This is art, it is hard work And one friend said, too hard for me And the other said, if you will I will come again Because I found it hard I felt honoured
I have started a concert series, and it is a miracle of hope and celebratory energy.
"I Wish: The Roles that Could've Been" is a chance for performers to live out their dreams-- the roles that passed them by, the roles that never will be, but TONIGHT: here we are.
Playing the role in living color at Broadway's supper club, 54 Below.
The first concert was an impromptu endeavor on June 2, the week before the Tony Awards. It was such a huge success that 54 Below agreed to make it a serial.
Behold the opening number (with lyrics co-written by genius, Brian Nash):
Once Upon a Time …
I wish
In a far off kingdom…
more than HANNIGAN
More than THE LIFE
of Metro Detroit…
More than TupTim
Lived a young maiden
More than THE LIFE
With totally delusional casting dreams
MORE THAN EPONINE!
More than TiMoune!
YOU WISH
I wish to play Mama Rose and Scar
I wish to play Mama Rose and Scar
George Serat!
The guests are gifted.
The evening is pure positivity and light.
It feels like a great big celebration of actualized possibilities.
A party.
A catharsis.
The wonderful October cast
my incredible producer Jen Sandler!
To view the ever-expanding playlist (all captured by Famous in NY) click here.
In action!
As I say at the conclusion of the concert:
Octavia Spencer was told she was weird-looking and “not for Hollywood.” Suck it haters: she now has an Oscar.
Samuel L. Jackson recovered from a crippling addiction to cocaine and heroin before landing Pulp Fiction at 46.
And even though Angela Lansbury was nominated for an Oscar at 18, a Goldwyn girl, a movie and gigantic Broadway star, she wasn’t a household name until she starred on Murder, She Wrote which she began at the age of 60.
Not to mention Ariana Huffington starting The Huffington post at age 54.
Or Charles Darwin, who was 50 years old before he published On the Origin of the Species in 1859.
Or Julia Child who published her first cookbook at 39; and made her television debut at age 51.
PROOF that dreams DO happen, and it is never too late for ANYTHING
Tonight you have watched people live their dreams, and I hope YOU remember why you are pursuing YOURS.
Enjoy one of the best and most difficult conversations I've had in years with "Dr. Drama" (a practicing psychologist and theatre-lover who uses theatre to explore and disucss psychological themes in the mainstream. She runs a brilliant blog featuring "Interviews & insight from Broadway's psychologist.")
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[TW: This article contains a discussion of the Holocaust and pictures of white nationalists and Nazi Germany.]
As I prepared to interview sage actor and writer Alexandra Silber (Fiddler on the Roof, author of After Anatevka and White Hot Grief Parade) about her role in the Olney Theatre production of Cabaret,
I kept thinking about the parallels between the nationalist, xenophobic
song, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” and the war cry of white nationalists
saying, “The Jews will not replace us” during their march in
Charlottesville in 21017. Cabaret is a show
that both helps us elucidate the past and reflects upon contemporaneous
issues. With anti-Semitism and other hate crimes on the rise in recent
years, this show, its questions, and its provocation are the kind of
theater that we need. I spoke with Al about what this musical tells us
about how hatred takes hold, how this show is impacting audiences, and
the ways in which doing this show is an act of resistance.
What do you think the show is saying about how fascism comes to power and how xenophobia gains ground?
It’s really crucial to draw contemporary
social parallels that are at the moment all too prescient, such as the systematic hunting down of “illegals”, the trauma being caused, and
dehumanization.
One thing I think is really, really
important to say before we get into anything else, just as a huge disclaimer, is that a crucial distinction is they [immigrants] are not
being systematically terminated and murdered. In the Holocaust, we should never forget that 9 million people were systematically exterminated. (And for Russia scholars, they probably add 20 more
million people to that.) I don’t want to say that in terms of exclusivity, what I want to say is those people’s memories are lost and need to be honored for what it is and not diminished by being compared to something that it is not.
Torch-bearing
white nationalists rally around a statue of Thomas Jefferson on the
University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville, Aug. 11, 2017. (Edu
Bayer/The New York Times)
It’s important to make that
distinction like you said, to honor their lives, to distinguish how
what’s happening now in our country is different from what happened and
also to move the discussion forward. There are important lessons to be
gleaned from what did happen that we can apply to what’s happening right
now.
Correct and also it doesn’t mean that it
won’t happen. I think that we’re starting to become even more aware of that as things become scarier in our waking world. The further away we
get from the Holocaust and the rise of the Nazi party in time, the more it really does feel foreign to younger people, something that happened
in the past, as far away as Medieval times and the dinosaurs walking the
Earth. The way that we got there is exactly the way we’re walking there
right now and that’s the beginning of this conversation.
‘Cabaret’ at Olney Theatre Center. (Photo: Stan Barouh)
Hitler and authoritarians like him
didn’t invent or create racism. They didn’t create anti-Semitism or
anti-immigrantion points-of-view or nationalism. They didn’t invent
those, they have fertilized on those feelings that were already there
and are lying dormant in our humanity. When people feel their survival
is being challenged, they operate completely for the fear-based place
and the worst of them comes out.
Fascism and racists aren’t born, they’re made. As it is said in South Pacific, “you have to be carefully taught”.
The rise of fascism and the rise of
specific targeted hate associated with fascism, it happens in stages. It
starts with dehumanization, it moves on to expulsion, the removal of
rights and it ends ultimately with extermination. We are already at
three out of four. When we start to be unmoved watching video after
video of children being separated from their families, begging people to
treat them like human beings, that’s how we know dehumanization is
working.
And once upon a time in the rise of Nazi
Germany, Jews were being compared with rats. First they said that they
do not belong here, they are not German. Even Jews who were born in
Germany were called, “generational interlopers”, which is exactly what
is being said now about people from Mexico, central South America and
the Middle East. They are generational interlopers and they are stealing
our business. They are taking our jobs, they are ruining our economy
for the people that “belong” here. And the more you compare them to
vermin, the more palatable the concept of exterminating them because
they’re not human beings.
Then second, we start to get into
expulsion, now Jews can only live in this part of town. They have to
identify themselves with a Star of David on their clothing. We have to
round them up and put them somewhere and then suddenly we have the
removal of rights, meaning you don’t get to vote, you have to pay higher
taxes, you don’t get to have state benefits. That’s already happening
in America with access to public services, even if you’re documented.
Jewish families being forced out of their homes by Nazis in Poland (Photo: Getty Images)
The next thing we got here on the list
is extermination. Once you have Hitler, it’s too late. That means that
you have been operating inside your bubble for so long that you didn’t
see evil right there. I think for a lot of people, they just felt so
secure. New York City, Los Angeles, these cities were so incubated in
their liberalism that they didn’t even connect with, speak to, pay
attention to any other opinions that were happening in different parts
of the country. It’s a lot like Berlin in the 1930’s.
Cabaret is a play about the
price and the cost of complicity. What does it cost to identity with
evil? To actively do nothing? And the play is an answer to the question,
“How did this happen?” Then the show ends with the question, “What are
you going to do about it?”
Can we talk about what a song like, “Money” says about how economic fear and xenophobia?
One of the things I don’t think I ever
fully grasped is that the song is commenting upon how Cliff has decided
to blindly smuggle money for the Nazis. Cliff is a protagonist, a “good
American boy”. He has decided to ask no questions and go back and forth
with these briefcases full of cash and do what he has to do to pay his
rent. So many people were in precisely that position. I think what’s
really profound about Cliff is that he has the ability to ask deeper
questionnaires, he has the ability to comprehend their answers, he just
completely declines to. He’s different from Sally who is operating in
ignorance. She is like so many of us, her weakness is that she cannot
bear the ugly. Of course we must laugh and celebrate and heal and
continue on with as much joy as we can muster but there’s a huge
distinction from that and blocking out reality.
We have a responsibility to humanity.
I’ll openly admit that five or six years ago, I was a person that
thought, I don’t have a revolutionary spirit and I don’t find politics
particularly interesting. A couple of causes mean a lot to me but on the
whole, it’s not my thing. And then 2016 happened. I am Jewish and I am
white passing. I’m an artist, but I live in a socioeconomic bracket that
isn’t poverty. So I am privileged, it wouldn’t change my way of life
whatsoever if I didn’t want to look. But my human conscience won’t allow
me to have people and the news speak of my friends and colleagues as if
their lives are worthless or don’t exist. Perhaps that comes from the
echoes of 1930’s Germany that I feel in my DNA.
In the Jewish community, we have this
phrase “Never Again”. My question to the world who is listening to and
reading this is, what does that mean? If it’s just something we say,
then it becomes a trope without action. It requires resistance. If you
ever wondered who you’d be and what you would do during the Holocaust,
you’re doing it right now.
There is this almost hysterical
denial represented in the show. In 1930’s Berlin, it was music and booze
and drugs. Currently, it may still be alcohol and drugs but it’s also
our phones that we use to get those dopamine rushes that keep us
satiated.
We live in a society of decadence, the
decadence is simply personal, external validation. Whereas once upon a
time it was partying all night long, we’ve completely replaced that with
our phones, which doesn’t make it any less decadent. We are
distracted.
Alexandra Silber as Sally Bowles (Photo: Stan Barouh)
Cabaret is a show that confronts. Given the world we currently live in, how have your audiences been responding?
In the original production, they very
famously staged a mirror that was in the very back of the club that was
revealed and audience saw itself in the final moments. What it says is
you are now watching yourself watch as families burn. By confronting
yourself in the mirror, the innate subtextual question there is, are you
a different person than that person watching?
What we all wanted with this production
was for people in the audience to be so disturbed and so shaken that
they donated money, that they called their Congress-person, that they
did something. We have a Brechtian ending where we turn on the
lights and we look directly in their eyes. We are all standing on stage,
every single person in the company. I look in a patron’s eyes for 30
silent seconds. There’s some people that look all around, still trying
to have audience-actor relationship.There are people that are extremely
confrontational, that feel tricked that you made me laugh and you asked
me to applaud and now you’re punishing me. And then there are people
that are weeping that say I don’t know what to do but this 30 seconds of
being held by your eyes is helping me find the strength to do
something.
The whole purpose of theater, going back
to its origin, was to have a group catharsis and for political action
because everyone in the community, including the Greek senators, were
there. Actors were speaking directly to their representatives and in our
society we have been told, and hopefully those truths will remain so,
that we are in charge of our own political destiny with the power of our
vote and the power of our voice. If that holds true, then hopefully
when you attend any piece of theater you have your cathartic experience,
whether it be joy or sorry, but please also leave the theater and do
something with those emotions. Take action for it to make the world a
better place.
We really need a show like Cabaret right now. We need to lean into the awareness and the political.
One of my favorite things I’ve learned is the Hebrew phrase, chevak v’ematz, which means “travel bravely”. There’s this beautiful little micro scene at the very end of Cabaret
where Herr Shultz stops to say goodbye to Cliff and Sally. Cliff says
to him, “I wish you much Mazel [good luck]” and Herr Shultz responds,
“Mazel. That is what we all need.” I always feel hit that he would say
that, the ancient wisdom there is so crucial. It’s not travel safely,
it’s travel bravely.
- Angela Lansbury facts, trivia and general knowledge
- Sending postcards
- Making grain-free bread
- Writing love letters
- Power-napping
- The Golden Girls
- Ulcerative colitis. (Don’t be jealous)
- How to charm a cat
- The Golden Age of Musical Theatre
- Making quite delicious if I do say so, quite strong, coffee
- Writing lyrics to television theme songs that don’t have lyrics
- Grasping at joy and humor in even the direst of circumstances
- Quoting “What About Bob?”
- Manifestation
- “Zoodles”
- Learning new things
- Curiosity
- Just barely keeping a succulent alive
- Navigating the best route through a capital one bank parking lot behind the N train overpass to gain a serious short cut and thus get home from said subway in under 4 minutes.
When it comes to creating characters as a theatre artist, I (like many actors) like to think of rehearsal as a “studio” — the way visual artists might regard their time experimenting and crafting their artwork. With that in mind, I like to think of myself as having a varied “toolkit” at my disposal to help aid my creation. Based in really thorough research and fueled by my imagination, I have so many wonderful techniques at my disposal to play around with. But I have found that I often prefer to create characters from the “inside - out,” if you will. (This method was made famous by Stanislavski around the turn of the century in Russia, and made its way around Europe and eventually to America where it was utilized and transformed by American Naturalism pioneers such as Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, and later Uta Hagen and many others). The “inside - out” theory merely means you start working from the inner world of the character (the “inside”) and see how that affects the behavior and actions of that character, I often prefer to start with their inner life and backstory and a lot of psychological questions about what got this character to this place in time and geography. But interestingly, with Sally Bowles I have been working in the opposite direction! Reacquainting myself with a number of physical theatre techniques that help me understand who Sally is by starting with herbehaviorin thepresent—and allowing the physicality to fill in and inform her inner world and backstory. It’s been exhilerating and extremly evocative to work this way, because for Sally, her persona is THE most important thing in her life at this point in time. We know very few facts about her and she even says to Cliff when they first meet:
“Oh Cliff. You musn’t ever ask me questions. If I want to tell you anything, I will.”
I can’t imagine creating such an enigmatic character (for whom so much of her reality is put-on / theatrical / false) in any other way. And I am finding that as I craft and hone her behavior, her voice, her fashion sense, her actions, her choices— her psychology and her backstory and revealing themselves to me like a dark and twisted Easter egg hunt.
As I’ve stated above, Sally is an enigma in almost every way.
In Christopher Isherwood’s 1937 novella Goodbye to Berlin (on which the musical Cabaret is based) Isherwood famously introduces Sally by writing:
A few minutes later, Sally herself arrived. "Am I terribly late, Fritz darling?".... Sally laughed. She was dressed in black silk, with a small cape over her shoulders and a little cap like a page-boy's stuck jauntily on one side of her head.... I noticed that her finger-nails were painted emerald green, a colour unfortunately chosen, for it called attention to her hands, which were much stained by cigarette smoking and as dirty as a little girl's. She was dark.... Her face was long and thin, powdered dead white. She had very large brown eyes which should have been darker, to match her hair and the pencil she used for her eyebrows.
What we do know about her is that she is a relatively young woman we are told is from England. She is one of the star performers at the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin in 1930 at the height of the liberal all-night-party that was the Weimar Republic in Germany between the world wars (just before Hitler and the Nazis seized Germany). The Kit Kat Klub embodies Berlin at the time: the German epicenter of sexual liberation, freedom, and decadence; and Sally is never happier and more filled with purpose than when she’s performing on the Kit Kat stage.
She is not-necessarily conventionally talented (though she does have some kind of “star quality”), she is liberal with her values, she is sexually promiscuous, terrible with money, and appears to have a terrible addiction to gin and being the center of attention.
But despite all these slightly repugnant qualities, there is something about her that is charming, irresistible, intoxicating and even warm.
I can actually think of no other classic story more important thanCabaretin 2019.
Cabaret is the story that details the humanity (or lack thereof) of Berliners at the dawn of Nazi Germany. It paints vivid pictures of struggling Germans who long for a better country, and are torn apart by a struggling economy, floods of immigrants, Nationalistic pride and an utterly divided political climate. … sound familiar?
Berliners in 1930 did not realize that the Nazi Party was one to be taken seriously. They were shocked by the uprising in Nazi power. And while the Nazis were anti-semitic and absolute extremists, in 1930, the horrors we associate with their regime had not happened yet. No regular citizen couldfathomhow far the theories would go. What they proposed was a practical (if radical) economic solution for a desperately struggling country.
But the true message of Cabaret is that of the price of COMPLICITY.
What does it mean to “do nothing?”
What does it cost us all?
Just like in 1930s Germany, we as 21st century Americans do not live in a country or in a world where we can be neutral. Our human rights are being attacked every day. Do we live in an age where it is possible to be neutral? Do we live in a time where we can sit tight and think “governments come and governments go…?” If we remain disinterested, inactive and silent, must we hold ourselves accountable as being complicit in the actions being taken by not only lawmakers and our government, but by our friends and neighbors?
A list of things you will never hear me say, and if you do, absolutely call the police:
- “Oh why yes: I would love to go on a cruise.”
- “Please PLEASE: turn that acid rock UP!”
- “Why yes I would love to go clubbing!”
- “Ya know? I think I’ll go braless today...” [This is not just for the good of my boobs, but for the public service to humanity who has to look at me]
- “Let’s burn some INCENSE.”
- “Cottage cheese: YUM”[Let me be crystal clear: if you placed a $100 bill at the bottom of a bowl of cottage cheese,
and in order to walk away with said $100 I had to eat the bowl of
cottage cheese? I'd walk the heck away.]
- "Please: tell me more about your elimination diet"
- "Please: tell me more about the intricate details and specificities of your work-out regime (and if you have videos, do indeed share them immediately)[I
have an entire hazing relationship on Instagram with actor Tally
Sessions that celebrates this precise pet peeve. To great amusement for all, may I add.] - “Wow. I quite enjoyed this waxing session” - “Wow. I quite enjoyed this reality TV program (that is not a documentary, but is, in fact, reality television)” - “Wow. I quite enjoyed this confrontational conversation”
- “Tell me more about how difficult your journey through traffic here was.”[I literally do not care that the 405 was closed or that the 6 train was
delayed. I don't care. No one cares. You hit traffic. You are late.
Let's move on.]
- “I’d love to hear every detail about your IN-YOUR-SLEEP DREAM”
- “Wow. I sure enjoyed that piece of epic Irish literature”[I once threw [threw!] 'A Prayer for Owen Meany" across a room. It remains, to this day, the only book I have ever projected in the air.]
- “I'm RIVETED to know more from your, novice internet person, about how to heal my colon” [Last time I checked, I have a devastating, chronic auto-immune disease
that makes my body attack itself with deadly bleeding ulcers and KAREN?
Activia yogurt and that Yahoo Answers article WILL NOT HELP ME. Sit
down, Karen. The internet is not a doctor. And neither are you.]
- “Please. Tell me more about that article you read that is better than any actual doctor’s advice”
- “Behold me: I have PUT ON this mini-skirt and I think I look fantastic in this mini skirt.” [said Al Silber NEVER]
- “Ya know what? I think I’ll get a tattoo”
- “Boy do I love Las Vegas!” [I
was once offered the travel advice by an acquaintance: "You know when
you wake up in a new city and as you open the curtains and take in a
fresh breath of air you think 'AH! ROME! I can't wait to explore you!'
In Las Vegas? RESIST THAT URGE."]
Continuing on with this series, and my love-letters to journaling, Part 4’s offering reiterates why making journaling a habit creates so much power. Journaling is a beautiful and powerful facilitator of self-discovery. By journaling in the morning and/or evening, you’ll quickly see your life laid bare before you— in your own handwriting, in black white; with crystal-clear clarity. You’ll see what blocks or obstacles might potentially be removed, as well as what should continue to be included and further cultivated in your life.
Letter-writing (real and imaginary) has long been a tool for self-expression— the epistolary form is intimate in ways that even private conversations cannot capture.
I wrote letters with my high school English teacher Judy Chu for over 10 years (a relationship chronicled here and in my memoir), and one of the great joys was being able to “speak to” her with a level of intimacy we never had when sitting face to face in class. I could pour my soul into the pages and confess the truth to her, and thus, to myself, that was previously unavailable to me. I vividly recall our first face-to-face meeting in an outdoor Traverse City sidewalk cafe years later, when the first hour of our meeting was an energetic adjustment to this fact: all the extraordinary intimacies shared on paper, that had never been uttered face to face. We did so, of course, and remain close to this day. But the lesson is there: letters are magical portals, not to geographic places, but to unknown, shadowy caves within our souls. Write a letter and see where it takes you.
Sincerely Yours,
Al
x
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Prompt: Write a Letter
• Write a letter to someone you need to forgive.
• Write a letter to someone who believed in you even when you didn’t believe in yourself.
• Write a letter to be read by each of your loved ones after you’ve passed away.
• Write a fan letter to your favorite actor/actress.
• Write a letter to the editor of your favorite magazine telling them what features you would like to see included in the magazine.
• Is there something you’re reluctant to tell someone? Write a letter to help y0u organize your thoughts.
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