Cabaret, written by Joe Masteroff, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and John Van Druten’s I Am A Camera, offers an ominous look into German life during the early 1930’s. 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.
Despite the general climate, or perhaps due to it, Berlin cultural life thrived; expressionist art flourished, cinema boomed, and live performance halls were scattered throughout the city. Revues, varietés, and cabarets offered an escape from the hardships of everyday life. As time passed, however, not even art could provide adequate escape.
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. Such is the backdrop for American novelist Clifford Bradshaw’s stay in Berlin. As Clifford tries to navigate life abroad, he is drawn to the Kit Kat Klub. There he meets nightclub singer Sally Bowles and their tumultuous affair begins. Ultimately, the entertainment at the Kit Kat Klub serves not as an escape from the Berlin in which it is located, but as a commentary on the grim reality of the moment.
The performance, inside and outside of the Cabaret, is symptomatic of the liminality of identity, gender, sex, class, and race. It negotiates the masks we put on every day; it shatters façades and protects illusions at the same time. Each character has to resolve his or her performativity in the light of impending doom. The concerns depicted in Cabaret are not exclusive to the historic moment of the emerging Third Reich but speak to the way in which the individual is always responsible for the shaping of society. In this way, the world itself becomes a theater through which a new order is formed.
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Katrin Dettmer & Aaron Malkin
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