General Audio Producer Ethan Rubenstein speaks with the cast and crew of the UT Theatre and Dance Department’s production of the musical ‘Cabaret’ about their creative process and what makes the show more relevant than ever.
Reported and produced by Ethan Rubenstein. Edited by Drew Kampf-Sullivan. Cover photo by McKenzie Henningson. Music by Pixabay.
David Gonima: Well, I, I just came from my, my makeup fitting and I have like glitter all over my face. I just think it’s funny that there’s glitter all over my arms.
Ethan Rubenstein: That’s David Gonima, a fourth-year BFA acting major here at UT Austin.
Gonima: I think my freshman year they, they started doing this thing where it’s like, every other year we’re gonna do a musical. We were like, okay, so senior year, that’s gonna be the next musical. Oh my gosh, wait, what could it be? And then they announced Cabaret and I was like, oh my gosh, this has to be like my bookend to my musical theater journey. Or maybe not. We’ll see, I mean, we’ll see what happens after graduation, but, um, I was so thrilled.
Rodolfo Robles Cruz: UT Austin wanted to do a musical, they try to do one like in a pattern every other year. So this is my thesis production, and they let us know they were gonna do a play and a musical, so to pitch one or the other. And I, and I loved Cabaret. I mean, I love musicals. I’m a big fan of musicals. Um, and I’m very familiar with it. I think it’s a musical that really lets actors shine. I think it’s in a musical that amplifies scene work. And I knew that with our pool of actors that we could do this.
Rubenstein: And that’s Rodolfo Robles Cruz, a third-year MFA directing student at UT. He’s the director spearheading one of the UT Theatre and Dance Department’s most ambitious productions in recent years, Cabaret, which opens this Thursday, October 30th.
*jazzy instrumental music*
Rubenstein: I’m Ethan Rubenstein reporting for The Daily Texan, and if you’re not a former theater kid like me, you might be asking “What exactly is Cabaret?” Here’s Rodolfo again:
Robles Cruz: I think my interest in doing the show is to present the show that, that was originally—when Christopher Isherwood wrote the Berlin Stories, um, which is what this music was based off of, it was to document a very specific moment in time. And I think he rushed in, in writing these, these stories at that time in the 1930s to put out a, a warning against the rise of fascism in Weimar Republic.
Rubenstein: Then in 1966, Kander & Ebb, the songwriting team behind other such hits as Chicago, turned Isherwood’s stories into a hit Broadway musical that became a hit Oscar-winning movie and spawned several other iconic revivals.
Ella Eavenson: There’s so much source material, like there’s the novel and then the play, and then the musical, and then the movie, and then all these other musical iterations that have come after it. And so initially I felt a pressure to like get it right, but honestly, throughout the process, like everyone has been so supportive and encouraging of exploration and trying new things and bringing myself to the role that I don’t anymore.
Rubenstein: That’s Ella Eavenson, a sophomore BFA acting student who plays the role of Sally Bowles, a British nightclub singer at the Kit Kat Club where much of the action takes place.
Eavenson: I have never ever been an ingenue. Um, I, I used to think I had a typecast for old people, like I’ve played a man and old people. Actually, I feel like I always play someone who’s like maybe a little crazy. Or like a little weird. She’s definitely the most sensual character I’ve played. So it’s been interesting to like, explore that physicality and that side of myself.
Rubenstein: Sally Bowles is not your average ingenue. That’s a leading lady for all our theatrical laypeople listening. Considered by some to be an early example of the manic pixie dream girl trope, she fits right in with Ella’s history of playing eccentrics. David, on the other hand, plays the Emcee, the master of ceremonies presiding over the Kit Kat Club and the show itself.
Gonima: The Emcee’s always just looming and watching and giving these knowing and cynical glances at, at the people on, on stage and the audience members too. Um, and that is such a joy ’cause it’s just like I’m a fly on the wall spectating, and I know something that they don’t. Um, and there’s so much tension and it’s uncomfortable and scary, and I think in, in full makeup and costume, it’s gonna really be interesting to see.
Robles Cruz: I think the metaphors are everywhere. The opening line of the show is welcoming the audience to dissipate any thoughts they have of the outside world and get absorbed into the story. Our Emcee gives that provocation to the audience. And I think it’s, it’s, you should look out for the Emcee always. I think the Emcee will be the one who guides you through the story. And they should always be on the lookout for that character.
Gonima: We kinda landed on like he is this sort of enigmatic like literary device that exists in a void. Um, and so yes it can be true that that he has this like, this backstory that’s rooted in reality but he really is just a representation of Weimar Berlin at the time. God, 1920s Weimar Berlin was such a vibrant, epicenter for like, you know, um exploration and sexual freedom and it’s just, you know, so, so I think the Emcee is everything. It’s, the Emcee, is everything and more.
Rubenstein: So what should first timers expect if they’ve never seen the show?
Eavenson: It’s a musical that I think lulls you into a false sense of security with its incredible songs and musical numbers and dance numbers, that then suddenly pulls the rug out from under you. It’s so like, it’s Brechtian.
*laugh*
Rubenstein: If you’re wondering why you just heard me laugh in the interview, it’s because “Brechtian” is as cliche of a buzzword in the theater world as “Lynchian” is to cinema. And yet, in the case of Cabaret, it’s a fitting descriptor. Here’s Rodolfo to explain:
Robles Cruz: Bertolt Brecht was a theater maker in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, who often used this technique of alienation of this, this continued kind of breaking out of the story in an effort to have the audience remember where they are, um, to continue tracking both the story and your own emotions about it. You’re feeling sad? Here’s a device that takes you out of it and makes you process why you’re feeling sad as we jump right into this next beat.
Rubenstein: One such device is the Emcee himself, who often breaks the fourth wall to interact with the audience.
Gonima: It’s so interesting because I feel like once that first audience is in there, everything is gonna like, not change, but like it’s gonna feed me so much and I can actually like stare at the audience members. But for now, I mean, it, it’s just all about being prepared and having some, some ideas in mind and, um, making those choices. So, so, I mean, right now in the rehearsal process, I’m just doing it to empty seats or like the assistant director in the audience. Like you, you don’t know how the audience members are gonna react to me, like going up to them and like staring at them.
Rubenstein: Another element of this production that is uniquely Brechtian? Projections.
Robles Cruz: We have, I think, believe one of the top like integrated media programs in the nation, uh, for projection design, media design. So a lot of our shows tend to implement that because it’s part of their training. It’s part of our interests. I think it’s, it’s part of where the world of theater is shifting into. I mean, think about like Sunset Boulevard and those giant projections that are happening, and all of Broadway is like in projection world.
Nitsan Scharf: I asked to be put on Cabaret just ’cause like I love the show and I, I don’t know, like, as like a queer and trans and Jewish person, I was very like, excited to get to tell that story, uh, and, and design for that story. Um and I was very excited at the prospect of like, ’cause oftentimes, especially in a show that, uh, is traditionally done with a lot of projections, there is kind of an expectation that your stuff is gonna look like the stuff that came before. And so but when there is no stuff that came before, there’s no kind of precedent, there’s a lot more openness to what you can do.
Rubenstein: That’s Nitsan Scharf, a third-year MFA student and projection designer for the show.
Scharf: I was really interested in this idea of anti-fascist art and fascist art. So looking at the time period in question, like the thirties and forties, um. I was looking at film as a tool of both anti-fascist and fascist kind of messaging, I guess you could say, as well as, um, like print and collage. The film element, I think I was really excited looking at all of these like kind of strange like avant-garde, uh film art of that period, uh as well as being kind of horrified but also like very interested in the way that the fascist movement and like the Nazis and things like that used film, um, as a tool of propaganda. Um, so looking at like what are the aesthetics of facism and what are the aesthetics of anti-facism and of like this sort of surrealist movement and Dada and things like that. I was very heavily inspired by a lot of period collage art, like Claude Cahun and John Heartfield that were used for like either explicitly anti-fascist, like protest art, or very like queer kind of gender non-conforming art. Um, I was really interested in this feeling of like messiness and jagged edges and um disorder and having that be kind of the place of like safety and maybe not comfort, but this idea that like, we are actually safest in the world of the show. We are safest in these places that are dark and messy and ugly, quote unquote. Um, and, you know, that kind of reflects the club. And then we are actually the least safe in these places of like light and brightness and order and symmetry and these kind of um aesthetics that are often used in a lot of like fascist—and were used heavily in a lot of like Nazi propaganda of like nature and light and, you know, beautiful blonde haired people running around and things like that.
Rubenstein: So what does it mean to be putting on Cabaret in 2025, in a political climate where the phrases ‘fascism’ and ‘anti-fascism’ have re-entered the forefront of the American popular consciousness?
Eavenson: I think there’s a lesson in Cabaret about complicity and inaction, like the, the characters, obviously say for the characters who are like literal Nazis, a lot of the characters are, are not fascists per se, but are not willing to sort of take action or to, you know, explicitly disavow facism and that’s kind of where things start to fall apart is so many people just let this thing happen. I think an important lesson is like how the sort of quote unquote neutral uh, folks can also be complicit in that kind of rise of facism. Uh, and I think we’re very much seeing that happening now in this country. I hope that it can be kind of a reminder or a sort of wake-up call of like that kind of neutrality and complicity is uh, is also culpable.
Rubenstein: Ella echoed a similar sentiment in our interview.
Eavenson: I think a lot of what makes it different is that it’s happening right now, here. I mean if this is a play that is about choosing apathy and being complicit under the rise of authoritarianism, uh, I think we’re living in a time where there is an increase in governmental control. There is an active increase, uh, in governmental overreach into our educational opportunities. And not just our educational freedoms, but our personal freedoms. And so I think it’s interesting to be in a production that is completely devised by undergraduate and graduate students with the assistance of faculty in a university you hope would support your own educational desires.
Rubenstein: Rodolfo offered a slightly different perspective on watching the show through a contemporary lens.
Robles Cruz: I do think theater is something you overlay on top of the world. When I watched the original production in 2014, the one at Fresno State University, it was in the middle of, uh, the Marriage Equality Act kind of coming out. It was right before, right before the Supreme Court decision to make marriage equal to everybody. And that was, Cabaret itself, you know, it wasn’t changed. They weren’t saying, they didn’t fly out a flag that said marriage equality at the end, you know. But it was charged with, with a want and desire and an exploration of, of themes that felt in line with what was happening in the world. And that was me as an audience member coming in and projecting that on. I keep on saying that I think the audience is doing half the work for us here. I invite the audience to bring in all the world with them, and to let theater be a frame if that’s what they need.
Rubenstein: David had this to share regarding the show’s continued relevance.
Gonima: I think it’s different from any production I’ve seen. I think at its core, the text and the message are the same. But as for like, creative choices, I think it has its own identity and it’s very unique in that way. It’s been such a, such a joy to do like a big, a big named uh production that’s, that’s so relevant and, and timely and timeless, and it’s scary and uncomfortable and fun and funny. We have our wonderful graduate students working on the creative teams, the director’s a graduate student. It feels like they are so hungry and, and they, they’re so driven and their ideas are so fresh and innovative and, you know, they’ll say things that I’m like, I never would have considered that point of view. And they’ve, they’ve started their work like, I don’t know how many months ago, like before we even got our scripts.
Rubenstein: How many months ago exactly? Well, here’s Rodolfo with the answer.
Robles Cruz: We decided the show was gonna happen, I believe, in the, the fall of 2024. And then we had auditions in the spring of 2025. We cast it, we start designing in the spring of 2025. We go through rigorous meetings where we figure out what’s doable, what’s not, and then we start building in the summer.
Rubenstein: And lastly, what should longtime fans of the show be looking out for?
*trumpet instrumental music*
Robles Cruz: I think if you have seen the show, immediately I think there, there’s a shift in space. Normally a show like this is done in a more intimate setting, still in a grander scale, but in a thrust or pushed out deeper into an audience. We’re doing it in the proscenium, which I think activates a certain show spectacle that’s a little bit different.
Gonima: Our ending is very, uh, it’s, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be special is what I’ll say. And it’s not what we usually see with Cabaret is what I’ll say.
Rubenstein: Well, you heard it here first, folks. What twist ending does UT Theatre and Dance have in store? You’ll have to find out at the B. Iden Payne Theatre, where Cabaret plays from October 30th through November 9th. Tickets and more information can be found at theatredance.utexas.edu/events/cabaret. That’s theatredance.utexas.edu/events/cabaret. Signing off for The Daily Texan, I’m Ethan Rubenstein.
This episode was written and produced by yours truly and edited by Drew Kampf-Sullivan.
