Steven Stead comments: “There is a common misconception about cabaret. Many people immediately associate the word with feather boas, fishnet stockings and high-kicking chorus girls, or they imagine tribute shows á la Barnyard featuring a band and a few singers performing the music of likes of Abba, Queen or Michael Jackson.
“But cabaret, real cabaret, is far more sophisticated and also far simpler than this.
“It is an art form born in the bars and nightclubs of post First World War Europe, where artists could present experimental, challenging, sometimes subversive music and poetry, offering social comment, and often full of deep emotional resonance. It was often an incredibly pared down and intimate theatrical experience: a small, smoky room with a spotlight, a singer, a couple of musicians, and material that engaged the audience intellectually and emotionally. Sometimes wickedly funny, sometimes heart-wrenching. Always powerful.
“I wanted the students to be given the opportunity to act through music, and to experience the very intimate and sometimes intense relationship a performer develops with an audience when performing in cabaret. It is such a pure and uncomplicated form of theatre, significantly different from musical theatre, where one has characters to hide behind. In cabaret, the artist is exposed: raw and real. And the experience can be profound for both performer and audience.
“Jacques Brel, the celebrated 20th century Belgian song-writer and singer, provides the ideal material for an exercise of this kind. His songs are passionate short stories, intimate monologues that communicate with great depth of feeling, ideally suited to the genre of true cabaret.
“It has been a great pleasure to introduce these young people to this important and powerful material, and to this art form, and to see how readily they have responded to it, and how much they are relishing this direct, potent, theatrical experience. We hope that you will enjoy it just as much.”
Songs include Amsterdam, Mathilde, Brussels, I Loved, Carousel and Marieke.
Crazy Carousel will be staged from September 23 to 26, 2021, at the Roy Couzens Theatre, Westville Boys High School in Westville.
Thursday to Saturday’s performances at 19h00 with Sunday’s performance at 18h00.
Audiences are encouraged to bring a bottle
of wine and some glasses (no eats please).
The theatre is limited to an inside audience of 50 people, with either two or four table seating arrangements. (Please either book a table of two or four – the venue unfortunately cannot seat more together as per COVID regulations).
Tickets R120 per person. There are two tables of four available, and 21 tables of two. No single ticket bookings will be accepted.
Tickets available at Webtickets & Pick N Pay Stores nationwide
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