"If you want things to stay as they are, things are going to have to change."

                                                                                           -Guiseppe di Lampedusa

Talking with one of my German students a few weeks ago, I mentioned our upcoming show and invited him out. I knew that he had been at the original cabaret a year and a half ago, and that he had really enjoyed himself. He answered that although he would love to come see the show again, he had to admit he was a little worried about it. I wondered aloud what he could possibly be worried about. He replied that the first show was so incredible, he was kind of afraid that nothing else could possibly live up to it.

Goes to show you never know how a compliment is going to sneak its way in.

But my student certainly had a point: the original Cabaret Vagabond performance was a magical night. It was April of 2008, and we had been talking about putting together this cabaret for months, some of us for years. It all started with a conversation I had with my friend Blayne Greiner while we were both living in Berlin. He was doing Dada-inspired performance art in a little variety show at a place called the Monday Bar, a whole-in-the-wall speakeasy run by friends, and only open on Monday nights. We got to talking about music and Dada and the golden age of cabaret and wouldn't it be a great idea to start something like that back home?

Sure enough three years later we were both living in Chicago and had a pretty spectacularly talented group of friends, so we decided to give it a go. As a venue, Blayne secured the Heart of Gold, which according to the Chicago Reader was " . . . the best little speakeasy in Lakeview." Though there was arguably not a lot of competition for this title, it was an awfully ideal location: the fourth floor of a discreet building in the oriental rug district on Lincoln. No sign of course, and nothing to greet you but a dismal, endless hallway and an equally oppressive wooden staircase leading past landing after landing of dirty white walls and unmarked white doors.

Upon reaching the top floor however, one was ushered into a completely different world. Through the white door at the top there opened up a giant loft space, wooden floors and these white walls bedecked with every manner of painting and objects d' art. There were frames and sculptures and photographs and people and furniture and through the antechamber one found a long rectangular room, big enough to fit a few hundred people, the walls completely covered in jazz-age murals depicting a swinging party. There was a long wooden bar along the length of one wall, and a stage at the end, framed by windows looking out over Lincoln, and on eastward towards the lake.

A haze of smoke drifted over everything, the scent of which altered conspicuously over the course of the evening. At the start there were clumps of folks spread out all over the space, once ten o'clock rolled around, there was barely enough room to stand. As the night unfolded, the energy of the crowd built with it and an hour into the show the air was electric.

There were music acts and a vaudeville team. Blayne as the charming master of ceremonies filled in with the most comically bad vagabond jokes imaginable. There were digital cartoons and interstitial skits about 'Kunst'-what it was and where to find it. An accordion player who followed up his melodramatic songs with a puppet piece in which he sang an Irish ballad a capella, silencing the crowd and bringing many to tears.

There was dancing and drinking and carousing and more drinking and the energy was through the roof. By two-thirty the bar had run out of beer, and by three-thirty there was not a thing left to drink the building. People danced and talked and touched and exhilarated. It was a wild night and the spirit of it was contagious.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thinking back on that first exuberant performance, and the perfect storm that made it so special, it was easy for me to understand my student's reluctance to attend. How could the shows ever live up to the thrill of the first time? Part of what made that first cabaret so unforgettable was the spontaneity of it; the pure adrenaline that pumped into the room when we all realized this crazy idea of ours was actually working-and the audience did too.

Things have changed of course. The Heart of Gold, and its atmosphere of free-wheeling bohemian abandon, is no more. This is due largely in part to the unwanted publicity they received by being reviewed, which led to a police order and an extended buzzkill. The performers have changed drastically since we started twenty months ago. We've played a dozen different venues, and collaborated with over a hundred artists. The satire has gotten sharper, and the quality of the acts continues to impress. Balanced of course by the occasional stinker; but what is success without failure?  Its the paintings you see at Starbucks. And reality TV. And Autotune.

So whatever happens at the cabaret these days, you can be sure that its not something you've seen before. Outstanding live musicians, hilarious hijinks, and some of the top performers in Chicago putting on their best.

Come see what the buzz is about. Dec 7th at Martyr's, the cabaret is waiting for you . . .

This Kunst is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

-BBell

               "Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it."

                                                                                                      -Karl Marx

How does one provoke in a free society? When everything is allowed, what is there left to stimulate? Is provocative art possible in an environment that gives equal weight to every perspective?

Creating art from a position of privilege (American, white, male, educated, middle-class) carries with it the stigmas of indulgence, myopia, and leisure. These stigmas are perpetuated by those who enjoy the same privileges  as much, if not more than, those who do not. This privilege also carries with it the responsibility to challenge the social hierarchy and work towards equity for all who are disenfranchised by it.

And we do that by fighting zombies.

In recent years zombies have become a metaphor for everything: complacency, social collapse, technological isolation, the future, the unknown. They have also served as the whipping boy for every type of demon that needs purging: pornographic violence, post-modern masculine identity, the lack of suitable national enemies, rampant capitalism. And no matter what zombies mean to you, one thing most people can agree on is that zombies have to go.

But why? Why the fascination with re-animated corpses? And what does this possibly have to do with white privilege?!

The last nine months have been nothing if not a lesson in how tenuous power and privilege can be. Seemingly overnight, institutional failure became commonplace. Whether its billion-dollar banks on Wall Street or old-guard suburban theaters in Chicago, it seems as though no organization is as safe or insulated as we thought. The prospect of yesterday's captains of industry becoming todays Starbucks employees (read: zombies) is not only conceivable, it is a reality.

In the aftermath of this economic upheaval it is as of yet unclear who will come out on top. One thing is for sure, everyone is trying to get there's. Grab and go is the name of the game, and no prize is too large (or small) to escape notice. Just like in any good zombie story, when the corpses start coming back to life the first thing the survivors do is turn on each other. As the dust settles, new conglomerates are cannibalizing the old and taking their turn at the reins. For the rest of us, who are pretty much finding ourselves back where we started (minus significant amounts of savings), we're wondering where the money went. And wondering who the new Madoffs are.

Which is why its important to name them. Its important to look around and point a few fingers; to keep our eyes on those who would tell us that the zombies are still at the gate. Or that they are all gone. Or that the only way to keep them at bay is by compromising our ideals.


To arouse, to incite, to stimulate. To provoke, one must simply draw attention to what is already there. These days we are certainly not lacking for material.


-Brian Bell
Artistic Director

 

Look forward to titillating antidotes and wise semantics from Vagabonds of all shapes and sizes.

This shall be a forum for written Kunst.

Learn more about how we roll, yo.