Since it premiered on Broadway in 1966, “Cabaret” has been revamped several times to make the story better reflect the atmosphere prevailing in Germany in 1933. The Belle Theatre in Cape Coral has gone one step further by tasking cast member Cat Turner as the play’s historical advisor or dramaturg.
“Recently I was in a theater history class,” said Turner. “My final paper was about what theater performance looked like under the Nazi rule, looking at how it changed. What you would end up seeing was instead of things like a cabaret as presented in this show, there was a return to the classics, a lot of Shakespeare and then a lot of demonstrations of traditional German folk music and dance to represent the Fatherland.”
Turner’s input makes Act Two even more harrowing and horrifying by providing Bradyn Parmelly, who plays the emcee, and the rest of the cast with the understanding they needed to portray the impact Hitler’s purge of so-called decadent theater had on the performers of the day.
“World War II has always been an interest of mine,” Turner said. “My father is a Marine Corps veteran. We’ve always had that connection and those conversations. But for my theater, in my first year of college a class called the Holocaust History Memory and then when I took this recent theater history class, I wanted to look at my Holocaust history background and apply it to theater.”
In “Cabaret,” Turner plays Fraulein Kost. In that role, she gives voice to the prideful nationalism many Germans felt following Hitler’s ascendency in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s chilling Act One song “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” But now, Turner can also add dramaturg to her theater repertoire.
“I’ve thought about adding dramaturg to my theater resume,” Turner acknowledged. “It is really interesting looking into and diving deep at the historical context of shows and looking at not just history, but clothing and music and all that stuff. All of these things are so deeply and intrinsically tied together.”
“Cabaret” is onstage at The Belle Theatre through August 16th.
MORE INFORMATION:
A dramaturg (or literary manager) is an essential member of the creative team for any stage production.
The role of a dramaturg varies with each theater or opera company. However, their primary task is to provide actors and production team members with textual analysis of a play or opera’s story and theme, as well as information on production history, the author of the play, any previous adaptations and historical context particularly for period pieces.
Turner has taken two classes on World War II Nazi Germany.
The first focused on the changes that occurred in theater and the rest of the performing arts as Hitler assumed power in 1933.
“It went from the Expressionism era, which was concerned with rejecting industrialism and capitalism and unifying people to Hitler’s appropriation of the arts for his political ends,” Turner observed.
According to author Frederic Spotts in “Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics,” one of Hitler’s foremost objectives was to create a Germany in which culture was not only supreme, but the envy of the entire world. To achieve that end, he felt that he had to rid the visual and performing arts of modernism, “cultural degeneracy and Jewish corruption of the arts.”
In the version of “Cabaret” onstage at The Belle Theatre, the emcee is not just the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Club. He’s a stand-in for artists and marginalized people during the Nazi's rise to power. As such, he and the club’s performers are targets of the Nazis’ ire. Hitler signaled as much in “Mein Kampf” and repeated the dire warning in his inaugural address as chancellor on March 23, 1933:
“Simultaneously with the political purification of our public life, the government of the Reich will undertake a thorough moral purging of the collective body of the nation. The entire educational system, the theatre, cinema, literature, press and radio – all these will be used as a means to this end …. Blood and race will once more become the source of our artistic intuition.”
Following the dismissal of thousands of Civil Service government employees who could not, or would not, pledge loyalty to the Reich, artists who could not meet rigorous racial and ideological standards were prohibited from practicing their profession. Jews, communists and social democrats were summarily dismissed. Luminaries like Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein were stripped of their citizenship. Many were ultimately rounded up and herded into concentration camps, where they invariably perished.
All of this took place in the months following Hitler becoming chancellor. By the end of 1933, virtually every cabaret had been closed or repurposed. There was not a single museum, concert hall, opera house or university that had not been purged. Modernist paintings and sculpture, which were labeled “degenerate art,” were confiscated and either sold to foreign interests or destroyed. Music and books were banned. On May 10, 1933, 20,000 books were burned in public squares in Berlin and other cities.
It was against this backdrop that “Cabaret” takes place. Those who disagreed with these changes either fled or held their tongues. But the masses, and many artists, embraced Hitler and his regime, as signified in “Cabaret” through “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”
“Fraulein Kost is one of [the villains] in this show,” Turner noted. Although she realizes that she’s merely playing a character, Turner admits that, for her, playing Fraulein Kost is difficult.
“It’s obviously not easy going onstage and saying horrible things about Jewish people,” Turner conceded. “But thinking about the historical background that I have just a little bit of makes it a little easier to channel.”
Her knowledge of the era informs her facial expressions, demeanor and delivery not just in that number, but throughout the balance of the story.
“Of course, we always want to see good prevail, but in this particular situation, it doesn’t exactly happen in that way, and I think presenting to the audience both sides, and especially that extreme, is important so that we can recognize when we start to see these signs sort of pop up [today].”
Turner attends New College in Sarasota.
“My major is technically theater, dance and performance studies,” said Turner. “A lot of my historical side comes from performance study, which is the study of the practice of theater and not just performing theater.”
Turner was seen locally last summer in “Rent” and “Falsettos.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.