Cabaret Actor Feature: Cliff and Ernst

Q: What is the relationship between your two characters?
Davis: We are friends. Close friends. Buddies!
Andrew: Strictly business.

Q: Andrew, what was your experience like in your first DT show?
It’s been an awesome experience, I’ve had so much fun meeting everyone in the cast. I look forward to trying out for more shows.

Q: What is something you enjoy performing/seeing performed every show?
Davis: My favorite part that I perform is my monologue to Fraulein Schneider near the end of Act 1. I don’t want to spoil anything, but to me, it’s the moment where the whole tone of the show really shifts. And of course, I love watching Two Ladies every night, it’s very funny and the audience reactions are always insane/
Andrew: I love seeing the audience’s reaction when Ernst and I talk at the end of Act 1.

Q: What is one object in the show you heavily relate to?
Davis: I don’t relate to it, but on opening night, I discovered that a few people had written words of encouragement in my passport. It was a really lovely surprise and I’m eternally grateful for it.
Andrew: The suitcase because sometimes it decides to not work and is really difficult to close for no reason.

Q: One fun fact about you!
Andrew: I can dunk a basketball.
Davis: Andrew lied in his fun fact.

Cabaret Actor Feature: The Kit Kat Girls

Q: What is the best part of being one of the Kit Kat Girls or being in DramaTech’s Cabaret?
Katherine: Honestly, it’s just fun to go out on stage and feel confident and sexy like a Kit Kat would!
Erin: Getting to be a part of something bigger than myself has been so incredible. This show is very thought-provoking, but it’s also just a great time, so getting to experience both the lighthearted fun side and the deeper, darker side to it has been very powerful for me.
Hannah: Definitely the people! Love my girl gang and the rest of the cast more than words.
Marissa: I love having a team of fierce ladies dancing our hearts out every night! Plus being a Kit Kat girl is really fun because while you’re portrayed as a sexy nightclub dancer, there’s also that creepy little something below the surface letting the audience know that you know something they don’t.
Skyler: The dancing is really fun! And just being able to flesh out our characters and make them their own person was super cool.
Audrey: The music is fantastic!! I adore Ebb and Kander, and getting to sing my heart out every night is an absolute joy! Being a Kit Kat girl is so freeing and fun!!

Q: If you could steal a part of another Kit Kat girl’s costume for yourself, what would it be?
Katherine: I love Audrey’s dress! I could see myself wearing it.
Erin: Hannah’s beret. It looks really soft and I love hats.
Hannah: Katherine’s wrap looks super comfy, so I’m definitely stealing that when it gets cold.
Marissa: I absolutely adore anything with flowers, so definitely Katherine’s floral wrap.
Skyler: Marissa’s pants because she’s less exposed.
Audrey: I also would die for Marissa’s pants. They’re awesome.

Q: Favorite song to hear/perform?
Katherine: I love performing Don’t Tell Mama with my girls! Watching Lina sing Maybe This Time is one of my favorite parts of the show.
Erin: I love both Wilkommen and the Finale/Wilkommen Reprise because they are so similar and yet so totally opposite and that really sums up the whole show for me.
Hannah: I go hard backstage to married reprise, not gonna lie.
Marissa: I crack up every time I watch Two Ladies! I love performing Wilkommen because I enjoy seeing the audience’s initial reactions to our personas.
Skyler: Tomorrow Belongs to Me is unfortunately a bop. My favorite song to perform is Two Ladies.
Audrey: As terrible as this sounds, I love tomorrow belongs to me. It’s creepy, but so fun to sing, and from a musical standpoint it really is beautiful. I also love Cabaret – one of my favorites in the overall musical theatre canon.

Q: Favorite memory from rehearsal?
Katherine: I loved watching everyone dance offstage (namely dabs and whips) while we were running songs. I also loved the sitzprobe and getting to hear our amazing orchestra for the first time.
Erin: My favourite memory is definitely the first time we ran the whole show in the black box, because it made all the hard work and late nights so worth it to see everything just come to life in the space.
Hannah: One of my favorite memories was watching the SNL Fosse sketch. It definitely helped me channel my inner kakonk for Don’t Tell Mama.
Marissa: We learned Don’t Tell Mama in roughly three hours, all while watching Fosse SNL sketches for inspiration and scarring the people in line at Panda Express through the window.
Skyler: Scarring all of the people at Panda Express while doing Don’t Tell Mama and Two Ladies.
Audrey: For sure the sitzprobe, but also I enjoyed all the little conversations about our characters relationships to one another. Those were always very interesting, insightful, and funny.

Q: One fun fact about you!
Katherine: I have three citizenships: US, Canada, and France.
Erin: If Georgia Tech doesn’t work out, my backup plan is to be a trapeze artist with a circus.
Hannah: I got to work on Spider-Man: Homecoming and Tom Holland asked me for a pen and I died.
Marissa: One time I tried to approach Ludacris at a mini-golf place. I called him “Mr. Ludacris” and he legitimately ran from me.
Skyler: I still miss One Direction.
Audrey: I accidentally swallowed a dandelion once.

Cabaret Costumes Designer Feature: Megan Shaffer and Kelsey Durick

Q: What is your process like for designing costumes/makeup?
A: A lot of the show deals with living in fantasy versus facing reality, and that theme drove a lot of the choices we made. Some of the characters live in the real; they got more tame, period appropriate, and realistic costumes. Some of the characters thrive on living in fantasy — their costumes are much more eclectic, with pieces of lingerie, dancewear, men’s formal, pretty much everything we could get our hands on. This show was a lot of improvisational design, where we looked at what we already had or could buy for cheap and made it work rather than trying to fit a particularly specific design for each character.

For makeup, we took historical designs of stage beauty makeup and exaggerated them. We made them uglier, we made them cooler, and we made them look as real and fake at the same time as we possibly could.

In conclusion, we hand-made nipple tassels for this show and spend over an hour each night gluing down people’s eyebrows. We don’t believe in subtlety here.

Q: Did the in-concert aspect of the show inhibit your creativity and if so, how?
A: It didn’t really change much for us. Many of the songs rely heavily on the cabaret performers looking just glamourous and grody enough to sell them, so we put just as much work into crafting the Looks as we would have if this were a full production.

Q: Is there anything that you’re especially excited for the audience to see?
A: There’s a cabaret number in act 2 that was particularly wild to costume.

Q: Favorite item in the costume room?

A: Ebeneezer and Bonnibel, the two stuffed animals we stole from the lost and found. They were our rocks throughout the show process. Megan is also particularly a fan of the nice professional tailor’s iron. Kelsey likes the tube of E6000 and the wall of scrap fabric.

Cabaret Lighting Designer Feature: Lexy Rile, Joshua Doss, Jacob Parks, and Will Nute

Q: Design inspiration?
A: Cabarets are pretty much peak musical theater – bright lights and saturated colors – but the show has many scenes that are kind of meant to be the antithesis of a cabaret. Because of this, we actually hung 2 different washes for this show, one with more saturation and one that was more neutral. This allowed us a wider variety in how we lit each scene and musical number in the show. The vanity lights and colored LEDs are also ideas we drew from nightclubs.

Q: Positives and challenges of lighting a musical in-concert?
A: Doing the musical in concert meant that practical lights, like the vanity lightbulbs, could exist on stage in one place, which is pretty much the only reason we were able to use them. Having an on-stage orchestra meant we had to be thoughtful in how we provided light for them, but also gave us more creative space. Also, because the show is in concert, there’s much more responsibility on the light designer to set each scene instead of using set pieces.

Q: Favorite light cue or effect? Is there something you’re excited for the audience to see?
Will: I’m really happy with how the end of Money turned out.
Josh: The cues right before intermission are great.
Lexy: I like the dark cue that happens in the Cabaret number.
Jacob: The abrupt change in mood at the end of act 1.

Q: LEDs, movers, gaff tape, or hazer? (tag urself)
Will: Movers because I’m impossible to work with but can do cool things sometimes
Josh: LEDs.
Lexy: Gaff tape because I value practicality.
Jacob: LEDs because I’ll make a reasonable attempt at anything you want, with a high probability of failure.

Cabaret Sound Designer Feature: Gwen Kvasnicka and Alex Boulware

Q: Why choose to sound design/what is your favorite part about it?
Gwen: I have always liked music & radio so when I joined DT I immediately gravitated towards sound. I love making playlists for house music (the music you hear before the show starts) to set the tone of the play, and I also love working with our sound cueing program, Qlab!
Alex: I haven’t done much tech work at DT so I wanted to give it a shot before I graduate next month! What really drew me to sound design was honestly Gwen’s enthusiasm for it. It’s been really fun learning from her. There’s so much thought that goes into choosing songs for house music or even just the perfect train whistle that most people don’t realize.

Q: Is there an element of your design that you’re really excited about that the audience should know?
Gwen: There are only a couple sound effects in the show, so I’m mostly excited about the house music. It’s all from the 20’s and 30’s, when Cabaret is set, and a lot of the songs are old recordings from German jazz bands or “kabarett” performers! There’s also a pretty rad train whistle I guess. Toot toot.
Alex: I second that. It was really interesting to research the music from that era and find the right tone for the show. One of my favorite songs on the list is “Ich bin die fesche Lola” which translates to “I’m the sexy Lola.” It seems like something Sally might sing.

Q: Favorite song in the show?
Gwen: From a theatre-goer standpoint, probably Cabaret, but from an orchestra standpoint it’s the Entre’acte that we play at the end of intermission!
Alex: This is tough because most of them have been stuck in my head all week, but if I have to pick, I’ll say Wilkommen. It really makes you feel like you’re there with the dancers at a dimly lit table in the back of the Kit Kat Klub.

Q: Any key on the keyboard, what would you be?
Gwen: All this time I thought this was a music question but I just realized that the right answer is the space bar.
Alex: I think space bar is the only acceptable answer here.

Cabaret Props Designer Feature: Katie Zong and Jamison Orvis

Q: What was your process for designing the props for the show?
A: To be completely honest, I mostly just went with anything that looked about right for the time period that I could find in storage. And fruit. So much fruit.

Q: Any challenges in executing your designs for props?
A: Our props inventory is pretty limited when it comes to period-accurate items, so it was a bit challenging to find things (especially the suitcases) that didn’t look too out of place considering Cabaret is set in 1930s Berlin. Also in the egg scene, I had to make a false bottom in the mug so Sally wouldn’t actually, you know, drink a raw egg.

Q: Will there be toasters?
A: Do you even need to ask?

Q: Favorite prop in the show OR favorite fruit?
A: It’s not even an actual prop in the show, but it’s probably the shadow pineapple prop lol.

Cabaret Director Feature: Caroline Geckler

Q: What is it like returning to DramaTech?

A: Great to be back, especially since I’m in a new position! I haven’t directed a musical in a few years so it’s nice to have the chance to return to what I love at a theatre that has always supported me.

 

Q:  What was your involvement here when you were a student?

A: Mostly acting, my DT credits can be found here.

 

Q: Best part of the process so far?

A: Getting to work with a live orchestra every night. It’s the best kind of challenge, and worth it.

 

Q: Is there anything in the show you’re most excited for audiences to see?

A: The whole thing! Every moment in this show is special, and I don’t want to give anything away

 

Q: Sum up your production in five words!

A: fearless, rude, unapologetic, striking, genuine

Cabaret Director Feature: Caroline Geckler

Q: What is it like returning to DramaTech?

A: Great to be back, especially since I’m in a new position! I haven’t directed a musical in a few years so it’s nice to have the chance to return to what I love at a theatre that has always supported me.

 

Q:  What was your involvement here when you were a student?

A: Mostly acting, my DT credits can be found here

 

Q: Best part of the process so far?

A: Getting to work with a live orchestra every night. It’s the best kind of challenge, and worth it.

 

Q: Is there anything in the show you’re most excited for audiences to see?

A: The whole thing! Every moment in this show is special, and I don’t want to give anything away

 

Q: Sum up your production in five words!

A: fearless, rude, unapologetic, striking, genuine

Congratulations to the Cast of “Cabaret”!

Congratulations to the cast of “Cabaret”!

The cast list as follows:

Lina Zikas as Sally Bowles
Ben Hepburn as The Emcee
Andrew Horton as Clifford Bradshaw
Hannah Strudwick as Fraulein Schneider
Craig Schwartz as Herr Schultz
Davis Williams as Ernst Ludwig
Soso Ogan as Fraulein Kost
Katherine Francois as Rosie
Erin Kistenberg as Lulu
Hannah Vanderver as Frenchie
Marissa Truskowski as Texas
Skyler Tordoya as Fritzie
Audrey Durbin as Helga
Christopher Sun as Bobby
Kenneth Crane-Moscowitz as Victor
Bryce Irvin as Hans

 

Congratulations again, and thank you to everyone who came out to audition!