Yale Cabaret
Vermilion, Bailey, Burton, Totti.
“Welcome home”: That’s the tagline for the Yale Cabaret’s 52nd season. The basement theater space at 217 Park Street wants to feel like a familiar hangout. The Cab’s three artistic directors — Zachry J. Bailey, a third-year in stage management, Brandon Burton, a third-year acting major, and Alex Vermilion, a third-year in dramaturgy and criticism, all at the Yale School of Drama — along with managing director Jaime Totti, a fourth-year joint candidate for an MFA in theater management at the School of Drama and an MBA at the school of management, are committed to creating community.
To that end, the Cab team has a plan to schedule the space on the weekends when it has no shows on — “sometimes,” says Vermilion, “around Yale School of Drama interests, at other times in partnership with organizations that have a use for the space.”
Called “The Dark Knights,” an as-yet-undetermined number of the ten “dark” weekends will be home to a range of potential inhabitants. The first Dark Knight took place this past weekend. From 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the second Open Studios Saturday, The Yale Cabaret became The Cab Coffeehouse & Art Walk. The Cab welcomed art to be hung in its hallway and was open to slam poetry, jam sessions and live improv, with lattes and macchiatos available from DrummerBoy Coffee Co. and desserts from The Queen of Tarts. Future “knights” may include game nights, film festivals, panels, poster shows and fundraisers — such as the Thanksgiving food drive, Totti said, that Burton and his roommate have undertaken, or, Vermillion mentioned, providing support for SWAN, the Sex Workers Alliance Network.
The team also described the Cabaret as “a door to a playground and to an oasis.” The team sees the space as “a sanctuary” where projects that might not find a home elsewhere are welcome. Their call for proposals asked for “the unusual — voices underrepresented, experimental works, canonical works treated in new ways with bodies not usually found in the casting.” The first four shows of the season so far give an idea of the scope the team has in mind.
The opening show was an unconventional play by Jackie Sibblies Drury: We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, between the Years 1884 – 1915. Directed by Christopher Betts, the play dramatizes a rehearsal of a play about the genocide of the Herero in which the actors debate strategies and argue — at times quite comically — about questions of privilege and representational authenticity. The next two shows were works devised by students: Waste // Land: a Climate Change Theater Action — conceived by Beyond Borders, an organization for international students — addressed the perilous state of the world environment in skits that dramatized rising sea levels, threats to aquatic life, the harmful side effects of everyday products, and the appalling number of species in the museum of extinction. benjisun presents bodyssey was a fascinating wordless theater piece involving movement, shadow puppets, and an evocative score to represent the trajectory of life on earth, by Benjamin Benne and Jisun Kim. The most recent show was How to Unlearn Yourself, third-year actor Doireann Mac Mahon’s thoughtful play about the aftermath of on-campus rape.
The Cab 52 team has recently gotten confirmation on the titles through the end of 2019. Up this week, Oct. 24 – 26, is Red Speedo, a well-received play by acclaimed contemporary playwright Lucas Hnath (his A Doll’s House, Part 2 was staged at Long Wharf Theatre last spring). Proposed by a team of current actors in the program — Patrick Ball, Adam Shaukat, and Eli Pauley, who will direct — the play, Vermilion said, “joins the conversation about competitive sports,” highlighting, Bailey said, “the pressure cooker” atmosphere faced by championship swimmers, and a winner-takes-all culture that permits physical and psychological abuse. The play is set in the 24 hours before an Olympic competition. (Burton was unable to be at our interview because he was meeting with Yale coaches to involve the sports community in talk backs at the production; talk backs occur after the Friday 8 p.m. show each week.)
For Halloween weekend, the Cab features Burn Book, proposed and written by third-year acting student JJ McGlone, and described as a combination of Mean Girls, The Craft, and The Crucible — though this time set at an all-male boarding school. The setting acts, Vermilion said, as “a queer cauldron ready to explode.” The play questions the mean-spiritedness of gay male culture, incorporates attitudes toward astrology and witchcraft among millennials, and fashions a campy sense of the connection between queers and witches. The show opens on Halloween and runs until Nov. 2. The audience is encouraged to come in costume and the menu will feature special “spooky treats as tie-ins.”
Then, after one of those dark weekends, the Cab returns, Nov. 14 – 16, with Pedestrian, proposed by Mattie McGarey, a New York artist, choreographer, and actress whose partner, Bailey Trierweiler, is a sound designer in YSD. The show explores “the ultra-pedestrian movement,” which favors reducing car use and promotes walking as a “way to break out of socialized spaces,” Bailey said. The show will feature non-dancers in movement-based interactions that question how roadways, signage and signals control movement through public space.
In the week after Thanksgiving, third-year sound designer Dakota Stipp — who worked on last season’s highly original treatment of Charles Mee’s The Rules — offers Interface, running Dec. 5 – 7. Conceived as “an interactive installation performance,” the show engages with questions about technology — such as how human is it? — and about digital culture, such as, in Vermilion’s words, “what happens when we translate memes into real life.” Bound to be technically challenging, the show may also challenge our notions about data collection, cyberspace and the nature of virtual reality.
The closing show of the first half of the season will be Leah Nanako Winkler’s Two Mile Hollow, running Dec. 12 – 14, proposed and directed by third-year director Kat Yen (whose thesis show, Anne Washburns’ Mr. Burns, runs at the Iseman Theater Oct. 26-Nov. 1). A “dark comedy,” Two Mile Hollow takes its aim at “the rich family by the water” play, Vermilion said. The show comments caustically on the many American living room dramas featuring the angst and recriminations of privileged white folk, whether penned by O’Neill, Albee, or Tracy Letts. And that should end the year with plenty of laughs.
In the second half of the season, the Cab presents its annual — and eagerly awaited — drag show, but that’s not until February. Vermillion confirmed that, as in the last two years, there will be a night for non-YSD drag artistes to show their distinctive talents. Expect a preview of the rest of the season sometime in January.
The shows at the Yale Cabaret have only five performances — Thursday at 8 p.m. and Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. At the early performances, dinner is served beginning at 6:30 p.m., featuring three choices for entrée, numerous small plates, and three choices for dessert, along with beer, wine and nonalcoholic beverages. For the late shows, drinks and desserts and small plates are available until 15 minutes before showtime. This is the third season featuring Queen of Tarts Catering’s creative cuisine based on local, sustainable ingredients.
The Yale Cabaret is ready and waiting to welcome you. Make yourself at home.
For tickets and more information, visit the Yale Cabaret’s website.