![]() “It was Brendan who showed us the Stolpersteine, or ‘stumbling stones,’ scattered throughout Berlin and all of Europe as concrete markers of the Nazi political party’s continent-wide genocide.” They met with Brendan Nash, an author and urban historian, who “gives a fantastic tour of Berlin keyed to the events and characters of the Weimar era,” González said. This past summer, González and Rainer went to Berlin to prepare for their courses. “I think about the opportunities that this particular script offers to our performers, and I really honor the students who took this on. “When I select productions, I select through the lens of an educator,” she said. Rainer, who has taught a course on the performance art of cabaret, was enthusiastic about his proposed course, and at his suggestion decided to produce the musical with the students in her theatre production class. She suggested he reach out to Rainer to discuss it further. González mentioned his idea to Megan Ruppel ’20, who was taking an independent study with him her senior year. “So, I decided to propose a course focused on the intertextual mesh that comprises the Cabaret archive,” he said. While watching the film, González said, he realized how the deep roots of Cabaret grew. “My mind was on fire contrasting Liza Minelli’s star turn as Sally Bowles with Isherwood’s inept chanteuse in Goodbye to Berlin,” he said. ![]() He had taught Isherwood’s novella in his course on the modern British novel and showed his students the number “Mein Herr” from the film adaptation. González got the idea for a course on the history of Cabaret in fall 2020. Photo provided by Karen Osuna Martinez ’25 The intricate material inspired English playwright John Van Druten’s 1951 play I Am a Camera, the second source. The first is Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novella Goodbye to Berlin, a fictionalized account of his time in Berlin during the early 1930s. ![]() ENG 283 focuses on the literary and historical aspects of Cabaret’s source material, and THST 345 brings the musical version to life on stage.Ĭabaret is based on two sources. The production is the culmination of two courses offered this semester, ENG 283: The History of Cabaret and THST 345: Practicum–Theatre Production, that are based on the incarnations of the story of Cabaret. To celebrate the milestone, Octavio González, associate professor of English, and Marta Rainer ’98, director of theatre and theatre studies and senior lecturer in the department, collaborated to stage Cabaret at Wellesley. This year marks the 50th anniversary of director and choreographer Bob Fosse’s film adaptation of Cabaret. The hope is that when they enter the theatre to see the show, they feel they are entering the world of Weimar Berlin. Audience members are invited to sit at tables in the cabaret space, creating an immersive environment that begins before the falsely cheery opening number welcomes them. This week, Wellesley’s Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre has been reshaped into the Kit Kat Club, the alluring and atmospheric setting of the musical Cabaret that operates in a sphere of smoke and conversation.
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