WELCOME TO BERLIN, 1934
The Last Night. The Last Cabaret.
July 1934. An abandoned factory in Berlin. A dissident troupe gathers to perform a clandestine show for their friends – some of whom have already gone missing. It is two weeks after the Night of the Long Knives.
Welcome to the worlds of Claire, Ernst, Fritz, Sebastian, and Trude – confronted by a Berlin that is no longer the life of Europe, but has become a capital city ruled by madness and egomania, fear and lying, on a colossal scale. How do they defend against forces like that?
L-R: Dan Deorksen, Brent Hirose, Meaghan Chenosky, Alen Dominguez and Julia Munčs. Photo: Michelle Koebke.
Welcome to the dazzling actors Meaghan Chenosky, Daniel Deorksen, Alen Dominguez, Brent Hirose and Julia Munčs, a four-piece band with Martin Fisk, Ed Henderson, François Houle, and Roger Parton, and 21 cabaret songs authentic to the Weimar era.
Roger Parton, Joanna Garfinkel, and Alan Corbishley. Photo: Michelle Koebke.
And welcome to a Canadian premiere: the daring concept, story, and arrangements of Alan Corbishley, Joanna Garfinkel, and Roger Parton, with set and light design by John Webber, costume design by Christopher David Gauthier, and choreography by Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg.
It is music theatre City Opera has never done before.
“We explore that exact moment, in 1934, when fascism came into direct conflict with an ardently liberal cabaret community, one born from a rich, yet doomed, era of German democracy.” – Alan Corbishley, stage director
“When resistance to oppression is so important, we re-examine the conventional memory of those lost in the Holocaust, too often characterized in a kind of innocuous and unchallenging suffering. We should conjure instead the different kinds of resistance those impacted carried out. Some resistance is vulgar, oblique, and funny. Some resistance wobbles its way to certainty. We get to throw a cabaret with you, and hopefully tremble our way to a salacious solidarity, a better resistance when it’s called for soon.” – Joanna Garfinkel, writer and dramaturge
“The era of the Weimar Republic was riotously rich, and Berlin served both as epicentre and laboratory. The Bauhaus brought architecture forward; in the visual arts, Expressionism, Dadaism, and the “New Objectivity” rubbed shoulders uneasily; and, in music, the lyric gifts of Spoliansky and Hollaender set the cabarets throbbing. A wonderful legacy has survived. In the witness it bears, we see that great but fleeting period of democratic experiment, just before the trap snapped shut." – Roger Parton, musical arranger
“Our objective is to examine the rise of fascism through the manufacture of chaos and consent, deliberate lying on an unimaginable scale, and the exploitation of race, fear, and gender. If this sounds familiar, it should. If it sounds contemporary, it is.” – Charles Barber, artistic director
Please join us at 8pm on 23, 24, and 25 January 2020. Performance Works, Granville Island. NOW ADDED: 2pm Sunday 26 January 2020. Talkback sessions immediately after 23, 24, and 25 January shows.
Presented in the PuSh International Festival, with Sound The Alarm: Music/Theatre.
BERLIN 1934: The Last Cabaret may be the most important – and least expected – show you will see this season.
Tickets only $44.50. Cabaret seating.
City Opera thanks the Canada Council, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, Leon Judah Blackmore Foundation, John Fluevog Shoes, Griffin Foundation, Hamber Foundation, Edwina and Paul Heller Memorial Fund, Illahie Fund at the Tides Canada Foundation, Yoshi Karasawa, Lando Foundation, McLean Foundation, R & J Stern Family Foundation, Chernoff Fine Art Inc, and our many private and business donors.
And an invitation to our annual fundraiser at Fluevog shoes
Join us for hearty appetizers, cocktails, and an audacious night of cabaret performances by City Opera Vancouver! We will once again be hosted by our friends at John Fluevog Shoes, and 50% of all proceeds from shoes sold on the night of the event will be donated to support the City Opera Operating and Production Fund. Our friends from The Woods Spirit Co. will be providing bespoke cocktails for the event, and Nuba will again be providing an array of tasty foods to take us through the night
Dress Code: dapper
Location: John Fluevog Shoes, 65 Water Street, Gastown
When: Thursday 13 February, 6:30 – 9pm
Tickets: $35 each, at the door or online
And more from City Opera...
MISSING: one of “the best operas of the decade” - Opera Canada Magazine.
Melody Courage in City Opera Vancouver/Pacific Opera Victoria's Missing, 2017—Photo: Michell e Doherty, Diamond’s Edge Photography
And from our friends...
The Electric Company Theatre: Anywhere But Here
February 4-15, 2020
Electric Company Theatre announces the world premiere of Carmen Aguirre’s spellbinding new work, Anywhere But Here from February 4–15, 2020 at the Vancouver Playhouse. A haunting blend of dark comedy and magical realism, the work is a vibrant celebration of Latinx theatre, with music and raps by Shad, that chronicles the many paths, real and imagined, we take to discover the truth — the truth about who we are, and where we may be headed.
Telling an engrossing story that intersects multiple timelines and spaces, Anywhere But Here introduces us to a host of fantastical characters who have experienced the pull of home, the ache of displacement, and the harsh realities of the border as they attempt to cross, guard, or survive it in Trump’s America.
Produced in association with Playwrights Theatre Centre. Presented with the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Tickets from $19.99.
