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Yale Cabaret
2008–2009 Season
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By Walter Byongsok Chon ’10
In its 41st season, the Yale Cabaret’s artistic theme was Icons and Iconoclasts. Under the leadership of artistic director Patricia McGregor ’09, associate artistic director Donesh Olyaie ’10, and managing director Aurelia Fisher ’09, the Cabaret presented 20 productions. The season launched with a recreation of one of Billie Holiday’s last performances in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, in which Christina Acosta ’10 shared the ups and downs in the life of Lady Day. Holiday’s songs and story seemed to converse with the ghosts of cabaret itself. 16 Bars // Soundtrack of our Minds, written and performed by Kevin Daniels ’10, looked deep into the psyche of an African-American’s struggle for his artistic ego in an ethnically conscious world. The Cabaret season did not limit its inspirations to American icons but stretched out to
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international contents and forms. Bones in the Basket, conceived by Alexandra Henriksen ’11 and performed entirely by first-year Drama 50 participants, lured spectators into an eerie and monstrous world of Russian fairy tales. For Mask Ritual: Electra, audiences joined the exorcism of Electra’s grudge over being denied judgment for the murder of her mother, Clytemnestra. Mask Ritual, adapted by Minsun Jung ’09 from Euripides’s Electra, sought to restore Electra’s lost voice through a Korean shamanistic ritual. Yale School of Drama playwrights also tested the limits of social decorum and theatrical verisimilitude. Gonzalo Rodríguez-Risco’s ’09 Gay Play told the story of drag queen Didi and her best mate Joseph, who—much to his surprise—finds himself in love with a woman. In Matt Moses’s ’09 Pamela Precious, two teachers fight over a third, until their rivalry turns into
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an unexpected partnership, involving a misguided castration operation and a life-anddeath struggle to retrieve the missing . . . er . . . ball. The Cabaret also encouraged experiments by students working outside their academic disciplines. Theater Management student Frances Black ’09 conceived and directed Hold for Beauty. On a fashion show catwalk, the performers executed everyday activities at varying speeds while reacting to different light cues, thus abstracting the behaviors from their usual contexts and forcing the audience to examine them anew. Funy as Hell, created by Technical Design and Production student Brian Dambacher ’11, presented an industrial purgatory occupied by Satori Circus, a clown-like progeny of technology, bringing Dante’s journey sardonically into our own times.