Joni Mitchell sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.” In Cabaret, freedom teeters on the edge of extinction—and no one seems able to stop it. Or stop history from repeating itself.

From the opening invocation of “all the world is a stage” to the final prologue, which seals the compact of cast and audience, the production illuminates the reality of theatrical space, the transformative power of the actor, and role of the viewer’s imagination to create the theatrical event. Starting as the victim of oppression, Shakespeare's Rosalind embraces theatrical strategies to face her challenges: through improvisation and performance, she discovers her strength and power. Leaving a troubled everyday world to venture into the unknown, Rosalind becomes actor, director, stage manager, and spectator. The production celebrates the power of the actor at her/his most joyous best, and suggests that real liberation is not about disguise, but how we bring ourselves – body, hear, and soul, to play our part in the world.

The year is 1808: France is a powerful empire ruled by Napoleon. Outside of Paris, in the mental asylum of Charenton, the Marquis de Sade has been inprisoned for seven years because of his outrageous writings ... Tonight, Sade presents a play, performed by the institution's patients, dramatyixing the assassination revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution.   He is glad to have you with us.

"Please feel free to take [my plays] and use them freely as a resource for your own work: that is to say, don't just make some cuts or rewrite a few passages or re-arrange them or put in a few texts that you like better, but pillage the plays as I have pillaged the structures and contents of the plays of Euripides and Brecht and stuff out of Soap Opera Digest and the evening news and the internet, and build your own, entirely new, piece—and then, please, put your own name to the work that results." - CHARLES MEE, playwright

In 1928, Treadwell stunned Broadway with a powerful indictment of a system that dehumanizes women. Through expressionism, she revealed the crushing forces of patriarchy in work, marriage, and the law—addressing issues like sexual harassment, unequal pay, and reproductive control. Ninety years later, the students in this cast say they still feel those same forces at work. And as we rehearsed, we watched continued attacks on institutions like Planned Parenthood, and heard hateful rhetoric from the highest levels of power. What gives me hope is the courage these young actors bring. They’ve delved into history, into family stories, and into themselves to understand the relevance of Machinal today. As they give voice to our collective past, they also point toward a future we must continue fighting for—a future where we steer the machine toward progress, not oppression. - JASON JACOBS program note

Classics invite interpretation, and this Hedwig is shaped by a new generation of young artists tearing down the walls of traditional gender strictures. Our rehearsals have been an inquiry into how this multifaceted role can be embodied by a diverse ensemble and how this story continues to resonate more than twenty years after its inception. Whatever your journey, I thank you for being here tonight and wish you an exciting theatrical ride! - Jason Jacob, November 2021 Program Note