The Yale Cabaret is an independent, student-run theater company in residence at David Geffen School of Drama. It provides an additional, strictly extracurricular outlet for the exploration of a wide range of material, including self-scripted material, company-devised original work, adaptations, and musicals. In light of the pandemic, Yale Cabaret 53 leadership team (Co-artistic Directors Maeli Goren-Wilson, Jisun Kim, Nicole Lang, and the Managing Director Matthew Sonnenfeld) decided to turn the Yale Cabaret into an online theater for their 20-21 season. Six months later after the season closing, four of them gathered in the Zoom room to reflect on their online season.
Q: How did the experience of running the online season at the Yale Cabaret change your view of theater?
Maeli Goren-Wilson: Last year, for me, became about searching for something that felt essential in theater, going back to “why did I want to do this in the first place?” Ultimately, it became clear to me that what was essential was vulnerable, authentic expression as a means of connecting people to each other. It made me realize that theater for me is very much a means to an end. I don’t know if I would even define everything that we did last year as “theater,” but I think it was all in pursuit of that thing that to me feels at the heart of why I decided to be a theater artist.
Matthew Sonnenfeld: Last year, we had said a few times that we weren’t sure whether what we were making was the definition of theater, but that it was theatrical. And I’ve thought about what that means with the inevitable comparison to filmmaking. Theater is not only an art form, but also a theater is a space, and our art form is named for that space, whereas a film is a physical object, and it is the recording of what is captured on that physical object. In making virtual theater, we sort of blur the lines. So, I’ve thought about what it means to create theatrical space and I have come to the conclusion that you don’t necessarily need that physical space and I don’t just mean four walls, but also being on a location, wherever it’s going to be. What’s really important is bringing together people for that time and that experience.
Jisun Kim: In the beginning of our season, we frequently discussed what live theater means and what defines “live.” As we went on, we realized that watching a live online theater is very different from watching a TV show or a film, because what’s at the heart of this experience is to gather people in the virtual space and experience things together. Even though we couldn’t see each other’s faces, there was an intense and intimate feeling of togetherness. I think what we really did was to create that sense of community throughout the pandemic and even broadened the definition of community. When we produced drag shows, I remember we were worried about what virtual drag shows would look like, but it turned out to be such an emotional space where we gathered and shared performances and reacted in time. It was not something lesser than an in-person performance, but something different. I think our online space created a different sort of community, in the sense that it was still very much theater to me.
Nicole Lang: If you asked me what theater was before we started the Yale Cabaret online season, I think I would have been able to give you an answer and I don’t necessarily know that I can now. I think that I have a lot more questions, and it’s good because I keep asking those questions as we’re returning to production and asking, “Why are we doing this?” And I think the ground rules or the framework have been broken for me in a lot of really good ways, where I think, “This could be anything you want it to be. You get to choose how this experience happens,” and I think there’s so much possibility there that I hadn’t quite acknowledged before this Cabaret experience. Because at the Cab, we had to. We had to ask questions: “Why are we doing this? Can we do this in a way that is better? Can we do this in a way that is more appropriate for a medium we were using or for our audiences?” and I think that is something that really stuck with me and broadened my personal definition of why we do the thing we do.
Jisun Kim: In a way, there was much less confinement that we had to deal with when we made work because artists could choose a different medium, different platforms, so we really had to start from scratch to imagine what the audience experience would be. It was not a black box theater where we know dimensions and seat capacities, etc., but it was so much wider and more ambiguous, so we had to search every single thing we could possibly do.
Maeli Goren-Wilson: To me, the primary experience of last year was artist-to-artist – how do people need to express themselves in this moment? Because no matter how loudly audience members screamed into the void, you just couldn’t feel them in the same way, and it meant that the act of creation and the experience of the person creating was primary. It’s similar to how I now work with young artists. The work that we’re doing is not mainly about the audience; it’s for young people to express themselves. Their parents and friends come and bear witness, but there’s not a gift-wrapped-something that we’re presenting to the public for their consumption.
Jisun Kim: Yes, it was much more about growing together than making something that’s consumable to the audience. And it was essential to our mission too, from the very beginning. And that became even more essential as we turned into online theater.
Nicole Lang: There was this weird duality in doing so much rehearsing and all the meetings on Zoom where you got these incredibly intimate, personal moments of people growing and changing and discovering, but also knowing that you are so physically isolated from that person. I think it was incredibly emotional.
Maeli Goren-Wilson: I was thinking about what I missed most last year. While we absolutely failed at times, we were coming from such a genuine place of trying to do things better, in a way that would be kind to people and fulfilling for people, and in a way that would make people feel more whole. I think that pursuit meant that I genuinely didn’t miss the way things were done before, because, in a lot of my experiences, at least in the professional theater sphere, those weren’t the priorities. I never want to go back to making theater with those not being priorities.
Jisun Kim: I always knew that those priorities are important, but before the pandemic, I was confused at times. I sometimes felt pressure to compromise, because there had been such urgency and pressure to keep the show go on. I think the last year made it clear to me that my top priorities are to take care of people, generate a community as a team, grow together, and make meaning together, as opposed to prioritizing making a “good” production.
Matthew Sonnenfeld: I learned that they’re not exclusive. You can prioritize people and still have a really incredible piece. You’re not sacrificing. You’re able to work on yourself and your relationships and to improve your practice and to help others improve theirs while putting together art that everyone is really proud of.
Jisun Kim: If you create a strong community and build the love and affection in the community while you’re making theater, they very likely become a really good production, because that joy and the meaning we make together are transferred to the audience in a much better way than when we prioritize the product over process.
Nicole Lang: I think one of the few things that I felt like I was missing when we were making virtual theater is being able to communicate in more ways. There were limitations about having relationships with people over this medium, and over email, and I am so happy to be in a rehearsal room again so that I can talk to a person when something comes up. I do think that there’s a lot of room for a more spontaneous collaboration. Just because things are less technological, I guess. You have to be a little extra prepared with the technology.
Q: Yale Cabaret 53 was committed to accessibility and Anti-racist work. It created “accessibility assistant” position at the Cabaret for the first time, and published Action Plan in Support of the Black Lives Matter Movement, as well as the Statement in Solidarity with the AAPI Community. What did you learn from these commitments?
Maeli Goren-Wilson: I think the degree of intentionality that we had to have last year really affected me. My eyes are more open now when we’re in the physical space. Working with our accessibility assistants and the process of designing the website at the beginning of the year really set us up to be constantly asking, “Where is this work potentially leaving people out, and how do we feel about that?” and wrestling with, “Is there an action that’s needed there, or potentially a reframing that’s needed, or reimagining that’s needed?” In the physical world I’m finding that more frequently I have to contend with the response to those questions being “Well, unfortunately this theater was built in the 1970s and therefore there’s nothing that can be done about that.” I believe there’s a way to overcome almost anything that one could want to overcome. But I do find that the conversation stops sooner, now that we’re back in person, than it did in the virtual space where we genuinely had no idea if things could be fixed. So we said “let’s try and figure out if we can fix that,” and then we would do everything we could to try and figure it out.
Jisun Kim: The experience of writing the Black Lives Matter statement together and talking to our company members and thinking about action plans really made me realize that theater lives “here and now.” It’s not an isolated place from reality. It’s always reacting to what’s happening in the world. As artistic directors, we had a different level of responsibility than individuals. Even if it was a small nonprofit student theater, there was so much responsibility. There were so many things that we could do when we were in the position of power to make decisions and program shows and create initiatives, being very intentional about all of them. Experiencing that power made me think a lot about so many things that theaters can actually do. It doesn’t have to live in your imagination anymore.
Nicole Lang: I relate a lot to that. In some ways, the Cabaret experience for me really drew back the curtains on how organizations are run behind the scenes because we had to figure out how to do it. There was so much that I didn’t realize how easy it was to do. For example, in coming up with our accessibility plan, there were a lot of pitfalls and different things that we had to try and figure out, but, in reality, we were operating with a pretty small budget, in a restricted space with restricted time, and we were still able to do so much. We were still able to accomplish a huge amount, and be reactive and tackle things that were coming our way head-on. I found it very enlightening, I do feel able to speak up in spaces where there aren’t necessarily accessibility plans or there isn’t necessarily an Anti-racist policy. I’m not as small as I think.
Jisun Kim: We have been told so many times at different institutions, where they’d say, “Oh that’s not possible because of how the structure of this institution works,” which makes it sound like it’s inevitable, that the change is not possible. Now we know that it’s actually possible.
Maeli Goren-Wilson: I think our experience last year helped me internalize the idea that decisions are made by people, policies are made by people, institutions are helmed by people, bureaucracies are made up of people. So the refrain of “Well, the policy is,” or “Well, the mission statement says”—those sort of ways of shirking individual responsibility that we’ve gotten accustomed to hearing—I don’t take that for an answer anymore. Last year, our community of artistic associates really held us accountable and raised questions when they needed to be raised, and the three of you held me accountable. So it was wonderful to never feel tempted to say that thing that we’ve heard, “oh my hands are tied, the policy says…” I knew that that was not the way that we were ever going to approach things.
Matthew Sonnenfeld: I think what really struck me was how once we stopped to look around, there were so many tools available to us. We found not only did the tools exist, but they are affordable and they’re easy to implement, so there are no excuses to not use them. I was wowed when we did the Spanish translations. That was something that was requested by multiple teams and we were able to make that happen. With regards to anti-racism, we worked very hard to implement all we could that was relevant to the Cabaret from We See You White American Theater. When writing the Black Lives Matter statement, when the four of us were going over every single word, we knew that every word matters. And the actions that we put behind those words matters, and that’s why our statement became an action plan. Now, The BIPOC Connection lives on (The BIPOC Connection is a monthly space for BIPOC folks to celebrate diverse cultural backgrounds, support marginalized and intersectional identities, and collectively imagine a future free from white supremacy culture. It was part of the Yale Cabaret 53 Action Plan). And the Accessibility Assistant lives on. Those are things that I’m excited to continue to see at the Cabaret.
Maeli Goren-Wilson: My experience of putting the shared values that we expressed into action often really meant recognizing the power of a person-to-person connection–the importance of actively holding space for and holding up individual members of our community. In the wake of several hate crimes against Asian Americans and Asian immigrants, there was a moment where folks on our team expressed, “I don’t feel held and I don’t feel seen right now.” I was extremely grateful that we had the kind of trust and love as a community where people were able to, from a place of courage, express that experience and say that they were not being held, so it was able to be addressed. I realized you never arrive at a place where you’ve crafted the perfect environment where no harm will ever be done and everyone will be held all the time. So just making sure that there is always love and support for individuals to express their experience, be heard, and then trust that there will be action taken… and that trust is only developed over time, only developed when people see that actions are constantly taken.
Jisun Kim: You reminded me of our mission statement where we said we’re looking to create a utopian experience in our community, and I think that the work of anti-racism and accessibility is part of that—we are always looking to this utopia that we will never get to, but I think the beauty of it is that we are still pursuing that place. We’re always wanting to go to that place, and I think that urge and willingness are what makes it really worth it.
Nicole Lang: It ties all the things together about how any institution, any company is made up of people. We were in a very lucky position that we could reframe it this way, that our company was about our relationships with all of these individuals who are our peers and friends. It becomes a very different thing than what you would traditionally think of as a theater company or as any kind of company, but it’s really a series of burgeoning relationships.
Q: What is your favorite memory of the Yale Cabaret 53?
Jisun Kim: How every single show we produced was so unique with their own challenges and own creativity, and how they were so malleable, how the artists adapted themselves to this new format, are still striking to me (during the pandemic, Yale Cabaret produced radio dramas, zoom plays, media art installations, puppet musical, drag shows, online theater festivals, solo shows, etc). Before, I had such a limited version of what theater is in my head. Once we were in a place where we needed to create new forms, and stories that would match the form, the artists were so incredible with coming up with a new way of storytelling that totally changed my view of what theater is.
Maeli Goren-Wilson: One of my favorite memories is the opening night of the untitled bathtub theater project. I remember being in my bathtub with my bath bomb and my wine and just listening to the actors laugh with each other and splash in their separate spaces, hearing in the smiles in their voices that they were enjoying each other. They seemed so together. It was just magic to hear that genuine togetherness coming through in my private bathtub with my own little splashes and I was thinking, “Wow, I don’t really care if this art works as a piece of art, I just care that I’m here experiencing this magic human moment that’s happening.”
Nicole Lang: I think one of the most exciting things was when we did Spark Factory (a public workshop held at the Yale Cabaret in a collaboration with the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. As part of the workshop, multi-disciplinary teams artists each received a virtual technology kit, a prompt, and a few hours to make a short piece of theater.) We’re on zoom literally from 9am until 9pm and it was so much fun, we had the best time. I was with all these people who I had never met before, and it was the nicest way to connect with a group of people that I knew nothing about and create something new. That, for me, really embodied the spirit of everything I had wanted our season to be and everything that our season was. It was a really wonderful and magical moment.
Matthew Sonnenfeld: I think my moment where it defined what the season was going to be for me, what we were doing and what it meant, was the first time I pulled an attendance report out of Zoom, and it showed where people were coming from. I was looking at the list of countries and I was thinking, “Who is watching this adaptation of a doll’s house from Peru?” And that just said, this is what we’re doing now, we are all of a sudden, a global theater. That to me was what it was all about in that year. We had people coming from Peru, India, Singapore, Australia, Mexico, Canada, the UK, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, China, Brazil, Korea, Malaysia, and more.
Yale Cabaret 53 team handed the leadership over to the next team after their year-long term. Now run by the 54th team, the Cabaret reopened in-person performances in Fall 2021. Yale Cabaret 53 season has been the first and only online season in the Yale Cabaret history.
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