What are your ideas for the beginning of this relationship with Howard University? What does it mean for you and the students? Why is it important for them to have this opportunity.?

 

For me, what this opportunity with the Howard students is so they can see the many different avenues you can go about being an artist without feeling that Broadway is the end all be all. Because a lot of times that’s what's forced down students’ throats, so that’s what they believe. However, the arts world and the arts community is so diverse, this will help them to see that you can be an artist and curate your own cabaret shows, you can be an artist that does different projects, not just on the stage. Also the purpose of this cabaret partnership is to help the Howard students expand their network in the DC area. Many of them are not from this area, so I figure that you’re here in the city for four years, why not garner up some supporters while you’re here. And it’s not just by being on the stage, but it’s by doing all the things. I’m a voice teacher, I’m a music director, I curate my own shows, so it’s not just by performing. But I had to realize that by having these kinds of opportunities which were awarded to me at George Mason, so I wanted to bring those same opportunities to Howard University.

 

Can you speak a little bit to the archetypes that you’ve chosen for this?

 

We have the Witness, the Dissenter, and the Reveler: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. The three archetypes are exposing the different sides of the human aspect to me that are flawed and define how we perceive different injustices and how we try to separate things out. The Witness has seen everything throughout time; he is somebody who has witnessed the different eras and same injustices happening, but he refuses to actually hear what’s happening. He’s observing, but he's not actually listening. The Witness, he sees it but he refuses to actually listen, to adjust and correct what’s happening. The Reveler sees, but she refuses to say anything because she just wants to have fun. How does me saying anything change things? So that archetype really is just “I just want to party, I just want to have fun, why should I have to always be the voice for the people?” And what you will see through her archetype is that you can have fun and speak up as well. And then The Dissenter speaks too much and he doesn’t have that human connection with other people, and so he gets in trouble because he is just constantly speaking, and he’s not actually looking at the current state of the world. Charles wrote this beautiful script for the cabaret, I can’t wait for you all to hear it. The archetypes are those three different states, and hopefully you recognize yourself in one or all or a few of them and then you recognize what you need to do differently. 

 

But it’s also fun, right? How do you keep the fun in a conversation like this?

 

The script is fun and the music is fun. It makes the topics that we’re talking about digestible. And I feel like the song choices that the students picked really hone in on each of their archetypes so that way you can really hear the voice of what they are trying to say. Also, for me a fun aspect of this is that I get to work with my students in a professional setting, and that’s something different from the university setting. So I give them deadlines and watch them step up and come into the rehearsal space as professionals. To me that’s fun. 

 

What can you tell us about the relationship of this concept to the Weimar era cabarets around which this season is based? 

 

So for me, it really is just about the celebration of liberation. I do believe it is celebrating feminism and sexuality in a way. I say that because for me , when people talk about my sexuality, it’s always like the typical LGBTQIA+ whatever, but to me, sexuality isn’t just about who you’re attracted to, it’s more about your expression, how you exist, how you be in life, so for me that’s what this cabaret is, it’s showing those different emphases, and it’s celebrating life. It’s showing those different characters we have: The Reveler embodies that feminism; The Dissenter has the Weimar connection, in that they are bringing up real political issues about what’s going on today but it’s presented through the eyes of cabaret. They are real issues that people are going through, but when you hear it in the script, it makes it possible to relate to what we experience day to day That’’s how we kept that Weimar connection, making the issues and the topics relatable to today vs it being solely theoretical.