Willkommen in Weimar

It’s 100 years since the end of the First World War and the start of the Weimar Republic, the unofficial name for interbellum Germany. Famous for nightclubs where talent, alcohol and drugs found a happy home. But they were also safe places where punters and artists were free to be themselves; where society and those in power could be criticised and satirised. As Germany plunged deeper and deeper into a recession, and lurched towards fascism, the cabaret artists of the Weimar Republic formed a last bastion of freedom where they warned of the impending doom. Until they were also forcefully shut down by the Brownshirts.
 
“They lived like every day could be their last and partied like crazy,” says singer Melinda Hughes, creator of Margo: Half Woman, Half Beast, a show about cabaret star Margo Lion, the bisexual lover of Marlene Dietrich.

“She was gripped by the decadence of Weimar Berlin. Her marriage was fuelled by alcohol, cocaine and jealousy. That makes for an incredibly complex character.” Hughes sings a mix of new work and songs from the Weimar era in her show. “The lyrics from that time are so poignant, so political. And they’re still relevant today.”
 
“The Weimar cabaret clubs were made for outsiders, for those who were different," says cabaret artist Bernie Dieter. "No matter what your gender, sexual preference or background was, you could go there and be one big family for the night." In The Little Death Club, Dieter creates a modern punk version of the cabaret halls that made Berlin famous in the late '20s and early '30s.

“We’ve taken the Weimar essence of cutting-edge, satirical social commentary as well as the sex and debauchery, and dragged it into the 21st century,” Dieter continues. In between songs about dick pics and oral pleasures, and acts from ladies that sport beards in intimate places, there is a clear message that is as important now as it was in the 1930s: “At the time there was a strict and authoritarian movement that was pushing differences as something to be feared. And that is happening again.

"In the US, in Australia, in Europe and the UK: political parties are trying to divide people. So I’m trying to encourage the audience to put their hand on their neighbour’s thigh. It’s important that we connect and form friendships. Don’t fear the other because it’s different from what you know,” she says.
 
The fear of the other is one of the main themes of Frau Welt, a cabaret-play about a Weimar-era drag queen who looks back at her life. “We examine what happens when you try to fit in, but never find your place,” explains Oliver Dawe, co-writer and director of the show. “Frau Welt is conservative, narrow-minded, rich, selfish, self absorbed, self obsessed, individualistic – everything that’s bad for society, now and in the Weimar era. The hypocrisy is rife here: she is a gay man who loathes herself. She starts ostracising others to feel better about herself. Looking at someone like Trump, maybe that’s behind his actions too.”
 
Weimar was an incredibly progressive time, says Le Gateau Chocolat, who this spring performed in Effigies of Wickedness (Songs Banned by the Nazis), a co-production of London's Gate Theatre and English National Opera. His new show, Icons, is indebted to Berlin’s Weimar cabaret in terms of its performance style. “They celebrated difference and gender neutrality, but at the same time a vacuum was created for conservatism to super-charge itself and create the rise of the far right. You’d hope that time would be linear and progressive, but things we said we’d never do again are occurring before our eyes.”

What occurred in Germany in the '30s was that Hitler and his henchmen gradually gained control over all forms of expression. It started with newspapers, cinema and theatre. Cabaret was, for some time, the only art form they couldn’t get a strong grip on. “The Brownshirts threw stink bombs into the venues to disrupt performances," explains David Dunn, writer and director of That Bastard Brecht. It's a show from the perspective of Elizabeth Hauptmann, a collaborator of Brecht's who is reputed to have written at least 80 per cent of The Threepenny Opera, but was denied credit during her lifetime.

“Artists and audiences were beaten up, especially if they made jokes about Hitler,” says Hughes. When Germany became a dictatorship in 1933, most artists fled. She goes on: “Plenty couldn’t or wouldn’t flee – they couldn’t foresee how horrible it would get. Many of the Stolpersteine [brass cobblestones that commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime] in Berlin bear the name of a Weimar cabaret performer.”
 
The influence of Weimar cabaret on theatre lives on, however. “German expressionism used big images, big shapes – they were playing around with form. That is what many drag artists still do,” says Dawe.

For Hughes many comedians are indebted to Weimar: “Instead of telling people what’s wrong with politics or society, we can make them think by magnifying the absurdities and confronting audiences with it through satire. Weimar cabaret could do that because they broke through the forth wall.”

“They completely demolished it”, agrees Dieter. “What people thought of as theatre back then was really only for the elite who could afford expensive productions. Cabaret halls were for everyone: from working class to nobility. They didn’t sit and listen to other people’s stories, forbidden to interact. There was a real conversation between the audience and the performer.”

Le Gateau Chocolat concurs: “That is what I borrow from Weimar: I’m speaking directly to you. And I’m addressing political issues. What caused the US to swing from Obama to Trump? What’s the role xenophobia played in the Brexit vote and how did that cause a rise in hate crimes against people who look different? The themes that occupied writers a hundred years ago, are heartachingly relevant today.”