If life is a cabaret, then there’s a whole lot of livin’ about to happen.
Last weekend saw the final of three performances of the Paramount Theatre’s “Cabaret Under the Stars,” a biannual fundraiser with the audience seated at tables onstage cabaret-style. The evening show ran Thursday through Saturday with 11 local performers.
But how does one end up onstage at the Paramount? It isn’t just practice, practice, practice. It’s putting yourself out there, too.
“There’s a meeting between the music director, the (show’s) director and myself. We start recalling people that we know, and we invite them,” said George Levesque, the Paramount’s executive director and show producer.
“But we have had so many performers that somebody has said, ‘Hey, you should listen to Jim Bob,’ and somebody will send us a video of them singing, and we’re like, ‘Holy cow, we need to get them in our next cabaret,'” Levesque said.
The theme for the show was “Songs for the Road,” featuring songs related to places. Some of those places were real like the 1953 “Istanbul! (Not Constantinople)” by The Four Lads. It was covered by They Might Be Giants in 1990 and sung at the Paramount by Kyle Martin.
Or the place could be imaginary like Olivia Newton-John’s 1980 hit “Xanadu,” sung by Dawne Swearingen Meeks.
The next cabaret at the Paramount won’t be until February.
Levesque said the theater tries to schedule them when not much else is happening in the community.
Trying to avoid that Feeling of Missing Out or FOMO as the kids call it?
Levesque said the cabaret fundraiser is an idea that seems to be catching on locally. The local universities have reached out, including Eastland’s Majestic Theatre, to start their own shows with Abilene Christian University’s “Lights Up Cabaret” happening Nov. 15.
“So what used to be one is now, I think, six different entities doing cabarets,” Levesque said.
This article originally appeared on Abilene Reporter-News: ‘Cabaret Under the Stars’ an intimate evening of music at the Paramount
Reporting by Ronald W. Erdrich, Abilene Reporter-News / Abilene Reporter-News
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