First Encounter

My goal with the first encounter for the cast and production team is to emphasize the emotional landscape of the production. My plan is to play several rounds of a game called Wink Murder, also known as Murder in the Dark or Killer Killer. In the game everyone closes their eyes and one moderator (myself) chooses the “killer.” Then everyone opens their eyes and walks about the room. The “murderer” winks at people and they are “killed.” The goal is for the non-murderers to guess who the murderer is and the goal for the murderer is to not be caught. For the first round, I will introduce the game under the premise that there is one murderer. But when everyone closes their eyes, I will choose more than one person to act as the murderer to complicate the game even more. We will play several rounds of this. In one of the rounds, I will supply masquerade masks, boas, and other fun party costume props for everyone to wear. This will not only make it harder to discern when someone is winking and when someone is making eye contact to receive the wink, but will also tie into the idea that the cabaret club in Cabaret serves as a place of distraction and blissful ignorance from the world. When the activity is over, I will ask everyone how the game made them feel—likely paranoid and suspicious of other people. My goal with this game would be to explore the growing feelings of suspicion and tension and the waning feeling of safety in German society at the time Cabaret is set. These feelings serve both my desire to emphasize the political history of Cabaret and the specific history of the targeting of queer folks in Germany at this time.