WOMEN IN GERMAN

ANNUAL CABARET 1998

Aptos, California

 Photos assembled by Susan Cocalis*

*I need help with the details. Please contact me at cocalis@german.umass.edu to contribute to this project.

WiG Newsletter Reviews of the Cabaret 1998:

"WiG Cabaret proudly presents: Queer German Television:"Lost and Found in Shanghai"
(a Weonlyspoofwhatwelovethemost Production)
Our intrepid camera has captured for our viewing audience a documentary that defies description, or at least cannot be conflated into any category of any sort. In fact, it might be the perfect post-modern, post-session, post-dinner document to have ever been recorded. While innocently filming the beginnings of a scene for a tourist agency in Shanghai--and recording the ENDLESS musings of a most interesting cultural informant--our camera was captivated by the unusual appearance of a large vehicle, the sylla-bus, transporting a strange conflagration of characters. As they approached the ever-vigilant border guard with her searing questions and exquisitely active "Stempel," the motley group introduced themselves as Jeanette Wander, two confused tourists and a musical group known as the "Speise Girls." Upon interrogation by the border guard, it became clear that while each knew her name, not one knew who she was. Added to that, it appeared that this group didn’t know WHERE they were either. Were they tourists, or were they in exile? Were they in Shanghai? Ost? West? The Brechtian moments began, as signs repeatedly were brought onto stage saying "Conflate" and "aber,". Our camera, ever vigilant, knew when to intrude, and began to voraciously film the signs and these extremely odd personages--the wandering Jeanette, the tourists, and Germanistik Spice, Graduate Student Spice, Old Spice, Rot/GrŸn Spice (Joschka Fischer), Ocular Spice, and Monika Spice. There was much visual pleasure to be had: Old Spice wore particularly lovely Lorelei hair, the skirts of Germanistik Spice and Ocular Spice were short enough (and the camera loved the large Ocular eyeball), Graduate Student Spice was suitably snowed under with books, Rot/GrŸn Spice was quite herbal (nur Kr·uter-Viagra, bitte!) and Monika Spice attired in a clean blue dress. This almost cracked the lens, so our camera added a cinematic interlude of hypnotic noodle stretching as our cultural informant continued to talk about her many conquests.

In the mean time the curtain opened to find Monika Spice reclining on the divan, eating a banana, which unfortunately fell on her dress, staining it. In a "Hard Day’s Night" moment, the girl group then entered en mass looking for the "Ovary Office." Monika knew just where it was, and sang a little song about it. With things quickly getting bad, they immediately got worse as Wilhelm Jefferson von Goethe appeared, pursuing the "Speise Girls" into the Ovary Office and onto the "Ost-Westlicher Divan." Over the years our camera has seen everything, but she was not prepared for the female aggression of these consuming women, who ATE Wilhelm Jefferson von Goethe until they were completely stuffed. It looked just like a scene from a Jelinek novel.

But, in a cinematic slight of hand, Goethe rose again as the Body as Text to join the group as "G‰tterspeis." Our camera was happy to see the narrative find a Hollywood Ending, as the "Speise Girls" ultimately found their identities in a box of WiG t-shirts. Putting on the beautiful $5.00 shirts of yesteryear--yes you can still buy them from Anna Kuhn...a bargain at twice the price--the girls became WiG Nachwuchs....and the tourists knew who and where they were, and Jeanette Wander stopped wandering, the cultural informant stopped talking, the border guard fell in love with the camera, and everybody sang and danced in the final big production number." Author??

I wasn't present at the 1998 cabaret, so I reprinted the summary from the November 1998 Wig Newsletter. There is no author listed and no mention of who played what parts, although one speculates that Rick McCormick contributed to a lusty William Jefferson von Goethe, that Jeanette Clausen might have played the role of Jeanette Wander, and that Lisa Roetzel might have had a hand in the Speise Girls.

I do not have any pictures of this cabaret. Help?