This fall, the Berkeley Rep presents An Audience with Meow Meow, about an international singing sensation and über-award-winning comedienne. In connection to the play, I’ll be offering a class exploring the music as a “degenerate” art form.
Degenerate, Forbidden, Suppressed. Music and Otherness in Fascist Europe
The attitudes displayed by European fascist regimes (especially Italy, Germany, and Vichy France, from the early 1920’s to the end of WW2) towards musical cultures of the “other” — including Jewish, Romani, North African, and African American music, as well as cabaret and popular song — ranged from unambiguous condemnation and suppression, to more nuanced tolerance and even inclusion. This class will examine Fascist rules about music, examples including Brech and Weill’s musical theater, Django Reinhardt’s “Gypsy Jazz,” Italian adaptation of American blues and jazz, and traditional music in colonial North Africa, exploring myths and facts about music history in the early 20th century.
This class will be taught by the fabulous Francesco Spagnolo
The class will be Wed., Sept. 17 from 7 to 8:30pm and will meet at Lehrhaus, 2736 Bancroft Way, Berkeley.
An Audience with Meow Meow opens Sept. 5th.
Our ENTOURAGE code, making tickets available at reduced rates will be forthcoming. Email me if you have questions.
Berkeley Rep’s publicity says:
Ladies and gentlemen, from the lights of London’s West End, the backrooms of Berlin, the sails of the Sydney Opera House, and the opium dens of Shanghai, please welcome…Meow Meow! The international singing sensation and über-award-winning comedienne—who’s wowed audiences from Paris to the Antipodes—finally brings her electrifying repertoire to our lucky shores. The “post-post-modern” phenomenon creates a musical world premiere of gargantuan proportions for Berkeley Rep’s audiences, featuring sizzling songs, sequins and satire, blow-torch wit, and divine mayhem! The captivating Meow Meow has rendezvoused with fellow superstars Mikhail Baryshnikov, Pina Bausch, and David Bowie. Now she’s entangled with the endlessly inventive director Emma Rice (The Wild Bride, Tristan & Yseult, Broadway’s Brief Encounter). Expect beauty, expect hilarity, expect heart. And possibly the splits. You are the perfect audience and she is…the extraordinary Meow Meow.