This summer I was fortunate enough to be one of twelve young people to be awarded a Peter Kirk Travel Scholarship of £1500 to conduct a six-week research project. My project was titled An Exploration of European Cabaret Culture in the 21st Century. I have been interested in the resurgence of Cabaret and Burlesque in recent years, and in tracing the roots of this kind of performance by going to cabaret clubs both traditional and more progressive throughout Europe. Being primarily a maker of contemporary theatre I am fascinated by the sheer entertainment value of variety performance and was struck by the vast range of experiences I had during my travels. Unlike many Peter Kirk Scholars, I did not travel alone, but with my boyfriend Philip. Whilst I appreciate the value of undertaking such a project by oneself, I was aware that most of my research would be done late at night, and often in rather dodgy areas of large cities. I was glad of the company throughout my trip, and to have someone to bounce thoughts off whilst on long train journeys. This book is a document of my research, and looks in some detail at each of the events and places I visited. It is of course not an exhaustive account, but I hope that it gives some insight into the truly incredible experience I had.

10th July, Salvagnac Village Square I’m writing this on my bag, in the dark, sat in some scrubby patch of dirt on the ground. Obviously I forgot my notebook. This isn’t really cabaret, in fact some kind of contemporary ballet I think – but it seems worth noting, as coming across live performance by mistake isn’t exactly an everyday experience. The woman dancing is incredibly beautiful – slim and blonde, but with strong legs so you can tell she is a dancer. (And of course) there is a long-haired man playing a wooden flute. Oh wait – actually she seems to be drawing the raffle tickets for the night. Maybe this is some kind of strange postmodern cabaret gig after all! But the haunting and dreamy music continues… She dances with a shawl, and the shadows are quite beautiful but her performance is strangely un-intriguing. The man is playing some kind of drum kit though – maybe this is how they always do raffles in France? The woman’s scrabbling on the floor now – perhaps to produce some unwanted bottle of cheap whiskey as a prize for someone… who knows. Also the man keeps saying something in French about carnations.

11th July, Salvagnac Music Hall Event, Salle Omnisports We’re sitting in a sports hall on the edge of the village, a painted stage is erected and the village talent comes to sing, dance, and… well… prance! It seems that actually this week of ‘non-research’ has turned out to be quite the opposite. It’s the village’s Bastille festival at the moment so there’s loads going on in this tiny, remote place. As I write this, Colin Painter – the villages local ex-pat British (there are a lot of them here) painter – yes! – teaches the Frenchies traditional English songs. It’s very patronising, but in good spirit and all seem to be enjoying themselves. It’s delightfully amateur, but the mood shared between the audience and their peers onstage is something quite wonderful. I always thought that my idea of am-dram/musical theatre/variety was something incredibly stereotypical and undoubtedly way off the mark. But – had my imagined stereotype come to life – it would be this. Exactly. I’ve been working here on the bar (do-able with my level of French) and at the box office (less do-able due to some crazy reservation system they have in place. That, and the fact that the French still use cheques). I’m exhausted from communication.

Honestly… this is so awful/great I cant describe it. Oh – everyone’s doing flamenco now, there’s even a woman standing at the back pretending to play guitar along to a recorded track that doesn’t have any guitar on it! The painted view of Salvagnac on the backdrop is the icing on the cake, I think!

So here we are, sitting on a train zooming towards Paris and reflecting on a busy week. Lets get this clear – Salvagnac was not meant to be part of this project, no. A wee visit to friends before beginning in Paris. A week of manual labour, digging floors, building sheds. But, alongside all that we were confronted by so much performance that it seems silly not to include it in here. Sure, it is not the slick tourist traps that I am sure we’ll visit in places like Paris and Berlin, but there was an element here that seems so human – so connected to the everyday comings and goings of people in this area, and something that I feel is really at the heart of any cabaret act. With theatre, especially with a play text, one has the ability to detach themselves from their audience. Stanislavski, generally the main practitioner in relation to naturalistic theatre, for example, instigated a ‘fourth wall’ theory in which the performers act as though the audience is not even there. Within cabaret quite the opposite is true: without the audience and their reactions a cabaret is nothing. The whole purpose of cabaret and cabaret-like performance is to entertain and interact with the public. So hats off to the people of Salvagnac, for their brave performances amongst their peers, for their ability to delight their audience, and for giving me even more to write about!

Parisians are well known for their snobbery. It’s something I’ve never really believed in, but unfortunately this time it seems to have come to light in their inability to reply to emails… of the 8 or so cabaret clubs I contacted before embarking on my journey, only one got back to me. Despite this, I do like Paris. It’s expensive and fast, but like all capital cities it has an energy that excites me. We were only here for a couple of days in the end, which was a shame, but I do believe we made the most of our time. We stayed with our first couchsurfing host, Frederic, here (arriving very late, in the rain; getting lost). Much like hitch-hiking I find couchsurfing is something that leaves you with humdreds of great anecdotes… Mishaps, new friends, strange experiences… wonderful. A snapshot: We go to the cabaret. I interview Yves Mathieu, the manager of this club – the oldest in Paris. Watch the show. 2am, we leave and are thrown into a different kind of circus: down the road, a vintage shop packed full of young arty types having a party. Lots of smoking, lots of dancing, dressing up and even still someone at the desk selling things… Okay – I really, really like Paris!

17th July, Au Lapin Agile, Paris “So, I assume you’ve read the website. What else do you want to know?” This is how my interview with Yves Mathieu, director of Paris’s oldest cabaret club, begins. “Well...” I fluster, “I’m really interested to know how things have changed here over the years”. Another non-starter; it seems the whole point of this club is to preserve it exactly as it was 100 years ago… And so we go on. I bumble through a number of questions to which Mathieu gives abrupt, bored answers, after a while I establish that he would much rather to talk to Philip about sailing around the Isle of Wight. He ends the interview by asking when we’re going to get married. I decide to watch the show, see what happens. We are in a small wooden clad room, like a tiny pub. I’ll try to describe the atmosphere but it’s difficult… It feels a bit like a party when you are a kid. Its late, and way past your bedtime, and all of the adults start to remember songs… The difference is that here at the lapin agile, they all happen to be amazing, funny and talented. A lot more like a pub folk session in Ireland than a performance. You get the idea that if there were no audience here they would probably all meet up and do this anyway. Generally songs are sung as a group, but with one person leading. Audience participation is definitely encouraged. I’m kicking myself for not seriously brushing up

on my French before this trip, but it still is incredibly enjoyable. You can really believe this place hasn’t changed since it first opened in 1860. As the night wore on however, I began to wonder if there weren’t things that this club could benefit from changing. Firstly we could all do with being a bit drunker – the kind of atmosphere they seem keen to preserve is one of Paris maybe in the 1920s, where probably everyone would have been incredibly debauched and rowdy at such an event. However, the high cover charge included one small drink, after which cost 6/7euro. Most people only had one or two drinks. Also, generally the place could have been more ‘fun’. Although it was amazing, and highly enjoyable, the atmosphere in the audience was quite subdued, and seemed to be mainly made up of Japanese tourists. For me what really shone in the Lapin Agile was the intimacy of it all. As a performer, there is always the desire to be separated, or have more power than your audience. The performers here achieved this power simply through their immense skill and charm, without the aid of microphones, costume, lighting or even a stage of any sort. Sat at a table like everyone else, they sang in a way that was both extremely performative yet completely accessible. We were encouraged to sing (or ‘la’) along even if we didn’t know the words and it felt completely right to do this even if you cant sing/don’t speak French.

Berlin is like London on a grid. I have been told hundreds of times that I will love Berlin. I’m thinking of spending 3 months studying here next year and am incredibly excited about getting a chance to check it out. And it is cool. But not cooler than Bristol. Or Edinburgh. Glasgow, London, Krakow, Valencia… I could go on. There is a strange sort of well-ordered, well organised alterative culture here, that for some reason doesn’t seem to gel with my outlook on life particularly. You can understand why people from Dartington would like it, but I find it hard to see what makes it better than other cities. Surely every city has its alternative culture, its warehouse theatres and grimy shops hidden down alleyways – the only difference I can see with Berlin is that here there will probably be a signpost directing you to this area. Instead of having to trawl through endless tiny lanes to find boutique second hand shops and underground music venues, here they are all neatly arranged along one wide avenue regularly punctuated with trendy cafés. In a time when ‘alternative culture’ is the norm amongst teenagers and students, I think all that anyone can aim for on this bandwagon is for a feeling of exclusivity. In a twisting, disorganised backstreet in London you may find somewhere that you can feel no one has discovered before you.

You make it ‘your place’ – you have an interest in what it sells, how well it is doing – you feel a part of something. Of course this is all in ones head, but even so, I did assume it to be thus across Europe. But in Berlin you get the feeling that everything you discover is definitely in the guidebooks. However, we did end up buying a ‘burn it yourself’ Reichstag candle – so all is good (in a delightfully tasteless way)

21st July, Chamäleon Varieté, Berlin Anke Politz is younger than I’d expected – perhaps in her mid 30’s, and greets me with a warm handshake during the interval of the Chamäleon Varieté Theatre’s wonderful SOAP show. She and a group of others took over this derelict theatre five years ago (2004), completely refitting and restoring this former ballroom to its turn of the century glory. The audience are seated at tables, as in traditional cabarets, and the walls are hung with velvet drapes. Beautiful waitresses take your orders for extortionately priced cocktails. The setup of this theatre is quite unusual in Germany. Shunning the traditional, the Chamäleon chooses to create it’s own fully produced shows, rehearsing for two months to create a complete spectacle of cirque-nouveau, instead of a jumbled, unconnected mix of acts (traditional variety gets acts, and then will employ a director just for a week to link them together slightly). The director of SOAP, Markus Pabst says, “We take the person, not the act. We are interested in making a show.”

SOAP does not use an MC to link the acts, but instead employs a much more theatrical device – the clown. Marie-Andree Lemaire deftly guides the audience through this strange world of bathtubs and trapezes with her role as, like us, an outsider. Often, our focus is less on the act itself, and more on watching Lemaire’s reactions to it. This device allows the cabaret to be less technique based – less about simply ‘wowing’ the audience – and more about the story and the delight of all that happens on stage. The emphasis on company collaboration and a lengthier rehearsal process is evident in the generosity of all the performers in SOAP. Drawn from circus schools, auditions and other cabarets this eclectic company come from Canada (7 Fingers – an offshoot of Cirque du Soliel), Russia, New Zealand and Germany. You really get the feeling of a united group rather than different acts pushing for attention like in some other acrobatic shows I have seen.

22nd July, Scheinbar Varieté, Berlin The front of the Scheinbar Varieté is painted with cartoons of the many comedians and performers that regularly perform there. In the middle we see our host for the night, Timo Wopp, resplendent with his juggling balls. We’ve come with our German couchsurfing host, Jakob – so can vaguely get the gist of what is being said, though to be honest, I’m mainly relying on body language. Also, all the rest of the audience are most definitely German – I don’t think this place has ever seen a tourist, so Philip and I are trying to laugh along with everyone else so we don’t look too weird going to a place where we don’t understand a word of what is going on…

The manner of the 10 or so comedians we see on the night tends to be not dissimilar to the popular British genre of (and I cant think of a better word) ‘Bumbliness’! This sort of quiet comic, although when done well is delightful, often seems to me to be slightly shying away from the outright silly or absurd nature of comedy and cabaret. The only outright silly act was a young woman dressed in Hawaiian gear and attempting to assemble a sort of xylophone from plastic pipes, which, when finally assembled, she played a number of cheesy pop ballads on. It was all very entertaining really, and not (I think) just because it was the only thing we could understand. However, although the audience seemed to enjoy it, you couldn’t help but feel a wariness in the air, of someone taking risks in their performance, and allowing themselves to look stupid. Actually, she was a very good clown. On the way home we asked Jakob about the performance, but the only comment we could get out of him was, “she is a dangerous woman – very easy to fall in love with, I think.” Perhaps he had.

Krakow was, I think, the best city I have visited. It’s a strange claim, as we didn’t actually get to see any cabaret at all – just a bit of street theatre and music. But Poland has something that other European countries are lacking it seems. It has a present. Having such a turbulent and disrupted past, people in Poland are so unconcerned with the ‘glorious past’ that many in Western Europe are so obsessed by. They have spent almost their entire history in a constant state of change. Polish identity goes about as far as a shot of vodka. The people here are so welcoming and over-whelmingly human – and it is so refreshing to see people getting excited about the future, rather than vintage/retro-ness! However, there are downfalls – Polish clothing, for example, is awful. Cheap, synthetic cloth in bad styles and garish colours. Everyone looks like they’ve been shopping in TK Maxx circa 1998. Music, also, seems to be late 90’s rather than noughties. Nonetheless, these are a people with hope and with excitement. Jolanta Kogut, of the Dworec Kuture Centre says, “we don’t talk about the past, and

we daren’t guess tomorrow. Today is all there is.” It seems an obvious argument, but I have never before met such firm believers in this philosophy. Poland’s inclusion in the EU has definitely changed many things in this country, but visiting western Poland especially (we stayed in and around Ponznan for a few days on our way here), we realised what a different place this is from Western Europe. Through a couchsurfing host, we ended up at a party in the polish lakes, with about 30 young polish civil engineers. It seems to me still to be quite a poor place – the average person at this party made about £6000 p/a – and, probably because of this, rather old fashioned. Quite a number of people are married with children, and it transpires that young adults in Poland stay at home whilst studying at University, and only leave once they are ready to settle down (marry, or at least get a mortgage). There is not the frivolous student loan spending/flat renting/exploring the world attitude of myself, and other young people in Britain. But maybe I’m reading too much into all of this. Personally, I still find it strange hanging out with ‘young professionals’ – as many of Philip’s friends now are. They seem so like students who go to bed early…

28th July, Dorota Slezak, Piwnica Pod Baranami, Krakow Dorota Slezak has led a double life since discovering her voice whilst studying English and Linguistics at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Now, 13 years later, Slezak teaches at a secondary school during the week, but continues to perform at the famous Piwnica Pod Baranami every Saturday night. She is a tiny woman, with thin limbs and large red hair. I meet her outside the cabaret, which is situated in Krakow’s main square. Annoyingly, July and August are the only months of the year that the cabaret here is not performed, but we descend in to the club anyway, where there is a rehearsal for a jazz festival going on. Slezak orders a vodka and orange juice, and we sit in one of the club’s dark corners to talk. So here is what I’ve uncovered: Piwnica was founded by Piotr Skrzynecki in 1956, and it has run without breaks since then – which is incredibly impressive considering Polands disruptive/disrupted nature. Dorota describes Skrzynecki as a man “unhampered by usual cares”. He had no wife, children, day job or even home! He put his all into the success of the cabaret and dealt with every aspect of its running – performers, publicity, admin etc – himself.

Slezak was the last performer to be personally selected by Skrzynecki, he having died only a year after she began performing at Piwnica. “This is real life, not plastic. Not TV” says Slezak, “this is something that cannot be captured by a camera.” She describes the cabaret as a rather niche, but nonetheless popular Krakow institution. The tickets for each week (which are quite expensive by Polish standards) sell out up to four months in advance, and Slezak claims to never have met an audience member who did not enjoy themselves at the club. Influenced by the Parisian and Berlin cabarets of the early 20th Century which I have been investigating until now, Piwnica Pod Baranami runs a programme that is created on the spot by the MC (a role that was also previously performed by Skrzynecki). There are 20 or so acts at the clubs performing songs, poetry and sketches. There is also always an opportunity for a newcomer to try out their stuff on the Piwnica stage, although Slezak says that this is quite uncommon. It is, in fact, in this way that she debuted here. Although I don’t think I could ever dare to step up onto the Piwnica stage, I definitely plan on returning to Krakow soon to get to see this amazing sounding cabaret. Though I might have to plan well in advance if I want to get a ticket!

I won’t lie – trying to do the Edinburgh festival with a particular angle was difficult for me. It is something that I attend every year, and have done so all of my life, normally I work at a venue or help with a production. This year I felt more like a tourist than ever before. However, being from the city does have its advantages: all of my friends were working for venues this year, so I managed to get into a lot of things for free. This allowed me to explore what was going on without spending every penny that I had in the process. Obviously I also did not have to pay for accommodation, living with my parents instead. Edinburgh is a fascinating place at this time of year. It goes from small parochial Japanese-tourist trap in July, to the world’s biggest arts festival in August. It’s exciting to know both sides of it, and one of the reasons that I love the city. Although it does always seem horrifically empty come September when everyone leaves. Within my research here I focussed on three events in particular, all of which were progressions of acts I have seen in previously. I went to watch Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls at the Edinburgh Picture House, a large new venue. I’d seen her two years before on a stage in the corner of the Forest Café, a hippy, volunteer run squat-like place in town. I also attended once again the Bongo Club Cabaret, which is perhaps the most well established festival cabaret in the city. The third

performance cannot really be classed as cabaret, but I’d like to include them for the ways in which they have used cabaret like styles within their theatre work. It is this sort of thing that I am ultimately looking to gain from this scholarship. My Life With the Dogs is a blend of storytelling, live music and theatre by company New International Encounter. I saw a work in progress of the work at Battersea Arts Centre in April last year.

17th July, My Life With the Dogs – NIE, Edinburgh My Life With the Dogs is the most recent production by Cambridge/Oslo based theatre company New International Encounter. It tells the true story of four year old Ivan Mishukov who ran away from home in Moscow and spent two years living with dogs before being found by the police. NIE’s storytelling technique is quite unlike anything I have seen before. All of the cast play musical instruments, and in every piece of theirs I have seen, this is an important device for conveying the story. Delightfully, in this show, Ivan tunes into an old radio, which then prompts the playing of live music by the rest of the cast. It is this kind of thing, this human connection with the audience that brings this type of theatre so close to cabaret for me. Here is a company that is working making contemporary theatre, but is in no way shying away from their public. For their ‘European Narratives’ trilogy they played accordions in the queue before the show, handed out free drinks and generally encouraged a party atmosphere. This embrace of the event of performance is something that I feel is so key to cabaret, and is demonstrated wonderfully by NIE’s style and techniques.

20th August, Bongo Club Cabaret, Edinburgh A little over a year ago, at the start of the 2008 Edinburgh fringe is perhaps where all of this begins. Cabaret, maybe most delightfully for me, someone so absorbed in the often snobby exclusivity of contemporary theatre, is entertainment that crosses so many art forms. Upon seeing the Cabaret at the Bongo Club last year I was excited by the variety of things that can get away with labelling themselves under this banner. And so I return to this night with high expectations and an excited gang of friends and family in tow. Our compère for the night is Lucille Burn. She is not beautiful, but alluring – wearing a backless green sequinned dress. Her back is spotty, and her body slightly plump. But she sings wonderfully and her manner is disarmingly sexy. It is unusual in a world that is so over-saturated with movie expectations, beautiful Hollywood smiles and size zero models, for someone ‘normal looking’ to be allowed to simply be sexy. The acts tonight vary enormously in style, with the first half seeming to host safer, but better established acts and the second homing those who we feel a little more unsure about. Disappointingly for me, I did not see anyone who I felt was really taking risks with their performance. We start with Miss Leggy Pee, a puppetry act that had been kicking around the Edinburgh/Glasgow scene for a number of years now. She is good, but I am always disappointed to see that

her performance has not evolved over the years. Following this are a number of acrobatic acts – performers from fringe shows looking to earn an extra penny on the side. Good, but again – not very original. And on it goes… It seems that another possible downfall of the Bongo club cabaret was it’s inability to feel like a ‘night out’ – something that I have come to expect of all that I have researched in the past months, and indeed one of the main aspects which generally differentiates cabarets from straight theatre. When I had previously visited this night, the format had been much more traditional with small, candle-lit tables and after the (slightly longer) show we danced to swing music for a good hour before leaving. This time, however – and I assume this is due to festival time pressures – when the hour long show ended we, with a fresh round of drinks grasped in our hands, were asked to please leave as there was a club night starting in the same space 15 minutes later. Despite enjoying the evening I felt somewhat deserted by this Edinburgh institution that had kick-started my fascination with this subject (sigh).

22nd August, Amanda Palmer, Edinburgh I first saw Amanda Palmer in 2007, before I had ever heard of the Dresden Dolls. She was playing at the Forest Café, a community run bar and arts venue in Edinburgh, wearing her eight foot bride costume, and performing with just a keyboard. Already then her energy on stage excited me incredibly, the way she played with the audience, made them laugh and pulled everything back into place for more serious numbers. She was dark and gothic, yet extremely playful and entertaining. This gig was an extremely different event, but no less entertaining. In a sold out 1500 capacity venue, Palmer followed a full brass band through the crowd and onto the stage after a support act of naked dance company Zen Zen Zo. She has a similar relationship with her audience as Camille O’Sullivan, another favourite chanteuse in Edinburgh at this time of year. Flirting and chatting familiarly to the crowd she has an incredible command of the stage which, I believe, comes from a confidence in her material which ranges wildly from Dresden Dolls classics to new material which has an almost operatic style to it.

I must say I did expect both more and less from Palmer. I was thinking big visuals, a set, epic costumes etc; but what we got was something much more intimate and – I believe – all the better for it. Palmer, who describes her work as “Brechtian Punk Cabaret” (completely accurate, I think) has such a presence on stage that she needs almost nothing more than herself and her piano. I have such respect for performers like this, who have broken out of the sweaty little cabaret venues and decided to take their act to a more mainstream audience. Sure, it is not for everyone, but I think it takes a certain skill and vigour to break through that barrier. To say, “Actually, I want to be famous – I want to reach a lot of people with this”. Amanda Palmer is just one example of an artist who has achieved this, and seems to have lots none of her integrity in doing so.

Copenhagen is great – it is modern and old fashioned in just the right measures. Everyone I met there was excited about the arts, and motivated about what is going on in the world (perhaps the reason that the climate change conference has since been held here). However, they also all get around on bicycles. I could live here, I think, as the train pulls in. We stay with some old friends of my parents, Pete and Nina, who form the Cabaret-theatre company ‘Livingstone’s Kabinet’. They are the main reason we are here, after spending a week travelling around Denmark with my housemate Billie, visiting her family. It is wonderful, after so many difficult interviews and big cities where we don’t know anyone, to be welcomed into a home, cooked dinner and then to have a conversation all night about Cabaret. A perfect last stop on this train. (I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey)

13th September, Interview with Livingstone’s Kabinet, Copenhagen Livingstone’s Kabinet is the name of the partnership of Danish actor and musician Nina Kareis, and Scottish composer Pete Livingstone. Together, they form this unusual cabaret act that has routes in music and fine art as well as a strong background in traditional theatre. It is from this mix of influences that they draw their unique style, usually creating entire works of theatre in a cabaret format rather than a simple variety act. I interviewed the duo in their home in Copenhagen about how they work to create their cabaret, and to watch a recording of their latest show, the highly acclaimed ‘Babble Babble’, a Dada influenced look at religion and it’s place within modern society. “The term ‘Gesantkunstwerk’ is very important to us” says Kareis. “It means, literally – together-art-work, and was a term first coined by German composer Wagner. The company use this term to refer to their practise of giving all aspects of their performance equal status. “We listen to the set designer’s opinion almost as much as the director’s” states Pete, “this way we get the input of as many people as possible before the public actually see the show”. By having gained more perspectives they feel they can

better gauge the way an audience will respond to it, and try to make it accessible for a larger audience. Babble Babble begins with a poem by Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, which recurs throughout the play, much like the theme of the clown in Soap. I do not wish to return to Soap so much within this article, as the two shows are not at all similar really. However, they do of course share the nature that they are both works within the cabaret format that, tired of the bitty nature of variety performance, are embarking upon full blown theatre pieces which take on a cabaret style. Livingstone’s Kabinet, unlike Soap, which uses a cast of highly skilled acrobatic performers, tends to use people who aren’t actors or often even performers in any way. For Babble Babble the cast consisted of two dancers, Pete, Nina, and three men who form the ‘Huhahu male voice choir’, a fictional group that only exists within Livingstone’s Kabinet shows. “People phone up and try to book them for weddings, and we have to tell them they don’t have any repertoire apart from what they do in our shows! None of them are very talented performers really”, apparently it is all down to the arranging. The pair argues that they like the human aspect that is brought to the stage by people who aren’t trained to be there, they say it feels more real, more exciting and raw. It’s something the audience can relate to; that ‘I could do that’ element that you don’t get with a trained actor.

A Note on Couchsurfing Whilst travelling as part of the Peter Kirk Scholarship, I decided to save some money and meet new people by partaking in the couchsurfing project. Couchsurfing.org is a large community (with over 1 million members) of people both offering and looking for places to stay whilst travelling. It works much like ebay, with users leaving feedback of a positive or negative experience on each other’s profiles. Through the project we had many experiences that I do not think we would have had otherwise. For example, en route to Krakow we were invited to a party in the Polish lakes with Natalia, a couchsurfer who’s sofa we asked to stay on in Poznan. I feel that this experience and others, although not related to my research subject, allowed me to gain a much greater understanding of the people and places we were visiting. I do not know if I would be so keen to couchsurf alone, and was glad that I had Philip with me. Although largely safe, I feel that as a single woman I wouldn’t be so trusting of people. It is, of course, also nice to occasionally have a hostel or apartment to stay in, and we did spend some time in this type of accommodation; where you can shower without asking, and come home as late as you like! Nevertheless, I would definitely recommend Couchsurfing to anyone wishing to travel not just as a tourist, but as an opportunity to discover new places and people. Also, the huge amount of money one saves is definitely worth the occasional discomfort of a lumpy sofa

Conclusion At the very beginning of this project, indeed in my original application, I stated that I wanted to make a performance at the end of this, and to perform it at a venue in one of the countries I visit (this was latterly going to be in Copenhagen, the last stop on my travels). I had a lot of ideas for this work, but sadly it never actually happened. As the date loomed I began to fret about the idea of having to have a full piece of work to present at a yet unknown venue in a new city… I got stressed, I couldn’t find decent rehearsal spaces during the Edinburgh Fringe and eventually I decided not to perform at this point. However, upon making this decision I vowed that the next piece of theatre I made at Dartington would contain a strong element of cabaret, and that I would use my research conducted this summer to influence and shape my work. This, I am delighted to say, has been an incredibly successful project and Isabella (pictured left) premiered at Dartington College of Arts at the beginning of February 2010. It followed the tale of 85 year old Isabella Purves who died in her Edinburgh flat in 2004, and who’s body lay undiscovered for five years before police broke the door down in the summer of 2009 (when I was conducting my research).

In making the piece we decided that by using cabaret we could play with our audience – making a piece that felt very light and fun, despite its gloomy core. For me I think this is something that much of the cabaret I have seen has achieved, a certain mood that can change or emphasise a story, a political situation, a disaster, a place. In our telling of the story we took the idea that Isabella, a retired midwife, had always wanted to be a cabaret singer. She began with a song, we had a three-piece band on stage, and the passing of five years was told in an incredibly silly Charleston. Being a student of theatre I am constantly looking for new ways to make a performance; for new styles and methods of storytelling. I want to be able to get to the heart of things and find out what makes them tick. I think, now, that this is essentially what fascinates me about cabaret. It breeds such a fundamental connection to the audience that most other types of performance don’t even come close to achieving. Its unashamed entertainment value is what makes it so successful, and what allows it to convey so much.