 UC Berkeley's Bear Stage is an organization that encourages creative development through performing arts. It offers a platform for student actors, directors, writers, producers, technical designers and musicians of all experienced levels to practice and develop their craft in a student-supported environment. This semester, Bear Stage is putting on the musical cabaret. We spoke to members of the production for more information. So my name is Mitch Pastore. My pronouns are they, he, I'm directing cabaret. So I've been kind of in charge of like the artistic vision as well as the blocking. When asked about their interest in directing, Mitch highlighted their love of theater as an avenue for exploring other creative outlets. So I've been doing theater like my entire life. I love theater so much. Anyway I can be a part of it. I try to. I've always usually been a performer in recent years. I've tried costume designing and yeah, I recently got into directing class and now directing the show. But yeah, I think it's just a really amazing outlet to like express all of my love for theater and like all the creativity I have. I feel like it's like my baby. I'm like I've never been able to put on a show before with like everything I love. Like I can just make it exactly how I want it to be. CalTV also spoke to choreographer Cura Wafers about the process of developing movement behind the numbers. For each individual song, I've probably spent around 12 to 15 hours on each one. In terms of developing choreo, part of it is just you got to read the script like 10 million times and then like really understand the themes of the number that you're working with. The show is really dark and has a lot of like really complex themes and a lot of the numbers that I've had to work with actually deal with some like sensitive topics. And so going into those numbers really paying attention to like working with care and like leading with compassion. And then in terms of like making choreo, very often I just listen to the song over and over and over again and I just start moving. I will be in like a little practice room or whatever and I will just start moving and see what sticks. So many of the numbers in cabaret are really like iconically choreographed by Bob Fossey. So it's one of those things where like, okay, I'm not going to copy what he's doing in any sense of the word, but it would be impossible to do a production of cabaret without like at least kind of paying homage to what made the original so great. So there was a lot of like searching through Fossey source material and then just kind of like messing around, seeing what stuck and really trying to figure out how I could tell the individual stories of each number and figure out how to convey the like really important themes of each number through dance and movement. Skylar Davidson, managing artistic director for Bear Stage, give insight into her experience playing the MC in this production. I think like first of all, one of the really cool things about the MC at least through the vision that Mitch is trying to propagate is that they're sort of everybody and nobody in terms of their gender. I'm not even sure that they really have one because they're sort of just a metaphor for all of the characters in the show, but also I sort of have created like my own through line just within my own conception of the character as the MC. I think that one of my favorite parts is you know developing a character outside the bounds of like okay well here's Sally and Cliff and this is their plot line and my songs are supposed to like amplify like their struggles but I think coming up with ways to tell my own story like through portraying their narrative has been one of the most exciting parts and definitely like one of my favorite songs this thing is it's called I don't care much and it happens sort of the end of the second act and it is just a moment of absolute numbness and sort of I would even say like acceptance of sort of like the atrocities that are starting to occur because it does take place in the 1930s in a pre-holocaust pre-World War II environment so I also think developing yeah that through line within that historical context has been really interesting in terms of challenging aspects of this character I would say that it's emotionally a very draining show generally but I think like one of the great things about like being in a show is that when you enter the stage you sort of like put on a certain hat and when you leave a stage it's not that that experience goes away but you're sort of able to be like okay like and this is the present and this is what I've learned from this experience and this is what we can take with me like moving forward. I guess like I just think it's important for us to engage in history and I think that this is a really like accessible way to do that because it's theater and it's exciting and it's fun and yes we can explore those dark moments we also do it in a space that's like very welcoming and in strives to pull in people who maybe would be like more hesitant to engage in like the darker sides of like our ancestors. Skyler cites a few reasons she returns to the organization every semester. I would definitely say the sense of community and camaraderie all of my best friends are from bare stage my current roommate of two years is I met her like at auditions freshman fall and honestly I think that one of the coolest things about bare stage is that if you ask anybody most people aren't theater majors or dance majors they're usually like anything else and they just happen to really enjoy doing theater because I feel like one thing that we really do well as a pre-professional company is provide sort of an avenue for people who just really love the arts to come in and do their thing like in addition to all of these other passions that they may be exploring through like other academic avenues. To learn more about the organization and future productions go to ucchoral.berkeley.edu slash groups slash bare stage or follow at bare stage productions on instagram reporting for cal tv news i'm lindsay mongman