Why Do You Sing In a Cabaret?
June 19, 2025
By Craig Pomranz
“Why do you sing in a cabaret?” The question might sound simple, but upon deeper reflection, to sing in a cabaret is to perform on a threshold. It’s a way to explore freedom, identity, resistance, and the enduring power of performance.
Cabarets have always existed on the fringes of the mainstream, welcoming misfits, rebels, artists, the queer community, radicals, and visionaries. Historically, they have offered a space outside rigid norms where satire could flourish and forbidden truths could find their voice. When you sing in a cabaret, you’re not just entertaining; you’re participating in a tradition of subversion. You’re telling the world, “I exist, I feel, I defy convention.”
In Weimar-era Germany, for example, cabarets were havens for dissent and sexual liberation, serving as a veil over looming authoritarianism. Hello? Sound familiar? In times of oppression, cabaret wasn’t an escape—it was resistance dressed in masks, feathers, and sequins.
You sing in a cabaret because it’s one of the few places where a song isn’t just a song—it’s a story, a confession, a confrontation. Unlike the polished perfection of mainstream entertainment, cabaret welcomes the cracked voice, the trembling hand, the glance that says more than lyrics ever could. It’s raw. It’s real. To sing here is to admit that you’re human, vulnerable, flawed—and unafraid to show it.
Audiences are looking for truth, and cabaret gives permission to deliver it—melodically, dramatically, and sometimes humorously and authentically.
Cabaret is a dialogue with the audience. It collapses the wall between performer and spectator. You sing to people, not just at them. Eyes lock. Smiles exchange. Someone in the back laughs too loud, someone in front tears up. It’s intimate and immediate, a living dialogue in real time.
That is why you sing in a cabaret—for connection. For the moment when a lyric lands like a revelation and someone whispers, “That’s me.” For the shared hush that follows a whispered note, or the eruptive applause that erupts after a song that leaves no one untouched.
And yes, sometimes you sing in a cabaret simply because it’s fun, it’s absurd, it’s fabulous. It’s a lipstick-stained martini glass at midnight. It’s a refuge for the wild-hearted. It’s life exaggerated and distilled into spotlight and shadow. It’s an invitation—not just to witness life, but to live it fully, theatrically, and unapologetically. To sing in a cabaret is to stand in bright light and declare: “this is me—unfiltered, unscripted, unforgettable.”
So, why do you sing in a cabaret? Because you must. Because it calls. Because in a world that often demands silence, the cabaret hands you a microphone and says, “Sing.”
