The Cupertino Courier

Education

Life is a cabaret for musical starring three high schools

Budget constraints prevent single-school productions

By ANNE WARD ERNST

For three years, the students in teacher Tim Shannon's advanced drama class have selected a theme for that year's theatrical productions. Two years ago the theme was war. Last year, they tackled productions that dealt with reality and illusion. This year, they embraced the provocative theme of prejudice and tolerance.

The third in this year's series is the Broadway musical Cabaret at Fremont High School theater, running May 4-6. The production is open to the public.

Cabaret is set in 1931, pre-World War II Germany, in the seedy Kit Kat Club in Berlin. Based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and John Van Druten's I Am a Camera, the story follows the romance of an American writer, Cliff Bradshaw, and a cabaret performer, Sally Bowles, who recognize that the political turmoil around them is more powerful than their love for one another.

To help students understand the time period in which the story is set, Shannon invited the grandmother of one Fremont senior to speak to the cast about her husband's experiences in Nazi Germany.

"We wanted to make sure the cast of the play was aware of the political atmosphere at the time," Shannon says. "Her husband was a German Jew who escaped. She came in and gave a little background information on what was going on in Germany at the time and why the German people were willing to follow Hitler at the time."

Though the man was not in a concentration camp, his family wound up in a camp in France, from which he was able to get most of them out of at the end of the war, Shannon says.

Cabaret will conclude this year's theme of prejudice and tolerance, which kicked off in the fall with the production of To Kill a Mockingbird. The production tells the story of racial prejudice in the South, where a white lawyer defends a black man accused of assaulting a white woman.

In March, the drama department took on the modern-day tragedy of the murder of Matthew Shepard in The Laramie Project. The true story takes place in 1998 in Laramie, Wyo., where an openly gay college student, Shepard, is kidnapped, beaten, left tied to a fence and later dies in a hospital.

Shannon says the group of students who first began selecting themes at the beginning of the school year will graduate in June. He hopes the students who follow will carry on the tradition.

Budget crunches cut the correlation of the arts program, but it was later allowed back as an extracurricular after-school enrichment program. Students receive school credit for participating.

Budget constraints prevent local high schools from affording solo productions of musicals, Shannon says, so for the past five years Fremont and Homestead combined resources, and Monta Vista joined the mix last year. Students and teachers from all three schools collaborate on responsibilities, including directing, dance and music.

From Fremont High School, performers in Cabaret include senior Chris Wollman as the emcee, who sings, dances and acts. Junior Richard Portune stars as Cliff Bradshaw, the American writer who can't seem to get anything written.

Homestead High School students include junior Jessica Salans as British lounge singer Sally Bowles, juniors Ori Gold as Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit merchant, and Allison Irvine as Fraulein Schneider, the German owner of a run-down boarding house. Monta Vista High School senior Samantha Sanford will portray Fraulein Kost, a German prostitute living in Schneider's rooming house.

Fremont High School is located at 1279 Sunnyvale-Saratoga Road in Sunnyvale. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets are $7 with a student body card from any of the three high schools, and $8 general admission.