On a crisp Saturday morning in late February, Rachel Murdy joined a group of singers of various ages and experience levels at the 92nd Street Y and sang “Party Hat,” delivering the refrain “I’m going to put a party hat on my cat” with a playful spark.
Murdy, a seasoned 56-year-old performer and director, had brought along her 7-year-old Chihuahua, Bibi. “I’m not a cat person,” she noted. But she said she could relate to the lyric, which advocates tackling loneliness with giddy defiance.
Joe Iconis, the composter, lyricist and performer, who had been swaying enthusiastically throughout Murdy’s presentation, approved. “You’re so right on,” he said, as he would repeatedly when the participants, chosen from a pool who had submitted videos, performed. “It’s about a human being looking for a connection.”
The group had gathered for a cabaret performance workshop that aims to foster fresh talent in a classic art form that has long been pronounced dead, only to rise again and again. Each had prepared a song by Iconis, whose musicals include the Tony Award-nominated “Be More Chill” and “The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical,” set to arrive in Washington, D.C., in June.
“I’ll do anything I can to help light a fire, especially in young people,” Iconis said in an interview, “to show them you can have all those things that are exciting about pop singing and also learn how to interpret the lyric, and make the performance of a song a dramatic experience.”
Michael Kirk Lane, a performer and teaching artist who is the director of cabaret programs for 92NY School of Music, offered both buoyant encouragement and gentle, constructive criticism. “We don’t need all that movement,” he told Katie Lavelle, 31, whom he had coached previously. “Trust your own strength and stand in it.” When Treasure Nelson, 21, seemed unsure of what to do with her hands, he suggested, “Use them as you would in conversation.”
As Lane had explained while chatting before the session, “Cabaret is a lyric-driven art form; it’s a storytelling art form.” Like musical theater, it can involve inhabiting other characters, but it more frequently emphasizes personal expression. That’s something Lane and his collaborating artists — among them cabaret and Broadway veterans such as Faith Prince, Lillias White and Melissa Errico — have stressed in their master classes.
Prince kicked off the first weekend series with Lane in September 2023. She returned for a more intensive, weeklong summer conference last July — closer in length and design to the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s annual Cabaret & Performance Conference in Connecticut — including panels with other artists and industry insiders, and will offer a second this summer. Another Tony-winning musical theater star, Lindsay Mendez, is scheduled to join Lane for a weekend program in late September.
The professional-level classes, part of a variety of cabaret courses offered at 92NY, arose out of an interview Lane conducted with Prince for “Cabaret Conversations,” a virtual series that began during the Covid pandemic. “I woke up the next morning to a message from Faith,” Lane recalled. “She said, ‘Honey, we should teach together.’ Here’s someone I grew up listening to on cast recordings and adoring. I thought, ‘Don’t threaten me with a good time, Faith Prince.’”
Prince said her approach to teaching is motherly: “firm but loving and encouraging.” She added, “I say to the students, ‘I’m sittin’ on ya’ — and that’s a good thing, because sometimes they can be tapping into something deep within themselves, and I’m really going to ask them to go there.”
92NY isn’t the only institution or organization in New York providing instruction to cabaret aspirants. Since 2015, the Manhattan Association of Cabarets has held weekend symposiums every fall called MAC to School, which also include master classes and panels, along with workshops dealing with specific skills from scat singing and song improvisation to direction and costuming. The nonprofit Singnasium offers classes and workshops with prominent artists throughout the year, including what the artistic director Lennie Watts describes as summer boot camps.
“Our motto is ‘All singing, no drama,’” Watts quipped during an interview. “People become great friends and support each other and see shows together, and do shows together. Aside from the knowledge we’re imparting, the idea that we’re forming a community is the biggest win.”
The MAC to School producer Jennie Litt pointed out that last year the symposium, which does not require an audition, was available to association members for $90 and to nonmembers for $165, “shockingly affordable” prices for a “one-weekend crash course in cabaret, in which all aspects of the industry — artistic, business and technical — are addressed.”
92NY’s weekend workshops focus more on extensive interaction with Lane and the headlining name artists; the one with Iconis cost most participants $525, though auditors could attend for $100 or, if they signed up later, $150. The upcoming July conference, with Prince and other guests — last summer’s participants included longtime cabaret favorites like Natalie Douglas, Sidney Myer and Billy Stritch — costs $2,350 including an application fee, with weeklong and single-day auditing available for $850 and $200.
In January, 92NY announced that the American Songbook Association would begin sponsoring scholarships for students age 16 and up to take part in both the conference and its workshops; one singer in Iconis’s workshop was partially covered. “We’ve always given scholarships, but it’s been challenging because we give them to young students and adults who take classes at the School of Music,” said Yana Stotland, executive director of the School of Music and School Engagement in the Arts at 92NY.
Not everyone first learning about cabaret in these classes has been a youngster. Michael Capito, a participant in Iconis’s session who performs as Suitkace, is 40, and has been a surgical nurse at the Hospital for Special Surgery for 13 years. Growing up in Queens, immersed in hip-hop culture, he also loved show tunes, “but since nobody around me was into it, I got into breaking.” After an injury, his wife suggested voice lessons; Suitkace began studying with Lane and took part in the workshop with White; he has now performed twice at the Green Room 42, a venue for rising and established talent.
“I realized that everything I learned from breaking I could apply to cabaret — you just can’t spin on your head,” Suitkace said. “They gave me the foundation: exploring the lyrics, and then once you have a bunch of songs, figuring out how to put them together to tell a story. It’s the same with breaking; you have to learn how to string the moves together in a way that makes sense.”
Suitkace admitted, “I experienced impostor syndrome at first; I wasn’t sure I could fit into this world. But they create this really safe space where you can try whatever you want.” By the time he took the stage, “it’s in your bones. It’s completely you up there; you have that confidence, and you can apply it to the rest of your life.”
