For four nights this week, the Freud Playhouse will be transformed into a swanky jazz nightclub complete with smoky lights, small tables and vocal performances from an era past.
Students will be performing in “Lainie’s Cabaret at UCLA,” a production featuring classic American songs from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The performance is led by Lainie Kazan, a UCLA visiting associate professor and a well-known Broadway and television actress.
“Lainie’s Cabaret” will feature multiple separate solos, duets and group vocals as well as dance performances by undergraduate UCLA students in both the Department of Music and the School of Theater, Film and Television.
The cabaret show is the product of weeks of intensive rehearsal with Kazan. The students rehearsed every week this quarter, and for four hours daily for the last three weeks.
One of her techniques is a substitution method in which she tells performers to imagine they are singing to someone dear to them in order to get as much emotion out of their performances as possible.
“I teach them exercises to relax the body, relax the mind,” Kazan said. “When we actually get to the song, they’re prepared to let the songs flow out of them emotionally.”
Students use these techniques to help them create their own arrangements and bring their own point of view to their songs.
Third-year theater student Aliysa Shareef will be performing one such song, “Orange Colored Sky,” with her own arrangements, and a part of the ’40s tune “Since I Fell For You” in the cabaret. Shareef said working with Kazan has been a blast and helps her get in touch with her senses.
“When we’re singing a song, we have to be in the place,” Shareef said. “We have to imagine what it feels like, what it smells like, what’s surrounding you, who we’re talking to. Even though you’re on stage, you feel the weather, you feel everything surrounding you, it just takes you to another place.”
Kayla Parker, a third-year theater student, is also performing in the cabaret. She said she appreciates the opportunity “Lainie’s Cabaret” presents – she is able to bring her own interpretation to the songs through her original arrangements.
“(Lainie’s) very specific and very detailed and she brings that specificity out in each and every one of us,” Parker said. “It’s great because we all have different stories to tell, we all have different little flames that add to the song we’re singing. There’s a whole level of personalization that goes into this that I think is really special.”
Parker, who is performing the songs “From This Moment On” and “When the Sun Comes Out” in the production, said because of the individualization each performer brings to his or her piece, this cabaret is very different from previous years even if some songs have remained the same. However, Kazan said this year’s song choice is more sophisticated and mature.
This year’s performance also features three vocal performance students from the Department of Music, while in previous years only students in the School of Theater, Film and Television were included. The structure is also slightly different because it includes dance performances, an element introduced this year.
Parker and Shareef both said the costumes, lighting and sets for the cabaret are outstanding. Every female singer will be wearing an individualized black dress that Shareef said is customized to the performer’s personality and songs, red lipstick and a ’40s hairstyle. Every male singer will sport slicked-back hair and a suit.
“It’s like going to a classic night lounge,” Parker said. “(It will be) like they’re really stepping into another world.”
Shareef said that the costumes and sets were one of her favorite parts of the cabaret.
“The audience can expect an experience,” Shareef said. “The lights, the costumes, it’s all stunning.”