How Would You Do Scenes?

It doesn't have to be Cabaret. That's just the one I picked :)

Well, if I was directing a production of, say, Bright Lights, Big City, I would start it off as follows:

Jaimie is seen in silhouette at first. Then we see him in full light. Then we see the silhouettes of the main characters in the background lined up side by side. They move downstage. When they reach Jaimie, they are hit with spotlights that bathe them in silhouette. Tad sings, "Are we ready to roll?" The cast and the offstage ensemble responds, "Where are we rolling?" Tad sings, "Into the heart of the night!" The line breaks and everyone starts dancing. The ensemble enters. The rest of the nightclub appears around them.

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I'd have him/her slitting her throat because at this point Sally has made up her mind to kill the baby.

If she aborts the child, she'll kill her relationship with Cliff and ultimately her last chance of survival. And the Emcee knows this.

No. Never saw Sweeney. I've heard of it though.

Pantomiming slitting your throat is sort of a universal code for 'I'm dead'.

In the original play the Emcee did that when he introduced Sally. 'There's only one thing in the way of her and me... My wife!'

As he said 'my wife' he mimed it. It was funny.

After the line, "...my wife!" Did the Emcee gesture to slit Sally's throat or his own?

Either way, perhaps it was meant as an aside to the audience at the Kit Kat Klub that his wife would kill him (or Sally) if they were to sleep together. Whether or not the Emcee has a wife is never known, but irrelevent. It's the sort of slapstick, goofy humor that Joel Grey brought to the role of the Emcee that has been missing from recent productions of the show. I'm not commenting on whether that is good or bad. I'm just saying that to me, it seems a little early on in the show (after introducing Sally for the first time) to start alluding to or foreshadowing her abortion.

I say go for it, timote. It's not the way I would direct it, but theatre is open for interpretation by the masses.

"I'd have him/her slitting her throat because at this point Sally has made up her mind to kill the baby. If she aborts the child, she'll kill her relationship with Cliff and ultimately her last chance of survival. And the Emcee knows this."

"His own. And it wasn't meant to allude to the abortion."


So what are you saying?

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So in that scene the Emcee would be a figment of Sally's imagination?

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But enough about me. What about you? How would you do scenes? :)