Club Paradise

Welcome to Club Paradise, the cabaret of dreams! For pleasure or for pain we deliver ourselves up to the judgement of our audience! If there is no food for the body, there will be food for the soul…

Club Paradise is a politically charged multi-media cabaret that critiques propaganda in Nazi Germany. The town Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, became a film-set for a propaganda film in 1944, forcing the imprisoned to act out a blissful day-to-dayness, with the aim to deceive the world about the purportedly “humane” conditions in the camps. The ghetto also imprisoned many musicians, singers, and actors, who continued to perform each night, with a desire to keep their spirits alive. It was especially the darkly humorous form of cabaret that empowered prisoners to mock their situation and cruel captors.

Club Paradise is a collage of curious cabaret acts merging digital animations, camera projections, and archival footage with live music, poetry, and movement theatre. The performance has been devised in the style of 1920s Berlin cabaret in homage to the cabaret life at Terezin, with a deliciously dark gallows humour to challenge notions of oppression and control.

Team:
Chloe Allen, Emma Bourke, Harmony Locke, Lauren Clarke, Geraldine Gibbons, Lee Jones, Maria-Magdalena Mineva, Will Moore, Ashley Sharpe, Matthew Simmonds, Shane Webster, Jack Whiteley, Stanislovas Zilinskas;
Scenography and Stage Management – Ben Hughes;
Dramaturg – Ildikó Rippel;
Animations – Jared Newbery;
Former Ensemble Members – Sarah Ridgley, Rahel Kapsaski

Team Shenanigans Theatre (United Kingdom)