Courtesy photo.
Post-modern cabaret sensation performs evening-length program Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors: The Wild Women of the Weimar Republic
SUMMARY
- UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Meow Meow performing Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors: The Wild Women of the Weimar Republic
- Thurs, March 7 | 8 p.m. | Lobero Theatre
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- The acclaimed post-modern cabaret sensation will perform a wildly entertaining tribute to the women of the Weimar Republic.
- Very limited tickets remaining! $50 / $35 / $15 UCSB students (Current student ID required) (A Lobero facility fee will be added to each ticket price)
- Tickets & Info: www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu
“She’s part of a neo-cabaret scene that spikes nostalgia for bygone chanteuses with the danger and urgency of performance art.” The New Yorker
SANTA BARBARA – UCSB Arts & Lectures presents Meow Meow on Thursday, March 7 at 8 p.m. at Lobero Theatre. Named one of the Top Performers of the Year by The New Yorker, Meow Meow’s award-winning solo works have been curated by David Bowie, Pina Bausch, Mikhail Baryshnikov and numerous international arts festivals. Her new show is a wildly enjoyable tip-of-the-top-hat to the Weimar Republic’s notable “wild women” – both fictional and real – that channels the era’s urgent blend of art, entertainment and winking social commentary.
ABOUT MEOW MEOW
Post-post-modern diva Meow Meow has hypnotized, inspired and terrified audiences globally with unique creations and sell-out seasons from New York’s Lincoln Center and Berlin’s Bar Jeder Vernunft to London’s West End and the Sydney Opera House.
Named one of the top performers of the year by The New Yorker, the spectacular crowd-surfing tragi-comedienne has been called “sensational” (The Times, U.K.), a “diva of the highest order” (New York Post), “The Queen of Chanson” (Berliner Zeitung), and “a phenomenon” by the Australian press. Her award-winning solo works have been curated by David Bowie, Pina Bausch, Mikhail Baryshnikov and numerous international arts festivals.
As well as being a prolific original music, theater and dance-theater creator, Meow Meow specializes in the Weimar repertoire and French chanson. She has played Jenny in Weill’s Threepenny Opera in Paris and London with the London Philharmonic and Anna 1 and 2 in Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with Orchestra Victoria, as well as numerous Weimar works with Sydney Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Oregon Symphony, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Bergen Philharmonic. Meow Meow has performed Schoenberg Ensemble founder Reinbert de Leeuw’s homage to Schubert and Schumann, Wunderschön, throughout Australia and in the U.K. with the Hebrides Ensemble.
Highlights of recent seasons include concerts at Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco and performances of William Walton’s Façade and Seven Deadly Sins conducted by Vladimir Jurowski at the Berlin Konzerthaus; Miss Adelaide in a concert version of Guys and Dolls at London’s Royal Albert Hall; performances of Meow Meow’s Pandemoniumwith the Sydney Symphony at the Sydney Opera House in 2018; and an extended run of concerts at the Barbican with Barry Humphries and the Aurora Orchestra. That program, a highly acclaimed return season, resurrected lost and banned works from the Weimar period. Meow Meow and Humphries premiered this program with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in the major concert halls of Australia including the Sydney Opera House, and then toured it to Tanglewood Music Festival, London’s Cadogan Hall and the Edinburgh International Festival. Recent London appearances include her Pandemonium and More Pandemonium concerts at Royal Festival Hall with the London Philharmonic and a sell-out season of her Christmas creation Apocalypse Meow at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe in 2017.
Meow Meow had an opera written for her by Richard Mills and Victorian Opera, and has appeared on the West End in Kneehigh and Michel Legrand’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. She played Titania in Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe; Pegleg in Tom Waits’ musical fable The Black Rider with Victorian Opera and Malthouse Theatre, directed by Matt Lutton; and Edith Piaf in Cocteau’s Le bel indifferent, directed by Ted Huffman for the Greenwich Music Festival.
In the United States, Meow Meow was commissioned for David Bowie’s Highline Festival by director John Cameron Mitchell. Her piece An Audience with Meow Meow premiered at Berkeley Rep with direction by Emma Rice and was recreated for Boston Arts Emerson, directed by Leigh Silverman and designed by Andrea Lauer. Meow Meow has performed with Pink Martini at the Berlin Philharmonie, Royal Albert Hall, Opera Garnier Monte Carlo, the Hollywood Bowl and across Europe, Canada and the United States. She appears frequently in the Bard College Spiegeltent Summer series and has performed in concert with Alan Cumming at The Met Museum, and in Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music series. Meow Meow performed in the PIAF! Centenary Celebration Concert at Town Hall with the American Pops Orchestra, and toured the U.S. with punk cabaret outfit Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls. Meow Meow has guested with the La Clique, Club Swizzle, and La Soiree companies globally including at Sydney Opera House, London’s Roundhouse, and in New York City.
Meow Meow’s original works include Vamp, Beyond Glamour, Feline Intimate, Meow Meow’s Little Match Girl, Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid, His Master’s Choice, Apocalypse Meow and An Audience with Meow Meow. These shows have played from Edinburgh International Festival to Berkeley Rep, from the Southbank Centre to the Sydney Festival and Shakespeare’s Globe, and from Shanghai to Slovenia, garnering numerous awards including the Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, Green Room and Australian Helpmann Awards.
ABOUT UCSB ARTS & LECTURES
Founded in 1959, UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) is the largest and most influential arts and lectures organization between Los Angeles and San Francisco. A&L annually presents more than a hundred public events, from critically acclaimed concerts and dance performances by world-renowned artists to talks by groundbreaking authors and film series at UCSB and Santa Barbara-area venues. With a mission to “educate, entertain and inspire,” A&L also oversees an outreach program that brings visiting artists and speakers into local classrooms and other venues for master classes, open rehearsals, discussions and more, serving K-12 students, college students and the general public.
Meow Meow is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.
Special Thanks: Voice Magazine
Tickets are $50 / $35 / $15 UCSB students (Current student ID required) (A Lobero facility fee will be added to each ticket price)
For tickets or more information, call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535 or purchase online at www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu, or call the Lobero Theatre box office (805) 963-0761 or online at lobero.org
UCSB Arts & Lectures gratefully acknowledges our Community Partners the Natalie Orfalea Foundation & Lou Buglioli for their generous support of the 2023-2024 season.