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Speaker 1: Well, going of conversations everybody. The twenty twenty six Sateelaide Cabaret Festival kicks off in June and the newly appointed artistic director joins us today, ruben K, what on earth are they thinking?
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Speaker 2: I have no idea. I never thought this would happen. I never thought I would have a job with a title.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: You are renowned performer, there's no doubt about that. But when did the idea of actually being a convener of talent and bring it all together? When did that pop up?
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Speaker 2: It's actually sort of where I started, because when I first started performing as ruben Ka, as this entity, it was as a host in burlesque, in cabaret shows, and that was collating talent, making lineups. So in a way, I think I've been doing this all my life. I've just never found a way to get superannuation out of it until now.
00:00:48
Speaker 1: Well, who identified this talent, this talent of yours?
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Speaker 2: I think my parents in a way new because I was sort of fed a diet of Marx Brothers, Danny k like proper old vaudevillian stuff, and that's all episodic, it's all this act. Then we'll slop this thing in here will slop this thing, and it's all jigsaw puzzles. And as I grew up and started performing in burleigh shows and cabaret shows and making it all, it all just sort of organically happened.
00:01:19
Speaker 1: He adopted the stage name Kay. It was it a tribute to Danny Kay.
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Speaker 2: Or was it the fact that it absolutely was?
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Speaker 1: What he tell us about the you know what impressed you. You're too young really to have seen too much of him, Thank you so much when you are you're only forty on it, and he's sort of a baby boomers entertainer. I would have thought, yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker 2: I think my mum was really intent on raising a forty year old homosexual from birth. So she just fed me so much old cinema, including Danny Kay, who was this amazing entertainer. If anyone doesn't know worth looking up the secret life of Walter Mitty, the Court Jester and all of his variety show appearances, just delightful, witty, funny but not afraid to be a clam. The movie The Court Jester really took my eye as a kid growing up, and he does this amazing patter song about what it is to be an entertainer and it's meant to be set in I think medieval times. It's a robin hood story essentially, but it's being done like it was in the seventies. It's got Angela Lansby in a very first role. It's got Basil Rathbone and he just I don't know something about it sparked my interest as a kid, and so I've always had this love of Danny Kay. And when I started getting into the Spotlight, I thought, oh, my last name krum Kium isn't really that showbiz. I mean, it's German for ben or crooked, which is kind of perfect, but it didn't sing, so I thought I'll give it an adjustment. I also have some sort of separation between my personal life and my professional life.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: You have family history to me fascinating. I mean, mum and dad obviously had artistic talent. Can you tell us about your mum and dad? And then we're talking about your grandparents as well if you can.
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Speaker 2: Yes, sure, I've got family on one. My dad's family is Russian and my mom's family is German, and my mom's side or my dad's side, is a little more straightforward, nonetheless impressive, more straightforward. My grandmother and my grandfather. He was a real sort of es seat. He was an artistic guy. But they found themselves working in the labor camps building railroads for Stalin, and he was the quartermaster. And my grandmother was this six foot tall busty, really a brilliant, fantastic, charismatic woman. And she walked up to this short, polish guy. My grandfather went, I want to eat. You're the quartermaster. Marry me and we'll have a bigger room. They'll give us a bigger living quarter.
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Speaker 1: Really, that's the story.
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Speaker 2: And he went, I don't know you. I'm not going to marry you. Should fine, look at me, look at you. I'll find someone and then I'll marry you.
00:04:02
Speaker 1: It was like that.
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Speaker 2: That was as far as the way my dad tells it it was. And having never met my grandfather but grown up with my grandmother because my grandfather died before I was born, I absolutely believe that story. She was a real character. She was never without all of her jewelry on at once. She painted, she sang, she was deemed like a witch in her village to relieve curses off people, and she'd make her own cherry brandy, which could have been used as break fluid, just a fantastic woman, really brilliant, really full of life. And they left Russia, escaped post war Warsaw, which was like just a frontier town, and then moved to Paris, where my dad was born, and then came to Australia and settled in q And my mom's side of the family is a bit more it's a bit darker, but a little less, a bit more dramatic as well. My grandfather and my grandmother escaped Leipzig in the war and came to Australia on the Janeera Ships, which were two boats that took war refugees of Jews but also Nazi sympathizers. And one of those ships got sunk by a Japanese sub I think, and the one my grandgrandfather was on did not. And on that boat was also Merkamorra, who was an artist who changed the face of Melbourne's art scene, but also helmet Newton, the photographer. They landed the hit and my grandfather met my grandmother I think, into Tura, which is an internment camp all the refugees got sent to. As if coming from the war wasn't enough, you then have to go to an internment camp, and then they settled in Australia. But then when the when the war was over and communism took hold, they defected to East Berlin. They moved back to East Berlin. I think they're the only people who defected to East Berlin. And my mum was born in England on the passage over on the way over, and then my.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: Mom se many questions how did she get back to Australia.
00:06:09
Speaker 2: So my grandmother the marriage was crumbling, my grandmother and my grandfather, and she had had another child, She had a son, My mom had a brother called Helmut, and my grandmother Elfrida basically was so desperate to leave the marriage. We have the paperwork that suggests that she researched what it would take to take both children, one child and no children, and she took my mum and she left my uncle behind and she came to Australia and set up a dressmaking shop in Colin Street in what is now the Paris end of Colin Street and was a dressmaker and a coturier. But my grandfather put my uncle in an orphanage and checked up with his secretary, who had two kids of her own. So he just replaced his family and he ended up becoming quite high up in the diplomatic core and the Stazi in East Germany, and the Uncle Helmut ended up becoming a musical comedian, a clown, and eventually a bank robber.
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Speaker 1: In there's so many questions there.
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Speaker 2: It's such a crazy story. I did a whole show about it last year the year before about it.
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Speaker 1: Did you meet Uncle Helmut?
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Speaker 2: I met Helmut once when I was like a child, like a toddler, and my memory is just this amazing smiling mustache. But my mum said he was such a sad and damaged man. But when he played with kids, when he was with me, it was like, oh, he just he totally changed. He barely spoke any English, but he had all these magic tricks. And when he died, he killed himself in a bank heist in West Berlin. I don't know, we don't know the reasons why. But in my mind, I think there was an element of him that couldn't the idea of being in another prison like he was in the prison of East Berlin. He was in actual prison in East Berlin, and then the idea of being sent back and you are being confined anywhere. He was just like, I'm out, we.
00:08:12
Speaker 1: Need to take a break. You don't mind me pursuing them, because we will talk about the Cabaret Festival. There's no doubt about that. We are talking to Ruben Kay, who was the newly appointed artistic director of the Audelaide Cabaret Festival, who's got a family history that is as entertaining and as fascinating as any stage show. Back after the break, folks, my guest and conversation is Ruben Kay real name is Ruby Cron which is a really interesting story as well as if you just tuned in. Ruben was telling us about his family history, his grandparents and uncle and eventually how they his parents came to be in Australia. As you're growing up, Ruben, are you regarded with the stories of your family's history. Is it part of you or no?
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Speaker 2: I had to do a lot of digging and asking because I think when you hear these things from distance, they sound fantastical, fabulous, exciting, They feel semi fiction because of the distance. But I think for the people involved, for my parents, all this stuff is quite painful and maybe there's a bit of shame in it, and I think, as parents, you want to protect your kids, so I don't. They didn't really talk to me about this until until when my dad got sick and I really started to investigate my family history and want to know more. You know, there's nothing like a deadline or a timeline. A deadline make your Oh, oh, I think I've really I regret not knowing more about my family.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Your dead was a sculptor. That's an artistic pursuit. Is it a way of making a living these days? All those days?
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Speaker 2: No, my dad never really was able to make a living from it. And I think that's one of the reasons why when I said I want to be a performer, they balked. They were really trepidacious about it. They were scared. I remember one time I came off stage. Dad was always obsessed that I had a backup, that I had to have a backup, and I think one day I came off stage. He'd see me perform at the Hamburg State Opera and I came off stage and his first words were, you've still got bartending to go back to if this doesn't work out right, And I remember being so mad and so upset and feeling so misunderstood and the luxury of distance. I look back and go, No, that was just Dad wanting to make sure it was okay.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like that, though it's up and down, surely he would be able to, you know, every right to be concerned about his son.
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Speaker 2: Well, one, it's up and down, it's up down. But people make a living out of being on stage all day, and I guess as a kid, I was full of the I'm gonna make it, how dare you?
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Speaker 1: You know?
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Speaker 2: That thing of like. And I struggle with this now, where advice feels like criticism and care feels like criticism, especially for my parents.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: And your mum was a filmmaker. Yes, so who was the major breadwinner of the family.
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Speaker 2: Mum was the major breadwinner. Dad was more of a stay at home dad. He really enjoyed being a parent. Well I say that. I think what Dad really enjoyed was being able to be a kid with me and my brother, and that's what made him such a great parent. But it meant that my mum was the breadwinner and also had to be the disciplinarian, which I don't think is fair. And I think that's one of the reasons that the marriage fell apart, but to their credit, I think my mum and my dad said, look, we might have screwed up the marriage, but we're not going to screw up the parenting. And even through the divorce, they were amazing parents and maintained a friendship after the marriage.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: What age were you when the marriage broke up?
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Speaker 2: I think around about eight, like that thing of like not being old enough to comprehend what's happening, but knowing that something was drastically different and not really liking that at all.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Who did you live with?
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Speaker 2: We lived with Mum, We saw Dad, every had a custody arrangement every two weeks. We'd swap over for weekends and things like that.
00:12:08
Speaker 1: You were obviously a sensitive kid, sensitive talented, and I've read about how tough school was for you. But can you take us back to those days?
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Speaker 2: Sure? I think I was raised in this. You know, a kid who likes Danny Kay and musicals, It doesn't really fit in in nineteen ninety.
00:12:27
Speaker 1: I was up there. I love Danny Kay, and I think most about maybe because we're so much older, but we love Danny Kay as.
00:12:36
Speaker 2: In nineteen nineties kids they don't know who Danny Kay's who brothers are. And so I was getting pretty badly bullied through primary school and high school. It was really pretty shitty. I had to be sent to hospital to have my face stitched up a couple of times. But what compounded the offense, I think, was not just that I was this flamboyant kid and everyone's there bullying me, calling me gig all those things, but that I didn't shy away from it. That even though I didn't know what was happening at the time, I didn't realize that I was. I was yet to come out, you know what I mean. I didn't shy away from conflict, and whatever they called me, I could come back with wit, with comedy, and I could, really, this is the big sin, make the teacher laugh in the moment of that. And if you just call a kid gay and everyone goes, oh, yeah, you've got a power, You've that's a big that's a checkmate, and then this kid comes back with some witty retort that the room just gets flawed by and the teacher laughs at you. So I was already using humor and wit as an armor, as a defense mechanism throughout most of my schooling, and I think that was in many ways, like the rehearsal room.
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Speaker 1: There's always a teacher though, and just about everyone I speak to who's talent and done something, there's a teacher this, who's understanding? Who who empowers you? And did you have that or did you feel your fighting against the sis the whole time.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: I had one or two teachers when I was growing up who I think we were ahead of the game. They looked at me with we know what's going to happen here, we know what this is, and that's really invaluable. And I think in many ways some teachers were like the first idea of a safe space in my life, especially in the school system. But for the most part, my school had no concept of how to deal with a gay kid. I was the only gay kid in my entire school that was publicly visible even when I came out, and I came out at fourteen, because I was like, well, everyone's calling me this. Who cares? I'm getting beaten up every day? Who cares?
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Speaker 1: What were your parents saying about this?
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Speaker 2: Oh? They were trying everything. They knew what was going on. They were trying to talk to the school. The school essentially just said, well, Reuben you need to tone down your behavior because it was easier to localize the effort, I think, rather than deal with the everything. But also so if we had a career as advisor who was very visible lesbian, and the vice principal was saying to her, you can't bring any of that LGBT crap into the school. You can't tell kids there's any like they sent me to a chaplain. What's the chaplain going to say to me?
00:15:19
Speaker 1: What did he say?
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Speaker 2: He had no useful advice at all. He sort of skirted round issues because of course he has to view everything through his faith based lens, which isn't necessarily the most helpful thing it can be. But he was just well intentioned, but fundamentally ornamental as well.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, I think things are different now. What what is your advice now from where you can look down and observe and look back. What advice do you give a young person in similar predicable I kind.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Of think what I have to say is irrelevant because when I have gone into the schools, most school systems I now as an adult, I see such a drastic change in policy but also public attitudes, teachers, capability and understanding. But also student attitudes, and I look at it with a sense of pride, but also a little bit of resentment of what I had to go through for this to then get there, and perhaps a little bit of grief because I have to mourn the things that I never had, Like I couldn't go to my school formal because I got told I was going to be killed if I was going to go. So I missed out on all these little rituals, or some of them I didn't even pimom myself to have because I perceived the dangerous too great.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: As well, there is some delightful vision of you fully dressed in drag speaking to little kids. I think it's in England, and the perception that they have of this guy dressed in drag is interesting. What did you make of that?
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Speaker 2: I was really shocked at that we discussed what we're going to do in with Channel four, but honestly it was okay, Rock up. Here are the kids, the parents are watching, here are the cameras. I had a child psychologist in an earpiece here chatting to me, just because you have to be very careful when you're dealing with kids, of course, and the remit was for us specifically, we didn't want to raise any issues. We wanted them to ask questions. They had to lead, and I just had to respond to the questions. But I couldn't introduce new topics, which I was like, this is really interesting, really challenging, fantastic. Put them in the driver's seat, and these kids blew us away.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: So they're about to ten years old.
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Speaker 2: They were eight to ten years old, ironically, about the time when my parents were divorcing. I was interviewing these kids in this in the heels, in these tiny little chairs, in this classroom, and it was the first tie I'd been in, like a school classroom, I think in a very long time. And the kids were just as kids are. They were funny, and they were curious, and they were sometimes brutal. This one girl sactually thought my outfit was too much. I was like, this is the most minimalist thing.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Well, it was actually a bit much. We need to take a break. Ruben Kay is my guest, Folks, artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. We will talk about it, but aren't you finding his life so interesting? Back shortly, Welcome back to conversations, everybody, or if you just tuned in. We're chatting with Ruben Kay who's the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. His life, his early life is interesting, difficult, an amazing artistic family who had to grandparents had to escape from Europe post War One side of his grandparents went back actually, but eventually settled in Melbourne and raised in Melbourne. Difficult time as a child growing up, obviously coming out when he was gay at fourteen. But you survived school. When you leave school, what ambition is there?
00:18:57
Speaker 2: I think I walked into school knowing deep down that I was going to be a performer, and that gave me this little anarchy mindset, so wal to going, Oh, I don't really need anything that this place has to give me in terms of its marks. Any metric it has for success is not my metric for success, which is one of the things that kept me going through school and schooling or schooling. In fact, I was some advice from my mum which was school is just something you have to survive until you get out into the real world and meet real people. Everyone thinks that school is the center of your universe when you're in it, but when you're in the real world. No one gives a crap where you went to school, or what your marks were, or what subjects you did.
00:19:38
Speaker 1: Some people do yeah, but I'm with you, But some people do it.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: But can you imagine being a forty year old and asking someone where did you go to school? Oh my god, you don't want to be at a dinner party with those people. But I left school and everyone said, you've got to get into a course. I couldn't really be bothered applying anywhere.
00:20:01
Speaker 3: I got into a TAFE course, a certificate a diploma course in Tafe for Small Company and Community Management at Swinburn, which was this great generalist course about how to start a.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: Small theater company, and it gave you a little sample of each of the things like how to do a business plan, how to do your taxes, how to do lighting, how to do stage management, how to act tatusing, how to dance, how to make costumes, all of the things that you would need if you were going to start a small theater company started by some of the people who built the PRAM factory. I think it's a really great course, but I was just not ready to be in a scholastic environment again. And I wasn't interested in anything that I it wasn't my laser within my laser focus. So about six months in they said, look, you're fine, You're getting all the marks and stuff, but behavior wise it's not really working out. Would you we think you should probably leave.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: Was that you got expelled?
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Well, they tried and give me two weeks, and I pulled my bootstraps up and I kind.
00:21:02
Speaker 1: Of sort of disruptive behavior like talking about oh.
00:21:08
Speaker 2: Like just not showing up or falling asleep in class, or deliberately poking fun at things that I thought were stupid, very like infantile but nonetheless of music stuff. And then I shaped up and I gave them two weeks of really great behavior to prove that I could. And I went, oh, this is lovely. If you behave like this, you can stay. And I went, no, I'm going to leave, which is like such a petulant thing to do, but I was nineteen. And then I got into the VCA. I bummed around for six months, and then I got into the Victorian College of the Arts Musical theater program, graduated from that, went out into the world and started. We had a teacher in that course who said, you can't just be at the mercy of the audition. You have to have agency. You've got to be able to make your own work. And I really flourished in that module of making my and work and making a ten minute cabaret bit. And from then on it was the first time in a performing environment that I think I felt the same rush as spitting jokes back at people. It was like, oh, I'm in the audience, I'm in I'm in the ring as opposed to other theater for me sometimes feels a bit the fourth wall is neutering.
00:22:19
Speaker 1: So when are you a comedian? If I'm asked, what do you do? Yeah, I mean I'm part from now You're an artistic director, of course, But you know, in that time I.
00:22:30
Speaker 2: Don't even know if I'm an artistic director yet. The festival hasn't happened. I've always said everyone else is going to rush to define you, and people have always rushed to defind me. Even in primary school, high school, they tried to tell me who I was. So I don't even think about it anymore. I just let other people worry about the taxonomy.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: Is it important do you have to make people laugh?
00:22:51
Speaker 2: I think for me, I do yeah, I think I do. I've laughed as like an instinctive, an instinctive like joy, this reaction, it's shock, it's or it's love, it's revolution kind of you know.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: Well, it's part of the title of this year's Cabaret, but we'll get back to that. I read a quote you said, the best comedy comes from anger, and my favorite comedians are the ones who are angry about something. Well, I contemplated that center and I thought, well, I think the funniest guy in Adelaide's Matt Gilbertson. If you said I don't see any I don't see the anger in his performance.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: I think I think Matt. Matt's ability to sit in a room with people of real power and just skewer and twists like that. I mean, it's it doesn't have to be outward anger, right, I'm not saying you have to be angry. That has to be something that you want to change in the world, and you have to be stealing in that resolve, And I think Matt does that brilliantly.
00:23:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, he takes something out of everybody.
00:23:58
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It's about suddenly Matt equalizes the playing field. Everyone gets chopped down to their knees with Matt, but he does it lovingly. But that doesn't mean there's not I don't know a seed of a seed of like Okay, go on, how much can you take?
00:24:15
Speaker 1: Well, it's fair enough point when you put it like that. Anyway, your brother says you should move to London.
00:24:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't getting work. I couldn't get a gig for love of money. And Sam said, look, you're unemployed in Melbourne. You might as well be unemployed in London, were you. I loved it. I had a great time in London. I was there for ten years. I landed and pretty much landed straight into work and started working in musicals, and then I in a fallow period, I was working as a barton. I was living in a bus in Stepney Way that was pat outside a pub that my mates were squatting. And it just had a wooden floors, a mattress and one powerboard that was connected by an extension called over the outer window of the bus to the balcony to the pub, which at night time or any inclement weather I had to unplug and wrap in a towel so it didn't short circuit. It was just near Brick Lane, and it was forty quid a week and I had to padlock it off from the inside when I was in it because it was on the street and people would just bang on it and walk in. And it was great. And I was working as a butler in like the members clubs in Pall mau a butler. Yeah, full white gloves, gray morning suit, silver service.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Did you have to go to butler school to get a job like that?
00:25:33
Speaker 2: No? No, they make you think you do, but no, I was faking it. I was doing what I've done my whole career, which is bullshitting. And I was doing musicals on the side as well as the butlering. And then I saw a cabaret show and I realized there was this network of cabaret and burlesque. And I saw the host and the host just had to look good, sing song and talk shit, and I was like, I could do that. So I started looking at all the hosts who were working, and I looked at what was missing or where the gap was in the market. I was like, Okay, well, this person's got this part down, this person's got this style down, this person does this. What's missing? What am I? And then I slowly started to work and create the character.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: And what were you? What did you identify that you could be.
00:26:26
Speaker 2: I clocked that the trend was for dark and glamorous, right, everyone was dark and mysterious and or someone's beautiful and dark and aloof But no one was funny, uproarious, like energy energy. No one was anarchic. Everyone was trying to be cabaret sophisticated. And I'm like, well, that's not me. Inherently, I'm still this scrappy, weird kid who just loves old vaudeville routines, you know, and like still this and St Michelle shocked, you know, or marrying faithful. So I'm going to be that, and I'm gonna look fabulous but still be but still be rough as guts, and I'll be Australian and that'll have a point of difference. And I can I can sing, So I'm going to make sure every number I do is a barn storm instead of soft cabaret sophisticated cabaret numbers that are amusing, which have their role. I was going to make every song I sing is going to be a show stopper, but.
00:27:26
Speaker 1: You must have one what what What's what's the song. What's the song that never fails?
00:27:31
Speaker 2: Oh for me, it's Sailor Boys, Sailor Boys for I. It by Charles Asnibor, written for his daughter. But also I used to do this beautiful. I still do it sometimes, a beautiful cover of landdown Under because it's in a minor key. It sounds so mournful and beautiful when it's slowed down, so it doesn't matter if the piano player has got lead for fingers. Just about these playing that softly is gorgeous. And if they're a good pianist or a good musician, it's better. And the lyrics of that song are so gay, Land down Under, Land down Under. I met a man from Brussels, six foot four, full of muscles. He just smiled and gave me a veggie mate sandwich.
00:28:16
Speaker 1: When you put it like that, but there's a girl in it as well.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: There's a girl and she just smiled and gave me breakfast. It's so full of innuendo. If you just twist, twist.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: In the den and bombay what you doing there.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: Lying in a DENI bombay with a slack jaw.
00:28:34
Speaker 1: Not much, is my guest. We will talk about the festival back after Ruben k is my guest. He's the artistic director of the Outelaide Festival coming up in June, and there's a floor in the opening night, Ruben, I don't know whether you've recognized it.
00:28:55
Speaker 2: No, what is it?
00:28:57
Speaker 1: It's at Festival Theater, which the newly developed one which I can't wait to see. But it's the same night as the Crows are playing Geelong at Adelaide Oval.
00:29:06
Speaker 2: We know this for I'm devastated because I wanted to walk in being carried by some of the Adelaide Crows.
00:29:14
Speaker 1: But apart from that, they approach you to be the Adelaide artistic director with the Adelaide Festival, the artistic director, Well, how do they offer you the job? How does that happen?
00:29:25
Speaker 2: Oh, it's never an offer, is it. They call up and say, oh, could we have a conversation, which is such a lovely term. Would you be interested in having a conversation about this? And then of course my brain goes to right, I know the things I can do. I'm pretty confident that the things I can't do is all of the boring stuff of this job. Do I have the patients to sit in zoom meetings and teams meetings and phone calls, and do I have the patients to sit in boardrooms and discuss all of the logistics stuff. And I just sort of went, you know what, I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it pain of sitting through and connecting and waiting for people to join a teams meeting or a zoom meeting. It's worth it for what you get to create, because I actually.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: We had to wait for you to join this one.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: Yes, you've got me, You've got me. But then again, if you're going to try and get a cabret performer to be alive and cognizant at ten am, then you've you've created a rod for your own.
00:30:24
Speaker 1: Back anyway, So is it like a kid in a lolly shop?
00:30:27
Speaker 2: But a little bit. It is because you have the world at your disposal in terms of acts you can call. And I've been working internationally with cabaret artists of all different calibers, and so I was able to just go, oh, who who do I want?
00:30:45
Speaker 1: What's so they give I'm first tracking this, So they give you the job. Who's the first who's number one? Who's your first choice?
00:30:56
Speaker 2: My first choice? One of my first choices was actually David Mills. David Mills in this cabaret festival. He's an American comedian and singer who I have worked with in London, and I love him. He puts the world right on the razor's edge. He says things that you just got. Oh, I don't know if you're allowed to say that, but he does it with so much charm and grace, and then he just sings these gorgeous numbers and breaks your heart. I think the late night banquet room is a fantastic place to start actually for the festival, because for me, that's really where I started in the festival. I've been doing this festival as a performer almost since twenty fifteen, on and off, and the banquet room becomes this congregating space late night where you go in and it's a tasting platter of next week's festival and this week's festival, and everyone's getting up and just doing random fantastic bits. And I knew I wanted each weekend to have their identity. So Tina Dell, Twist, Jillian Cosgriff and Frankie McNair are three amazing performers who host those nights in their own crazy way Jillian Cosgriff has It's called There's Nothing Like a Game in which the audience is and coach to play outrageous games with her. One of them was a laser tag game to Liza Manelli's songs called Liza Manelli Just dumb, stupid good fun.
00:32:23
Speaker 1: Does that work laser tag?
00:32:26
Speaker 2: Oh you'd like to go and see? Absolutely have to go and see. And the best place if you don't feel like joining in, you don't have to sit down and watch the craziness erupt. Last year me and Virginia Gay were sprinting across the room with champagne glasses to tables like some sort of mad beep test from pe. Tina dot Twist is a faded a faded showbiz icon who's just at the stage of intoxication where she's about to either give the performance of her life or expire on stage. Each night in the banquet room is just pure cabaret and key and comedy gold.
00:33:02
Speaker 1: But of course there's individual acts.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean people like Natalie Gamsu with her show a voice like Trapnell. Natalie Gams has been working on stage in solo shows and musical theater for decades and just has this voice that I could cut through glass, but at the same time melt you like butter. And she's lived so many brilliant lives. Beastly Yovich is doing a full Nina Simone show where she's singing the great songs of Nina Simone.
00:33:33
Speaker 1: I saw that. I was interested in that because we had Lisa Simone fantastic last year. She wants to know, how how do you compare those two? Did you did you contemplate that?
00:33:48
Speaker 2: No? I well, I was on stage with with Lisa Simone at the Brisbane at Quepac at the Brisbane Concert Hall and Lisa would I have to come back to the Tabary Festival and you've done it. Baby, I'm sorry I can't have you back the second year. But Ursula, I'm a huge erthly Yeovich fan ersuly Yovich is just one of those amazing Australian artists who I don't understand why they're not a superstar. So they bring their Nina Simone show, her Nina Simon Show, which discusses and dissects some of the activism that is present in Nina Simone's life. Lisa's show is a beautiful delivery of Nina's music, but sort of done from a family lens, like she's her daughter. Here's Ursula sort of reinventing, reinterpreting, but also dissecting Nina's life from a slightly more objective angle. It's a I think we're very different offerings.
00:34:42
Speaker 1: It was a tough life in the end, I think when she obviously had almost had to escape to Liberia, basically vilified because of her activism. Hang on sounding like a no.
00:34:54
Speaker 2: No, that's the best part. We should celebrate, the celebrate the people who have the expertise.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: But we get a we get a bit more earthy because Sarah McLeod. We love Sarah McLeod. She's a rock chick, isn't she.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, she actually is. And also for me, cabaret is punk because cabaret is social commentary, music and storytelling and that's sort of the tenets of punk if you just add electric music and the Super Jesus is just an Australian gold standard band. Sarah is so talented. I think she's got bigger balls than most men out there, and we're really what can you say, It's Sarah MacLeod. It's Sarah McLeod, and I think alongside her is someone like Mahalia Barnes who is singing the soundtrack to The Rose, but also other Janics Joplin songs, another woman who has this amazing blend of rock, soul and gospel.
00:35:51
Speaker 1: Mahaley is Jimmy and Jane's daughter, definitely has that rock and roll spirit.
00:35:57
Speaker 2: And then she is also going to be performing in What's the Buzz, which is the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar, which never came to Adelaide. It came, No, it never came to Adelaide. We toured the whole country and we never came to Adelaide because the Festival Center was being renovated.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: Wasn't it the Memorial Drive?
00:36:16
Speaker 2: No, the production that we just did that just toured last year, last year, last year.
00:36:21
Speaker 1: I'm talking fifty years.
00:36:24
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't think I was in that production. I'm so sorry. I don't know how I skipped that. No, Mahalia Barnes and myself and Michael Painter and Javon King were in the production of Jesus Christ Superstar that toured to every city and was just a sellout five star smash hit. It never came to Adelaide, And I was really determined that Adelaide should get to see this show instead of having to travel to another city. So we're bringing that show. We're seeing all the hits of the show and talking about all the stories in gossip from backstage for one night in the festival.
00:37:01
Speaker 1: Was there anybody that you really wanted who couldn't do it or wouldn't do it?
00:37:05
Speaker 2: There are a couple of people who couldn't do it because of just scheduling, just sheddling. I really wanted Sasha Valua, who's this amazing artist from America. The wish list of who I wanted is almost as long as the list of icons who we got. But you know that's the part of programming a festival.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: You're renowned for your pushing the envelope.
00:37:32
Speaker 2: Well, you bite the hand of face, you just want to get a bit of lipstick on it.
00:37:37
Speaker 1: I understand that. Do you feel you have to tone down a little bit now you've got this prestigious position. Are you're still going to be pushing the envelope?
00:37:46
Speaker 2: No, I'm still going to be pushing the envelope. I think if you hire Rubin K, you hire Ruben K, there are some small bits where you go, well, I'm not a maniac. I can understand the difference between a festival gala and a and a show at the Metro or show at the Adelaide Fringe, you know. But at the same point, I'm not gonna be muzzled or anything. But also I don't think the Adelaide Cabaret Festival will be staying true to its values if it did want to muzzle the artistic director in any way. Part of cabarets being outspoken, saying the stuff we're all thinking. That's the art form. And to their credit, they haven't asked me to tone down. Did they celebrated?
00:38:28
Speaker 1: No, they did they want did want an outline of what you've had planned?
00:38:33
Speaker 2: Well, that's part the job that we have to know what you're doing. You can't just wing it. But when I said great, I want to have Popo Moco and Dylan Adler in, they were like, who are okay?
00:38:45
Speaker 1: Great?
00:38:46
Speaker 2: So Po Moco are a Melbourne a Melbourne comedy quartete of women who I don't know they're in a share. There could be something from New York eighties Downtown performing an arts scene, performance arts scene. They could be something from nineteen thirties Berlin, or they could be something from like. They're like Big Girls Blouse if you remember Big Girls Blouse, Gina. They're like their younger days when they were really like outrageous and punk and fun and they're just anarchy. So they're doing a full retrospective of their last ten years called Best Bits. Dylan Adler in a House of House of Dailand. Dylan Adler is an American Japanese Jewish gay ex gymnast classically trained pianist who toured the Bible Belt and this show is all about that journey.
00:39:38
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's going to be a great show, Reuben. It's titled Delicious Revolution.
00:39:45
Speaker 2: Yes, the festival is revolution because that's what Cabret is. Cabret is this seductive blend of revolution, but also you know hedonism, and especially South Australia it has such an amazing food and wine culture. You have to be able to make something. You have to give them something easy to swallow.
00:40:06
Speaker 1: So the biggest dilemma we have is whether we go to the opening of the festival on Dune the fourth or the Crows Geelong match at Adelaide Oval. Big choice. We know where you will be. Thank you so much for your time.
00:40:22
Speaker 2: It's an absolute pleasure.
00:40:23
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Ruben Kay, the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Thanks for joining us folks,
Speaker 1: Well, going of conversations everybody. The twenty twenty six Sateelaide Cabaret Festival kicks off in June and the newly appointed artistic director joins us today, ruben K, what on earth are they thinking?
00:00:12
Speaker 2: I have no idea. I never thought this would happen. I never thought I would have a job with a title.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: You are renowned performer, there's no doubt about that. But when did the idea of actually being a convener of talent and bring it all together? When did that pop up?
00:00:27
Speaker 2: It's actually sort of where I started, because when I first started performing as ruben Ka, as this entity, it was as a host in burlesque, in cabaret shows, and that was collating talent, making lineups. So in a way, I think I've been doing this all my life. I've just never found a way to get superannuation out of it until now.
00:00:48
Speaker 1: Well, who identified this talent, this talent of yours?
00:00:51
Speaker 2: I think my parents in a way new because I was sort of fed a diet of Marx Brothers, Danny k like proper old vaudevillian stuff, and that's all episodic, it's all this act. Then we'll slop this thing in here will slop this thing, and it's all jigsaw puzzles. And as I grew up and started performing in burleigh shows and cabaret shows and making it all, it all just sort of organically happened.
00:01:19
Speaker 1: He adopted the stage name Kay. It was it a tribute to Danny Kay.
00:01:24
Speaker 2: Or was it the fact that it absolutely was?
00:01:27
Speaker 1: What he tell us about the you know what impressed you. You're too young really to have seen too much of him, Thank you so much when you are you're only forty on it, and he's sort of a baby boomers entertainer. I would have thought, yeah.
00:01:42
Speaker 2: I think my mum was really intent on raising a forty year old homosexual from birth. So she just fed me so much old cinema, including Danny Kay, who was this amazing entertainer. If anyone doesn't know worth looking up the secret life of Walter Mitty, the Court Jester and all of his variety show appearances, just delightful, witty, funny but not afraid to be a clam. The movie The Court Jester really took my eye as a kid growing up, and he does this amazing patter song about what it is to be an entertainer and it's meant to be set in I think medieval times. It's a robin hood story essentially, but it's being done like it was in the seventies. It's got Angela Lansby in a very first role. It's got Basil Rathbone and he just I don't know something about it sparked my interest as a kid, and so I've always had this love of Danny Kay. And when I started getting into the Spotlight, I thought, oh, my last name krum Kium isn't really that showbiz. I mean, it's German for ben or crooked, which is kind of perfect, but it didn't sing, so I thought I'll give it an adjustment. I also have some sort of separation between my personal life and my professional life.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: You have family history to me fascinating. I mean, mum and dad obviously had artistic talent. Can you tell us about your mum and dad? And then we're talking about your grandparents as well if you can.
00:03:08
Speaker 2: Yes, sure, I've got family on one. My dad's family is Russian and my mom's family is German, and my mom's side or my dad's side, is a little more straightforward, nonetheless impressive, more straightforward. My grandmother and my grandfather. He was a real sort of es seat. He was an artistic guy. But they found themselves working in the labor camps building railroads for Stalin, and he was the quartermaster. And my grandmother was this six foot tall busty, really a brilliant, fantastic, charismatic woman. And she walked up to this short, polish guy. My grandfather went, I want to eat. You're the quartermaster. Marry me and we'll have a bigger room. They'll give us a bigger living quarter.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: Really, that's the story.
00:03:55
Speaker 2: And he went, I don't know you. I'm not going to marry you. Should fine, look at me, look at you. I'll find someone and then I'll marry you.
00:04:02
Speaker 1: It was like that.
00:04:03
Speaker 2: That was as far as the way my dad tells it it was. And having never met my grandfather but grown up with my grandmother because my grandfather died before I was born, I absolutely believe that story. She was a real character. She was never without all of her jewelry on at once. She painted, she sang, she was deemed like a witch in her village to relieve curses off people, and she'd make her own cherry brandy, which could have been used as break fluid, just a fantastic woman, really brilliant, really full of life. And they left Russia, escaped post war Warsaw, which was like just a frontier town, and then moved to Paris, where my dad was born, and then came to Australia and settled in q And my mom's side of the family is a bit more it's a bit darker, but a little less, a bit more dramatic as well. My grandfather and my grandmother escaped Leipzig in the war and came to Australia on the Janeera Ships, which were two boats that took war refugees of Jews but also Nazi sympathizers. And one of those ships got sunk by a Japanese sub I think, and the one my grandgrandfather was on did not. And on that boat was also Merkamorra, who was an artist who changed the face of Melbourne's art scene, but also helmet Newton, the photographer. They landed the hit and my grandfather met my grandmother I think, into Tura, which is an internment camp all the refugees got sent to. As if coming from the war wasn't enough, you then have to go to an internment camp, and then they settled in Australia. But then when the when the war was over and communism took hold, they defected to East Berlin. They moved back to East Berlin. I think they're the only people who defected to East Berlin. And my mum was born in England on the passage over on the way over, and then my.
00:06:05
Speaker 1: Mom se many questions how did she get back to Australia.
00:06:09
Speaker 2: So my grandmother the marriage was crumbling, my grandmother and my grandfather, and she had had another child, She had a son, My mom had a brother called Helmut, and my grandmother Elfrida basically was so desperate to leave the marriage. We have the paperwork that suggests that she researched what it would take to take both children, one child and no children, and she took my mum and she left my uncle behind and she came to Australia and set up a dressmaking shop in Colin Street in what is now the Paris end of Colin Street and was a dressmaker and a coturier. But my grandfather put my uncle in an orphanage and checked up with his secretary, who had two kids of her own. So he just replaced his family and he ended up becoming quite high up in the diplomatic core and the Stazi in East Germany, and the Uncle Helmut ended up becoming a musical comedian, a clown, and eventually a bank robber.
00:07:12
Speaker 1: In there's so many questions there.
00:07:16
Speaker 2: It's such a crazy story. I did a whole show about it last year the year before about it.
00:07:23
Speaker 1: Did you meet Uncle Helmut?
00:07:25
Speaker 2: I met Helmut once when I was like a child, like a toddler, and my memory is just this amazing smiling mustache. But my mum said he was such a sad and damaged man. But when he played with kids, when he was with me, it was like, oh, he just he totally changed. He barely spoke any English, but he had all these magic tricks. And when he died, he killed himself in a bank heist in West Berlin. I don't know, we don't know the reasons why. But in my mind, I think there was an element of him that couldn't the idea of being in another prison like he was in the prison of East Berlin. He was in actual prison in East Berlin, and then the idea of being sent back and you are being confined anywhere. He was just like, I'm out, we.
00:08:12
Speaker 1: Need to take a break. You don't mind me pursuing them, because we will talk about the Cabaret Festival. There's no doubt about that. We are talking to Ruben Kay, who was the newly appointed artistic director of the Audelaide Cabaret Festival, who's got a family history that is as entertaining and as fascinating as any stage show. Back after the break, folks, my guest and conversation is Ruben Kay real name is Ruby Cron which is a really interesting story as well as if you just tuned in. Ruben was telling us about his family history, his grandparents and uncle and eventually how they his parents came to be in Australia. As you're growing up, Ruben, are you regarded with the stories of your family's history. Is it part of you or no?
00:08:57
Speaker 2: I had to do a lot of digging and asking because I think when you hear these things from distance, they sound fantastical, fabulous, exciting, They feel semi fiction because of the distance. But I think for the people involved, for my parents, all this stuff is quite painful and maybe there's a bit of shame in it, and I think, as parents, you want to protect your kids, so I don't. They didn't really talk to me about this until until when my dad got sick and I really started to investigate my family history and want to know more. You know, there's nothing like a deadline or a timeline. A deadline make your Oh, oh, I think I've really I regret not knowing more about my family.
00:09:40
Speaker 1: Your dead was a sculptor. That's an artistic pursuit. Is it a way of making a living these days? All those days?
00:09:48
Speaker 2: No, my dad never really was able to make a living from it. And I think that's one of the reasons why when I said I want to be a performer, they balked. They were really trepidacious about it. They were scared. I remember one time I came off stage. Dad was always obsessed that I had a backup, that I had to have a backup, and I think one day I came off stage. He'd see me perform at the Hamburg State Opera and I came off stage and his first words were, you've still got bartending to go back to if this doesn't work out right, And I remember being so mad and so upset and feeling so misunderstood and the luxury of distance. I look back and go, No, that was just Dad wanting to make sure it was okay.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like that, though it's up and down, surely he would be able to, you know, every right to be concerned about his son.
00:10:39
Speaker 2: Well, one, it's up and down, it's up down. But people make a living out of being on stage all day, and I guess as a kid, I was full of the I'm gonna make it, how dare you?
00:10:50
Speaker 1: You know?
00:10:50
Speaker 2: That thing of like. And I struggle with this now, where advice feels like criticism and care feels like criticism, especially for my parents.
00:10:58
Speaker 1: And your mum was a filmmaker. Yes, so who was the major breadwinner of the family.
00:11:05
Speaker 2: Mum was the major breadwinner. Dad was more of a stay at home dad. He really enjoyed being a parent. Well I say that. I think what Dad really enjoyed was being able to be a kid with me and my brother, and that's what made him such a great parent. But it meant that my mum was the breadwinner and also had to be the disciplinarian, which I don't think is fair. And I think that's one of the reasons that the marriage fell apart, but to their credit, I think my mum and my dad said, look, we might have screwed up the marriage, but we're not going to screw up the parenting. And even through the divorce, they were amazing parents and maintained a friendship after the marriage.
00:11:45
Speaker 1: What age were you when the marriage broke up?
00:11:48
Speaker 2: I think around about eight, like that thing of like not being old enough to comprehend what's happening, but knowing that something was drastically different and not really liking that at all.
00:12:00
Speaker 1: Who did you live with?
00:12:01
Speaker 2: We lived with Mum, We saw Dad, every had a custody arrangement every two weeks. We'd swap over for weekends and things like that.
00:12:08
Speaker 1: You were obviously a sensitive kid, sensitive talented, and I've read about how tough school was for you. But can you take us back to those days?
00:12:19
Speaker 2: Sure? I think I was raised in this. You know, a kid who likes Danny Kay and musicals, It doesn't really fit in in nineteen ninety.
00:12:27
Speaker 1: I was up there. I love Danny Kay, and I think most about maybe because we're so much older, but we love Danny Kay as.
00:12:36
Speaker 2: In nineteen nineties kids they don't know who Danny Kay's who brothers are. And so I was getting pretty badly bullied through primary school and high school. It was really pretty shitty. I had to be sent to hospital to have my face stitched up a couple of times. But what compounded the offense, I think, was not just that I was this flamboyant kid and everyone's there bullying me, calling me gig all those things, but that I didn't shy away from it. That even though I didn't know what was happening at the time, I didn't realize that I was. I was yet to come out, you know what I mean. I didn't shy away from conflict, and whatever they called me, I could come back with wit, with comedy, and I could, really, this is the big sin, make the teacher laugh in the moment of that. And if you just call a kid gay and everyone goes, oh, yeah, you've got a power, You've that's a big that's a checkmate, and then this kid comes back with some witty retort that the room just gets flawed by and the teacher laughs at you. So I was already using humor and wit as an armor, as a defense mechanism throughout most of my schooling, and I think that was in many ways, like the rehearsal room.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: There's always a teacher though, and just about everyone I speak to who's talent and done something, there's a teacher this, who's understanding? Who who empowers you? And did you have that or did you feel your fighting against the sis the whole time.
00:14:02
Speaker 2: I had one or two teachers when I was growing up who I think we were ahead of the game. They looked at me with we know what's going to happen here, we know what this is, and that's really invaluable. And I think in many ways some teachers were like the first idea of a safe space in my life, especially in the school system. But for the most part, my school had no concept of how to deal with a gay kid. I was the only gay kid in my entire school that was publicly visible even when I came out, and I came out at fourteen, because I was like, well, everyone's calling me this. Who cares? I'm getting beaten up every day? Who cares?
00:14:41
Speaker 1: What were your parents saying about this?
00:14:44
Speaker 2: Oh? They were trying everything. They knew what was going on. They were trying to talk to the school. The school essentially just said, well, Reuben you need to tone down your behavior because it was easier to localize the effort, I think, rather than deal with the everything. But also so if we had a career as advisor who was very visible lesbian, and the vice principal was saying to her, you can't bring any of that LGBT crap into the school. You can't tell kids there's any like they sent me to a chaplain. What's the chaplain going to say to me?
00:15:19
Speaker 1: What did he say?
00:15:20
Speaker 2: He had no useful advice at all. He sort of skirted round issues because of course he has to view everything through his faith based lens, which isn't necessarily the most helpful thing it can be. But he was just well intentioned, but fundamentally ornamental as well.
00:15:38
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, I think things are different now. What what is your advice now from where you can look down and observe and look back. What advice do you give a young person in similar predicable I kind.
00:15:53
Speaker 2: Of think what I have to say is irrelevant because when I have gone into the schools, most school systems I now as an adult, I see such a drastic change in policy but also public attitudes, teachers, capability and understanding. But also student attitudes, and I look at it with a sense of pride, but also a little bit of resentment of what I had to go through for this to then get there, and perhaps a little bit of grief because I have to mourn the things that I never had, Like I couldn't go to my school formal because I got told I was going to be killed if I was going to go. So I missed out on all these little rituals, or some of them I didn't even pimom myself to have because I perceived the dangerous too great.
00:16:37
Speaker 1: As well, there is some delightful vision of you fully dressed in drag speaking to little kids. I think it's in England, and the perception that they have of this guy dressed in drag is interesting. What did you make of that?
00:16:55
Speaker 2: I was really shocked at that we discussed what we're going to do in with Channel four, but honestly it was okay, Rock up. Here are the kids, the parents are watching, here are the cameras. I had a child psychologist in an earpiece here chatting to me, just because you have to be very careful when you're dealing with kids, of course, and the remit was for us specifically, we didn't want to raise any issues. We wanted them to ask questions. They had to lead, and I just had to respond to the questions. But I couldn't introduce new topics, which I was like, this is really interesting, really challenging, fantastic. Put them in the driver's seat, and these kids blew us away.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: So they're about to ten years old.
00:17:42
Speaker 2: They were eight to ten years old, ironically, about the time when my parents were divorcing. I was interviewing these kids in this in the heels, in these tiny little chairs, in this classroom, and it was the first tie I'd been in, like a school classroom, I think in a very long time. And the kids were just as kids are. They were funny, and they were curious, and they were sometimes brutal. This one girl sactually thought my outfit was too much. I was like, this is the most minimalist thing.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: Well, it was actually a bit much. We need to take a break. Ruben Kay is my guest, Folks, artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. We will talk about it, but aren't you finding his life so interesting? Back shortly, Welcome back to conversations, everybody, or if you just tuned in. We're chatting with Ruben Kay who's the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. His life, his early life is interesting, difficult, an amazing artistic family who had to grandparents had to escape from Europe post War One side of his grandparents went back actually, but eventually settled in Melbourne and raised in Melbourne. Difficult time as a child growing up, obviously coming out when he was gay at fourteen. But you survived school. When you leave school, what ambition is there?
00:18:57
Speaker 2: I think I walked into school knowing deep down that I was going to be a performer, and that gave me this little anarchy mindset, so wal to going, Oh, I don't really need anything that this place has to give me in terms of its marks. Any metric it has for success is not my metric for success, which is one of the things that kept me going through school and schooling or schooling. In fact, I was some advice from my mum which was school is just something you have to survive until you get out into the real world and meet real people. Everyone thinks that school is the center of your universe when you're in it, but when you're in the real world. No one gives a crap where you went to school, or what your marks were, or what subjects you did.
00:19:38
Speaker 1: Some people do yeah, but I'm with you, But some people do it.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: But can you imagine being a forty year old and asking someone where did you go to school? Oh my god, you don't want to be at a dinner party with those people. But I left school and everyone said, you've got to get into a course. I couldn't really be bothered applying anywhere.
00:20:01
Speaker 3: I got into a TAFE course, a certificate a diploma course in Tafe for Small Company and Community Management at Swinburn, which was this great generalist course about how to start a.
00:20:12
Speaker 2: Small theater company, and it gave you a little sample of each of the things like how to do a business plan, how to do your taxes, how to do lighting, how to do stage management, how to act tatusing, how to dance, how to make costumes, all of the things that you would need if you were going to start a small theater company started by some of the people who built the PRAM factory. I think it's a really great course, but I was just not ready to be in a scholastic environment again. And I wasn't interested in anything that I it wasn't my laser within my laser focus. So about six months in they said, look, you're fine, You're getting all the marks and stuff, but behavior wise it's not really working out. Would you we think you should probably leave.
00:20:56
Speaker 1: Was that you got expelled?
00:20:58
Speaker 2: Well, they tried and give me two weeks, and I pulled my bootstraps up and I kind.
00:21:02
Speaker 1: Of sort of disruptive behavior like talking about oh.
00:21:08
Speaker 2: Like just not showing up or falling asleep in class, or deliberately poking fun at things that I thought were stupid, very like infantile but nonetheless of music stuff. And then I shaped up and I gave them two weeks of really great behavior to prove that I could. And I went, oh, this is lovely. If you behave like this, you can stay. And I went, no, I'm going to leave, which is like such a petulant thing to do, but I was nineteen. And then I got into the VCA. I bummed around for six months, and then I got into the Victorian College of the Arts Musical theater program, graduated from that, went out into the world and started. We had a teacher in that course who said, you can't just be at the mercy of the audition. You have to have agency. You've got to be able to make your own work. And I really flourished in that module of making my and work and making a ten minute cabaret bit. And from then on it was the first time in a performing environment that I think I felt the same rush as spitting jokes back at people. It was like, oh, I'm in the audience, I'm in I'm in the ring as opposed to other theater for me sometimes feels a bit the fourth wall is neutering.
00:22:19
Speaker 1: So when are you a comedian? If I'm asked, what do you do? Yeah, I mean I'm part from now You're an artistic director, of course, But you know, in that time I.
00:22:30
Speaker 2: Don't even know if I'm an artistic director yet. The festival hasn't happened. I've always said everyone else is going to rush to define you, and people have always rushed to defind me. Even in primary school, high school, they tried to tell me who I was. So I don't even think about it anymore. I just let other people worry about the taxonomy.
00:22:47
Speaker 1: Is it important do you have to make people laugh?
00:22:51
Speaker 2: I think for me, I do yeah, I think I do. I've laughed as like an instinctive, an instinctive like joy, this reaction, it's shock, it's or it's love, it's revolution kind of you know.
00:23:07
Speaker 1: Well, it's part of the title of this year's Cabaret, but we'll get back to that. I read a quote you said, the best comedy comes from anger, and my favorite comedians are the ones who are angry about something. Well, I contemplated that center and I thought, well, I think the funniest guy in Adelaide's Matt Gilbertson. If you said I don't see any I don't see the anger in his performance.
00:23:32
Speaker 2: I think I think Matt. Matt's ability to sit in a room with people of real power and just skewer and twists like that. I mean, it's it doesn't have to be outward anger, right, I'm not saying you have to be angry. That has to be something that you want to change in the world, and you have to be stealing in that resolve, And I think Matt does that brilliantly.
00:23:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, he takes something out of everybody.
00:23:58
Speaker 2: Absolutely. It's about suddenly Matt equalizes the playing field. Everyone gets chopped down to their knees with Matt, but he does it lovingly. But that doesn't mean there's not I don't know a seed of a seed of like Okay, go on, how much can you take?
00:24:15
Speaker 1: Well, it's fair enough point when you put it like that. Anyway, your brother says you should move to London.
00:24:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't getting work. I couldn't get a gig for love of money. And Sam said, look, you're unemployed in Melbourne. You might as well be unemployed in London, were you. I loved it. I had a great time in London. I was there for ten years. I landed and pretty much landed straight into work and started working in musicals, and then I in a fallow period, I was working as a barton. I was living in a bus in Stepney Way that was pat outside a pub that my mates were squatting. And it just had a wooden floors, a mattress and one powerboard that was connected by an extension called over the outer window of the bus to the balcony to the pub, which at night time or any inclement weather I had to unplug and wrap in a towel so it didn't short circuit. It was just near Brick Lane, and it was forty quid a week and I had to padlock it off from the inside when I was in it because it was on the street and people would just bang on it and walk in. And it was great. And I was working as a butler in like the members clubs in Pall mau a butler. Yeah, full white gloves, gray morning suit, silver service.
00:25:30
Speaker 1: Did you have to go to butler school to get a job like that?
00:25:33
Speaker 2: No? No, they make you think you do, but no, I was faking it. I was doing what I've done my whole career, which is bullshitting. And I was doing musicals on the side as well as the butlering. And then I saw a cabaret show and I realized there was this network of cabaret and burlesque. And I saw the host and the host just had to look good, sing song and talk shit, and I was like, I could do that. So I started looking at all the hosts who were working, and I looked at what was missing or where the gap was in the market. I was like, Okay, well, this person's got this part down, this person's got this style down, this person does this. What's missing? What am I? And then I slowly started to work and create the character.
00:26:21
Speaker 1: And what were you? What did you identify that you could be.
00:26:26
Speaker 2: I clocked that the trend was for dark and glamorous, right, everyone was dark and mysterious and or someone's beautiful and dark and aloof But no one was funny, uproarious, like energy energy. No one was anarchic. Everyone was trying to be cabaret sophisticated. And I'm like, well, that's not me. Inherently, I'm still this scrappy, weird kid who just loves old vaudeville routines, you know, and like still this and St Michelle shocked, you know, or marrying faithful. So I'm going to be that, and I'm gonna look fabulous but still be but still be rough as guts, and I'll be Australian and that'll have a point of difference. And I can I can sing, So I'm going to make sure every number I do is a barn storm instead of soft cabaret sophisticated cabaret numbers that are amusing, which have their role. I was going to make every song I sing is going to be a show stopper, but.
00:27:26
Speaker 1: You must have one what what What's what's the song. What's the song that never fails?
00:27:31
Speaker 2: Oh for me, it's Sailor Boys, Sailor Boys for I. It by Charles Asnibor, written for his daughter. But also I used to do this beautiful. I still do it sometimes, a beautiful cover of landdown Under because it's in a minor key. It sounds so mournful and beautiful when it's slowed down, so it doesn't matter if the piano player has got lead for fingers. Just about these playing that softly is gorgeous. And if they're a good pianist or a good musician, it's better. And the lyrics of that song are so gay, Land down Under, Land down Under. I met a man from Brussels, six foot four, full of muscles. He just smiled and gave me a veggie mate sandwich.
00:28:16
Speaker 1: When you put it like that, but there's a girl in it as well.
00:28:20
Speaker 2: There's a girl and she just smiled and gave me breakfast. It's so full of innuendo. If you just twist, twist.
00:28:29
Speaker 1: In the den and bombay what you doing there.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: Lying in a DENI bombay with a slack jaw.
00:28:34
Speaker 1: Not much, is my guest. We will talk about the festival back after Ruben k is my guest. He's the artistic director of the Outelaide Festival coming up in June, and there's a floor in the opening night, Ruben, I don't know whether you've recognized it.
00:28:55
Speaker 2: No, what is it?
00:28:57
Speaker 1: It's at Festival Theater, which the newly developed one which I can't wait to see. But it's the same night as the Crows are playing Geelong at Adelaide Oval.
00:29:06
Speaker 2: We know this for I'm devastated because I wanted to walk in being carried by some of the Adelaide Crows.
00:29:14
Speaker 1: But apart from that, they approach you to be the Adelaide artistic director with the Adelaide Festival, the artistic director, Well, how do they offer you the job? How does that happen?
00:29:25
Speaker 2: Oh, it's never an offer, is it. They call up and say, oh, could we have a conversation, which is such a lovely term. Would you be interested in having a conversation about this? And then of course my brain goes to right, I know the things I can do. I'm pretty confident that the things I can't do is all of the boring stuff of this job. Do I have the patients to sit in zoom meetings and teams meetings and phone calls, and do I have the patients to sit in boardrooms and discuss all of the logistics stuff. And I just sort of went, you know what, I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it pain of sitting through and connecting and waiting for people to join a teams meeting or a zoom meeting. It's worth it for what you get to create, because I actually.
00:30:09
Speaker 1: We had to wait for you to join this one.
00:30:13
Speaker 2: Yes, you've got me, You've got me. But then again, if you're going to try and get a cabret performer to be alive and cognizant at ten am, then you've you've created a rod for your own.
00:30:24
Speaker 1: Back anyway, So is it like a kid in a lolly shop?
00:30:27
Speaker 2: But a little bit. It is because you have the world at your disposal in terms of acts you can call. And I've been working internationally with cabaret artists of all different calibers, and so I was able to just go, oh, who who do I want?
00:30:45
Speaker 1: What's so they give I'm first tracking this, So they give you the job. Who's the first who's number one? Who's your first choice?
00:30:56
Speaker 2: My first choice? One of my first choices was actually David Mills. David Mills in this cabaret festival. He's an American comedian and singer who I have worked with in London, and I love him. He puts the world right on the razor's edge. He says things that you just got. Oh, I don't know if you're allowed to say that, but he does it with so much charm and grace, and then he just sings these gorgeous numbers and breaks your heart. I think the late night banquet room is a fantastic place to start actually for the festival, because for me, that's really where I started in the festival. I've been doing this festival as a performer almost since twenty fifteen, on and off, and the banquet room becomes this congregating space late night where you go in and it's a tasting platter of next week's festival and this week's festival, and everyone's getting up and just doing random fantastic bits. And I knew I wanted each weekend to have their identity. So Tina Dell, Twist, Jillian Cosgriff and Frankie McNair are three amazing performers who host those nights in their own crazy way Jillian Cosgriff has It's called There's Nothing Like a Game in which the audience is and coach to play outrageous games with her. One of them was a laser tag game to Liza Manelli's songs called Liza Manelli Just dumb, stupid good fun.
00:32:23
Speaker 1: Does that work laser tag?
00:32:26
Speaker 2: Oh you'd like to go and see? Absolutely have to go and see. And the best place if you don't feel like joining in, you don't have to sit down and watch the craziness erupt. Last year me and Virginia Gay were sprinting across the room with champagne glasses to tables like some sort of mad beep test from pe. Tina dot Twist is a faded a faded showbiz icon who's just at the stage of intoxication where she's about to either give the performance of her life or expire on stage. Each night in the banquet room is just pure cabaret and key and comedy gold.
00:33:02
Speaker 1: But of course there's individual acts.
00:33:05
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean people like Natalie Gamsu with her show a voice like Trapnell. Natalie Gams has been working on stage in solo shows and musical theater for decades and just has this voice that I could cut through glass, but at the same time melt you like butter. And she's lived so many brilliant lives. Beastly Yovich is doing a full Nina Simone show where she's singing the great songs of Nina Simone.
00:33:33
Speaker 1: I saw that. I was interested in that because we had Lisa Simone fantastic last year. She wants to know, how how do you compare those two? Did you did you contemplate that?
00:33:48
Speaker 2: No? I well, I was on stage with with Lisa Simone at the Brisbane at Quepac at the Brisbane Concert Hall and Lisa would I have to come back to the Tabary Festival and you've done it. Baby, I'm sorry I can't have you back the second year. But Ursula, I'm a huge erthly Yeovich fan ersuly Yovich is just one of those amazing Australian artists who I don't understand why they're not a superstar. So they bring their Nina Simone show, her Nina Simon Show, which discusses and dissects some of the activism that is present in Nina Simone's life. Lisa's show is a beautiful delivery of Nina's music, but sort of done from a family lens, like she's her daughter. Here's Ursula sort of reinventing, reinterpreting, but also dissecting Nina's life from a slightly more objective angle. It's a I think we're very different offerings.
00:34:42
Speaker 1: It was a tough life in the end, I think when she obviously had almost had to escape to Liberia, basically vilified because of her activism. Hang on sounding like a no.
00:34:54
Speaker 2: No, that's the best part. We should celebrate, the celebrate the people who have the expertise.
00:34:59
Speaker 1: But we get a we get a bit more earthy because Sarah McLeod. We love Sarah McLeod. She's a rock chick, isn't she.
00:35:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, she actually is. And also for me, cabaret is punk because cabaret is social commentary, music and storytelling and that's sort of the tenets of punk if you just add electric music and the Super Jesus is just an Australian gold standard band. Sarah is so talented. I think she's got bigger balls than most men out there, and we're really what can you say, It's Sarah MacLeod. It's Sarah McLeod, and I think alongside her is someone like Mahalia Barnes who is singing the soundtrack to The Rose, but also other Janics Joplin songs, another woman who has this amazing blend of rock, soul and gospel.
00:35:51
Speaker 1: Mahaley is Jimmy and Jane's daughter, definitely has that rock and roll spirit.
00:35:57
Speaker 2: And then she is also going to be performing in What's the Buzz, which is the cast of Jesus Christ Superstar, which never came to Adelaide. It came, No, it never came to Adelaide. We toured the whole country and we never came to Adelaide because the Festival Center was being renovated.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: Wasn't it the Memorial Drive?
00:36:16
Speaker 2: No, the production that we just did that just toured last year, last year, last year.
00:36:21
Speaker 1: I'm talking fifty years.
00:36:24
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I don't think I was in that production. I'm so sorry. I don't know how I skipped that. No, Mahalia Barnes and myself and Michael Painter and Javon King were in the production of Jesus Christ Superstar that toured to every city and was just a sellout five star smash hit. It never came to Adelaide, And I was really determined that Adelaide should get to see this show instead of having to travel to another city. So we're bringing that show. We're seeing all the hits of the show and talking about all the stories in gossip from backstage for one night in the festival.
00:37:01
Speaker 1: Was there anybody that you really wanted who couldn't do it or wouldn't do it?
00:37:05
Speaker 2: There are a couple of people who couldn't do it because of just scheduling, just sheddling. I really wanted Sasha Valua, who's this amazing artist from America. The wish list of who I wanted is almost as long as the list of icons who we got. But you know that's the part of programming a festival.
00:37:27
Speaker 1: You're renowned for your pushing the envelope.
00:37:32
Speaker 2: Well, you bite the hand of face, you just want to get a bit of lipstick on it.
00:37:37
Speaker 1: I understand that. Do you feel you have to tone down a little bit now you've got this prestigious position. Are you're still going to be pushing the envelope?
00:37:46
Speaker 2: No, I'm still going to be pushing the envelope. I think if you hire Rubin K, you hire Ruben K, there are some small bits where you go, well, I'm not a maniac. I can understand the difference between a festival gala and a and a show at the Metro or show at the Adelaide Fringe, you know. But at the same point, I'm not gonna be muzzled or anything. But also I don't think the Adelaide Cabaret Festival will be staying true to its values if it did want to muzzle the artistic director in any way. Part of cabarets being outspoken, saying the stuff we're all thinking. That's the art form. And to their credit, they haven't asked me to tone down. Did they celebrated?
00:38:28
Speaker 1: No, they did they want did want an outline of what you've had planned?
00:38:33
Speaker 2: Well, that's part the job that we have to know what you're doing. You can't just wing it. But when I said great, I want to have Popo Moco and Dylan Adler in, they were like, who are okay?
00:38:45
Speaker 1: Great?
00:38:46
Speaker 2: So Po Moco are a Melbourne a Melbourne comedy quartete of women who I don't know they're in a share. There could be something from New York eighties Downtown performing an arts scene, performance arts scene. They could be something from nineteen thirties Berlin, or they could be something from like. They're like Big Girls Blouse if you remember Big Girls Blouse, Gina. They're like their younger days when they were really like outrageous and punk and fun and they're just anarchy. So they're doing a full retrospective of their last ten years called Best Bits. Dylan Adler in a House of House of Dailand. Dylan Adler is an American Japanese Jewish gay ex gymnast classically trained pianist who toured the Bible Belt and this show is all about that journey.
00:39:38
Speaker 1: It sounds like it's going to be a great show, Reuben. It's titled Delicious Revolution.
00:39:45
Speaker 2: Yes, the festival is revolution because that's what Cabret is. Cabret is this seductive blend of revolution, but also you know hedonism, and especially South Australia it has such an amazing food and wine culture. You have to be able to make something. You have to give them something easy to swallow.
00:40:06
Speaker 1: So the biggest dilemma we have is whether we go to the opening of the festival on Dune the fourth or the Crows Geelong match at Adelaide Oval. Big choice. We know where you will be. Thank you so much for your time.
00:40:22
Speaker 2: It's an absolute pleasure.
00:40:23
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Ruben Kay, the artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Thanks for joining us folks,
