Cabaret Collective, or, Yes, The Police Did Come And Take All Our Beer

Let’s address the elephant in the room first. Halfway through Kelley Sweeney’s rendition of an old Joni Mitchell tune, the Stony Brook University police came, knocked on the door, took all our beer and checked IDs. The Cabaret Collective has always had a spoken policy that it’s okay to discretely bring your own beverages. From what I understand, some people were coming to the Collective with open bottles in hand and mistakenly went into another performance in the same building, who thereupon called the police. I don’t know how disruptive these individuals were being, if at all. So the police came, stopped the show, and did their police thing. What I’ve heard is that Stony Brook has a wet campus, so our understanding was that there shouldn’t have been a problem. We were, obviously, wrong. According to the “State University of New York at Stony Brook Alcoholic Beverages on State Property Policies and Procedures,” (http://studentaffairs.stonybrook.edu/jud/docs/Alcohol_Policy.pdf):

“Unless a permit has been obtained from the State Liquor Authority, Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (“SLA Permit”) by the sponsoring individual or organization, the consumption of alcohol or possession of an open container of alcohol anywhere on campus is prohibited. This includes, by way of example only, classrooms, grounds, parking lots, student lounges and bathrooms.”

So the cops were in the right, unfortunately, to take all our booze. However, I’m not convinced they had any right to ask for people’s phone numbers:

“Standard identification procedures are required at all campus functions and at establishments where alcoholic beverages are available. Acceptable forms of identification include:

U.S. or international passport

Valid driver’s license

NYS non-driver’s ID

Selective service registration card

Resident Alien identification card

An individual must be proofed each time s/he requests an alcoholic beverage or enters the alcohol service area. Alpha lists will be used to verify student dates of birth. University staff may spot check the legal age of any persons in the area of consumption. The use of false ID is prohibited. All false IDs will be confiscated and a disciplinary referral will be made.”

That aside, let’s talk about the art!

In spite of Becky Goldberg’s clarification of my last response to a Cabaret Collective (http://waylonlenk.blogspot.com/2011/12/inter-arts-collaboration-at-sbu-cabaret.html), I’m still seeing a substantial lack of interarts collaboration. I’m not saying there isn’t any. Lukas Kürten and Karl Hinze both foray outside of their own departments (Physics and Music, respectively) to participate in theatrical endeavors. In Kürten’s case, he was the originating artist of a bilingual reading of Goethe’s Zauberlehrling with Theatre’s Nancee Moes.

But those are only individuals. To all extents and purposes, this Cabaret Collective was a concert by the Music Department, with a couple theatrical acts and some art in the hallway. And the format of the Collective seems most conducive to music. Nearly all of the acts (this includes both of the theatre acts) read their pieces off music stands. The ten minute spots are perfect for musicians whose songs range on average from three to four minutes, and a dominate venue for singer-songwriters are bars anyway. As for us in theatre, especially dramaturgs, I think we’re a little used to having a little bit more time in our individual events to hold forth on some theoretical theatrical concept. Not to say we can’t get the audience up a tree and back down in ten minutes – both of the acts I saw last night, as have many others that I’ve seen at previous Collectives. All I’m saying is that it seems like a musician’s natural habitat, not necessarily a dramaturg’s.

And a performance-based venue is the opposite of a plastic artist’s natural habitat! Especially if you’re going to get sequestered to the hallway. Maybe a better idea, if the Cabaret Collective is really about fostering interarts collaboration, is to put the art in the room with the performances, and perhaps even have the artists there to say a few words about their work to associate their face more strongly with it.

I’m still very dubious about the overall effectiveness of the Cabaret Collectives. Yes, they have inspired a few individuals to cross over out of their departments, but I’m not seeing anything that brings the arts together in a way that blurs the boundaries between disciplines. If anything, it’s become a fun way for a bunch of Theatre and Music grad students (and I’m purposely excluding Art here, because they seem excluded by the very structure of the event), have a few beers, maybe get busted up by the cops, and play music and do skits for each other. Which is all very nice, if that’s what the Cabaret Collective wants to be.