'Cabaret' was the most commercial success that I've been involved in.
The most rewarding thing is being on Broadway. I went into Cabaret as a replacement and was really challenged beyond anything I could have imagined.
When I started performing, there was no Internet; I didn't really have anything to copy. I kind of had to just make up what I thought burlesque was, based on photographs of Sally Rand or whatever.
If you start adapting to audiences, you're really second-guessing the situation, and it becomes a bit more like cabaret.
When I first walked into 54 Below, I had this kind of deja vu experience and tried to imagine what this was like back in the day when I would come here at night after doing 'A Chorus Line.'
I've always been a cabaret-vaudeville artist - an hourlong cabaret and a floor show in a hotel - somebody like that. That's my main forte.
Getting to perform at the Carlyle, following in the footsteps of women like Elaine Stritch, Barbara Cook, Christine Ebersole, Kelli O'Hara, and so many others, is nothing short of a dream come true.
I know my comfort zone and I know what my strong points are and my first love was always music. I'm a huge cinema fan. I was taking my time; I got offered a lot of scripts and things along the way but until Burlesque showed up at my doorstep, it really spoke to me. I have a collection of burlesque books at home that I've had for years. I've always been intrigued and fascinated with the topic, the beauty and the art of it and the comedic value of it. I think it's just a beautiful, empowering thing for women.
It's really a grand old, legendary theatre where the spirits of like Judy Garland and all these great performers have been. The clubs are way more underground.
Look at the darkest hit musicals - Cabaret, West Side Story, Carousel - they are exuberant experiences. They send you out of the theater filled with music.
In Yale they convinced me I had no talent, even though I was always working. They cast me mostly as prostitutes and old women, and I stayed because I loved the writers. I loved Chris Durang and Wendy Wasserstein. I was always doing their work in the Yale Cabaret.
I still sing, but completely for my own pleasure. I play a nightclub singer in 'Sparkle,' but I'd like to pursue it a bit more. I sang at a friend's 60th at Claridge's the other month; I did 'Baby It's Cold Outside' with the actor Hilton McRae, and 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'
I'm really excited to share cabaret, the art form, not just with the generations that are above me, but also my generation and the generation under me. I think it's an art form that's incredibly important, and I think that my generation is a little unfamiliar with it.
The wonderful thing about cabaret is, you can do a lot of things you can't do in a concert. You can't do smoky ballads for 50 minutes in a concert. It's a different animal.
I always loved fish for the colors and birds for the plumage. In the same way, I loved those women of the cabaret. They were birds of paradise.
When I was first introduced to the music of Jacques Brel, I was totally floored. I had never heard anything as intelligent or sexy or angry as his music.
I started out as a pianist and singer in gay and piano bars - they were the only places I could get a job singing show tunes.
I've always wanted to do a cabaret.
I went to a lot of theatre. My parents were very involved with the performing arts. I went to nightclub shows when I was a little girl. We went to Florida and we would go to the Cocoanut Grove down there. We'd go see Lena Horne, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker and Judy Garland.
I discovered lots of music; electronic synth bands from the mid-'80s like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Cabaret Voltaire. My friends and I used to take two-hour trips to the record store in Newcastle and we started buying copies of The Face and i-D. And then I went to art school and as time progressed, I ended up where I am now.
I've been in a New York City-based cabaret for the past seven years called The Citizens Band. It's possibly one of the most brilliant things I've ever been involved with.
I am inspired by show girls and Vegas. I was a cabaret performer, so that's where all that influence comes from.
I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists.
Life is a cabaret, old chum! Come to the Cabaret.
It's so easy in these cabaret venues to get earnest.
