Internationella Musikteatern & Olivia Stevens Productions in collaboration with:

Kabaret Kollektif Europa

With the vision to further the European cabaret arts, a number of European-born cabaret artists met up in New York City in the spring of 2003 under the banner of Kabarett Kollektif. The group’s debut performance occurred at the venerable Duplex Cabaret drew considerable praise from audiences and critics alike, and artists were inspired to further the venture.

In January 2004 the group expanded to include nine members from seven European countries (Germany, France, England, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and the United States). In October, the Kollektif mounted a month-long series at Mama Rose’s in the East Village, presenting new works each week for duo, trio and full ensemble: Introducing the Kollektif, Noise & Smoke: Hits of Weimar Berlin(with Karen Kohler and Dirk Weiler), Paris Nocturne and Foreign Currency: Songs for Our Time. In the spring of 2015, a fifth new work, Berlin-Paris Express , was debuted at the new Midtown hotspot, The Encore. In the fall of 2005, the Kollektif took up residency at Helen’s Hideaway in Chelsea to reprise its three most popular shows.

In our effort to nurture the European cabaret arts in New York City, we conceived and produced New York’s first festival for European cabaret, Kabarett Fête, from January 23-27, 2017.

Nine performers from seven countries delivered the European cabaret songbook in the city’s first cabaret festival devoted to the European cabaret arts. These NY-based artists came from France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Canada, and the U.S. Several had been members of Karen’s cabaret ensemble, Kabarett Kollektif, winner of the 2006 New York Nightlife Award for “Unique Cabaret Performance.”

Two programs made their NY debut in Kabarett Fête: Swedish-born Olivia Stevens’ tribute to the controversial Swedish star Zarah Leander, a siren of the Third Reich; and Rebecca Fletcher’s exploration of the Yiddish cabaret music of Warsaw. Karen also secured the rights to screen the documentary Dance of Death: Cabaret in the Camps by Berlin film-maker Volker Kuehn in NYC for the first time. This film, which combines rare footage of cabaret in the camps with interviews of some of the surviving artists, has been described as “an especially stirring document of the Holocaust…. more forceful than any known commentary… a memorial for the more or less unknown hero of the concentration camps.”