on escaping the cabaret

when the joke is on myself for watching a musical about the rise of fascism and trying to survive under hellscape

I. "What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play..."

Sally Bowles, the toast of Mayfair, warbles with frantic urgency underneath a single spotlight. The audience listens, drawn in by her invitation to escape the world outside the Kit Kat Club. Her manic breakdown prompts us to drown our troubles, but it’s a taunt. In contrast to the famous Emcee, Bowles dares us to believe the club walls provide an iron defence against the polycrisis.

When my specialist emailed about changing my surgery date, the same urgency surrounded me. I planned to take six months to prepare and that all evaporated. A last-minute cancellation meant my procedure moved forward to just three weeks away. My timeline shrank, and the enormity of my decision swelled. Pain doesn’t give you room to second-guess.

I said yes, not out of readiness, but necessity.

II. "Life is a cabaret, old chum... Come to the cabaret!"

I am in the revamped August Wilson theatre, now going by the Kit Kat Club. Performers cake their faces with thick stage makeup, and their movements are deliberate but cracks in the facade show. Shadows of Berlin creep, insidious and inescapable. In particular, Auli’i Cravalho’s Sally leans into her queerness in this revival, her kisses with other female dancers purposeful. Instead of escapism, she shows us survival through art, seduction, and deflection.

After receiving the news of an expedited surgery, I call my father, hoping for comfort. I explain the procedure, its suddenness, and my fear.

“It’s a minor surgery. They’re not even taking anything out. Don’t worry about it.”

While he is a physician, endometriosis exists outside his scope of practice. His glibness minimizes my fear, so I push back. I need him to see me not as a patient but as his child navigating something scary. He softens after this admission, but the sting of his initial dismissal lingers.

Photo by Anthony Camp on Unsplash

III. "Put down the knitting, the book, and the broom... Time for a holiday!"

Cabaret mocks domesticity, scoffing at the illusion of safety under the status quo. Its characters (and by extension, us as the audience) exist in a world teetering on collapse. While the Kit Kat Club brands itself as an escape, the venue is actually where art bears witness to slowly creeping fascism. Our imagined sanctuaries crumble as reality presses down on us. Healthcare hangs by a thread, reproductive rights are gutted, and basic bodily autonomy is threatened.

My surgery, though inherently personal, is inseparable from this context. Hormones, birth control, and reproductive procedures exist within systems that threaten their availability. Pain feels isolating, but it is deeply political.

IV. "But when I saw her laid out like a queen, she was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen!"

Disability haunts me, a spectre of pain wherever I go. The parts I sacrificed to pain, the relationships strained under its weight, the dreams I abandoned. Endometriosis alters the shape of my life, demanding I contort myself to its whims.

Watching Cabaret, I see parallels between Weimar-era Berlin and present-day USA. Fascism doesn’t arrive suddenly; it hovers around, feeding on the apathy and complicity of those who look away. The echoes of that slow rise reverberate in my world. What happens when the systems we rely on—healthcare, rights, community—begin to falter under the same weight? Or when we realize that they never served us in the first place?

V. "Start by admitting from cradle to tomb, it isn’t that long a stay..."

Her words mock permanence, her voice edged with defiance that feels like both weapon and shield. Sally doesn’t allow us to turn from the fleeting, fragile nature of our existence. Like impending war, contending with health leaves no room for passivity. Every moment feels fraught with consequence, all choices laden with risk. Pain reshapes priorities, demanding action.

I will not let this disease control me.

Even more so,

I refuse to let fascists win.

VI. "And as for me, and as for me, I made my mind up back in Chelsea... when I go, I’m going like Elsie!"

As we know from the musical, each character prioritises their survival. For Sally: She just had an abortion, left her lover, and resigns herself to the mediocrity of the Kit Kat Club. At the very least, it offers her a stage for when the world outside offers nothing but destruction. Cliff Bradshaw, her lover, chooses to flee back to America. Seeing the writing on the wall and after a fight with a Nazi friend, he leaves Berlin.

As a disabled person amidst polycrisis, I don’t have another place to escape. Pain grounds me, pulls me inward, and forces me to stay present even when the world feels unbearable. When people flee, I ask why they won’t stay and fight.

They have no answer.

VII. "Life is a cabaret, old chum..."

The desperation and fury in her last refrain reverberate through the hall. The politic is always personal. Escapism doesn’t promise safety, and no space can truly shield or be deemed safe. My pain, my surgery, my fight for care—none of this happens in a vacuum. Every interaction with capitalism reminds me of its fragility and unwillingness to accommodate bodies like mine without a fight.

VIII.

Every version of Cabaret is meant to make the audience uncomfortable. Hal Prince, the producer and director of the original production, staged it so a mirror faced the audience. Sam Mendes’ stagings sexualised and queered the Emcee and transformed the theatre into a seedy nightclub. Rebecca Frecknall’s champions queerness, but highlights the Emcee as a metaphor for German society descending into Nazi Party leadership. In the titular song, Bowles performs both to escape through her delusions and endure her onstage descent into a rage, focusing audiences to sit with their complicity in the horrors creeping closer.

Choosing care in a system designed to dismiss and dehumanise means I appear selfish to my peers. No one gets it. I can’t help that pain narrows my choices, exhausting me to navigate care that should be an inalienable right.

IX.

Cabaret ends in abject silence.

The drumroll stops, the house lights rise, and the audience remains uneasy stillness for the next few minutes. No amount of sparkle and no chorus line can erase what’s waiting beyond the theatre’s walls.

As I exit, I feel the weight of that silence.

I see myself in every poor citizen who chooses to stay.

They’re going to die.

A good person is going to die.

X.

As I prepare for my surgery, my emotions are tangled with gratitude, fear, and uncertainty. I am grateful for the opportunity to finally address this pain and get answers. But I am scared. Scared of what could go wrong, and what if I don’t get the answers I was looking for? And I am uncertain about what the future holds—not just for my body, but for a country where access to healthcare becomes more precarious every day. The personal is always political. This surgery isn’t just about my body—it’s about survival in a world that grows more hostile every day. I refuse to wait.

Time’s a little finicky bitch, isn’t it? If this surgery had been scheduled for next year, would it have happened? With the rise of American fascism and relentless attacks on healthcare and reproductive rights, it’s impossible to know. That alone makes me grateful to have this chance, no matter how unprepared I feel.

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Support my Recovery and Transform your Care.

As I prepare for surgery, I’m reflecting deeply on what care means in times of uncertainty. My workshops, Cosmos of Care and Embodied Cosmos were created to help us weave care and connection into our lives, especially in a world that often doesn’t prioritize us. Now, proceeds from these workshops will support me during my surgical recovery—a way for us to sustain each other.

Cosmos of Care will teach you how to build community care practices that decolonize relationships and create sustainable mutual aid systems. It’s for anyone looking to show up more intentionally for their communities. Embodied Cosmos invites you into the transformative power of storytelling and art, using narrative to reconnect with your body and relationships in meaningful, embodied ways (hello, art!)

By joining these workshops, you’re not just supporting me but also investing in yourself, your community, and a vision of care rooted in justice and possibility.