Hey Sydney, Bernie Dieter Is Coming Back To You, Ready To Seduce You Into A Filthy Revolution
Image: All images supplied
Willkommen! If Bernie Dieter has it her way, you’ll enter her show dressed for trouble, and “leave every last scrap of dignity at home.”
“You won’t need it. You’ll get something much better back.”
The filthy-mouthed punk cabaret queen returns with Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett, an 18+ pile-up of live music, gender-bending circus, full-frontal nudity and revolt.
Respectability, frankly, would ruin it.
This year’s line-up includes Jacqueline Furey – who Dieter says will set parts of her body alight “that you never thought were flammable” – the possibly-boneless contortionist Soliana Ersie, and aerial powerhouse Thom Worrell.
Super-strong Gemima Jones, “sultry sex clown” Iva Rosebud and gender-bending marvel Jarred Dewey complete Dieter’s menagerie.
You might be surprised to learn that the inspiration for this show filled with danger, depravity and sexual freedom is Dieter’s grandma.
She explains that her Oma’s family toured in a travelling circus in East Germany, and as a young girl, she was smuggled from East to West beneath a pile of sequinned costumes.
“She was never allowed to be [on stage], so in a way I am living her dream,” Dieter says. “She taught me that the most dangerous thing a body can do in a repressive country is have fun and be fully, unapologetically true to yourself in public. That’s the DNA of the show.”
Inspired by the Weimar Republic’s dens of iniquity and gender-bending sexual freedom, there’s interesting parallels between that era’s political turmoil and our present – which also faces major growing issues around queer visibility, safety and freedom, particularly for trans and gender-diverse folks.
“We are once again living in a time where politics is taking a hard right, and when that happens the first thing under threat are the ‘outsiders.’ The queer community, women’s rights, the cabarets, the people dancing where they shouldn’t be dancing,” says Dieter. “Weimar Berlin partied like the world was ending because it was, and everybody in that room knew it before the politicians admitted it,” Dieter says.
“Celebrating our differences instead of stoking the fear that divides us — that’s rebellion, and cabaret does it best.”
Dieter has no interest in pausing the party for a sermon. Her politics slip between thighs, filthy jokes and circus feats. “You don’t lecture people into a revolution, you seduce them into one,” she says. “The second cabaret turns preachy, it’s dead. Keep it filthy, keep it sharp, and the politics take care of themselves.”
After sold-out seasons around the world and previous Sydney runs, Dieter knows how to build a room where the “punks and the freaks and the too-much people” can be authentic.
“Somebody — a whole dressing room of drag queens above a nightclub in Berlin — made room for me once. Now I make the room,” she says.
At its heart, Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett is a safe space for anyone who has ever felt too queer for this world, or too much in general. Taking vengeance against the mundane, it invites every misfit to leave respectability at the door and be precisely whoever the hell they want to be.
“It’s not therapy and it’s not a support group – it’s better than both, it’s one hell of a party where nobody has to explain themselves.”
Bernie Dieter’s Club Kabarett runs from 8 October – 8 November at Carriageworks. (And it’s strictly 18+, obvs.)
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