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[0:00] Josh Mitchell: In the spirit of reconciliation, we are theatre, and theatrically aloud acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community.

[0:10] Josh Mitchell: We pay our respects to their elders, past, present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

[0:24] ♪ Musical number ♪

[0:42] Queenie van de Zandt: Hi!

[1:32] Josh Mitchell: Hello, Theatre fans, one and all welcome back to the We Are Theatre Podcast. And today we're switching it up a little bit. We've been musicals, plays, but we've never covered cabaret before. And I've got Queenie van de Zandt here from, uh, she is doing a show called Blue: The Songs of Joni Mitchell. Um, hi Queenie.

[1:49] Queenie van de Zandt: Um, hi Josh, I'm good. Thanks for having me on your show.

[1:52] Josh Mitchell: I am so excited. Uh, I have never seen a cabaret, and I've never covered cabaret before. So this is all new experiences.

[2:01] Queenie van de Zandt: I know.

[2:01] Josh Mitchell: I where have you been?

[2:03] Queenie van de Zandt: Under a rock, apparently.

[2:05] Josh Mitchell: So this is watching musicals.

[2:07] Queenie van de Zandt: Yes, honestly, that is probably it. But this is your chance to convince me that I've been missing out on a big chunk of live performance.

[2:17] Queenie van de Zandt: And um, it's everybody else at home. So this is this is the bar. Um, so why don't you tell us about the show real quick what it's about um and what we can look forward to?

[2:27] Queenie van de Zandt: Well, it's as you said, it's called Blue: The Songs of Joni Mitchell. So it's, you know, it's about Joni Mitchell, um, this incredible singer-songwriter, um, and an artist. Um, it uh, the show is, uh, it's five years old. It was I wrote it five years ago. Um, and I'd always want I've always been a huge fan of Joni Mitchell, always wanted to write a show about her, but could never kind of, I mean, she's an incredible artist, you know, really extraordinary, um, you know, uh, musician, extraordinary lyricist, uh, you know, a true, true artist. And so I was like, Oh, I could never think of a clever enough way of presenting a show about her that that was kind of up to her, kind of, you know, her incredible artistry.

So I just always just thought, oh, I don't know how to write it, so I didn't write it. So that took me 37 years before I came up with an idea. Um, and finally I was, um, I had a daughter myself quite late in life at 47, and I was breastfeeding her on the couch when she was about three months old and listening to Joni Mitchell's blue album, which I often did when I feel a bit sad and want a pity party, you know. So I was having a pity party of one and just sort of lying, you know, sitting there had a bit of the black baby blues, and I heard this song called Little Green, which she records on the album, and I remembered because I've read a lot about Joni obviously over the years, that she wrote that song about giving up her own daughter for adoption and how she hadn't wanted to do that.

It wasn't something that she'd planned to do. She'd really wanted to keep her, but she hadn't been able to do that, and um, wasn't in a position financially and, you know, in her life to be able to do that. And I, you know, having this baby in my arms that I just loved so much, I just started weeping at the thought of what that would do to you. Yeah, I just, I'd never get over that if I had to give her up now at three months old. Like it's just, and I knew I thought, how did she? It suddenly struck me. I thought, three months old, how did that even happen? And so the moment I put my daughter down for a nap, I just got on the internet and started, you know, investigating that story. And the story is just, you know, really, really sad and quite extra and quite extraordinary in itself.

And um, and that was it. I just started to then write the show from that perspective of, of how that, you know, Joni has always said that that single act of giving up her daughter made her melancholy for the rest of her life and fed into every lyric she wrote from then on. Like it was just, and I just thought, yeah, so I basically wrote a love letter really from one melancholy mother to another. That's how it kind of ended up being. So the show is very, it's beautifully melancholy in the way that melancholy isn't sad, it's kind of, it's just this kind of, it's almost a kind of a yummy kind of sort of, yeah, it's a yummy kind of malaise or a, or a, you know, it's there's something yummy about melancholy, you know what I mean?

It's not, it's not sadness, it's, it's yeah, you can sit in it, you know, and it, and it, and it opens and reveals a whole lot of your heart and the world when you're in that state, and um, so it's quite a melancholy gentle show, and I, uh, and you know, the audience come in, and there's, you know, it's the whole set is like an artist studio, it's all got these, you know, hippie rugs and hundreds of candles, LED candles, and we burn incense in the theater beforehand, so it smells like the beautiful 70s, you know, Nag Champa everywhere. And so it's a quite an immersive kind of experience in that way. And then we just basically sing the songs and tell some stories about, um, about Joni's life and, and really just about the songs that go with the, with different, you know, with different, uh, the stories of that go with different songs to open up those her beautiful lyrics, you know, that she has in her music.

And um, yeah, and so yeah, it's a really lovely show. It's been, it's won a lot of awards, been nominated for the Helpmann Award and and Sydney Theatre Award, a lot of big awards, and um, and I've been doing it for five years with a little gap there in COVID, but you know, um, so we love it, yeah.

[6:23] Josh Mitchell: Yeah, amazing. Um, it's funny because like my generation wouldn't know Joni as Joni because the only song that we really would know of hers is the cover of Big Yellow Taxi by Counting Crows.

[6:37] Queenie van de Zandt: Yeah, like when I look through her discography, I that would be the only song that I could actually point to and be like, that's Joni Mitchell's song.

[6:47] Josh Mitchell: Yeah, knowing that because of the so um, yeah, I'm actually really excited to get in and hear you do this.

[6:54] Queenie van de Zandt: Well, this is the thing, is it's not just a show for Joni Mitchell fans. People say to me all the time, you know, when they come, they say, Oh, I did no idea how beautiful her music was, you know. And Big Yellow Taxi, interestingly, is the least Joni-like song out of everything that she does. It's really like that song is really, um, yeah, it's just it's a real anomaly, you know, in her music. Um, and a lot of um, your generation actually know Joni, or actually, probably not so much your generation, probably a generation older than you, but but people in their sort of like 30s and um and 40s, uh, know her and come along to the show because they know her from that this beautiful scene in Love Actually, where Emma Thompson opens a, uh, she's seen her husband, um, buying a necklace in a shop and she thinks, oh god, that's what I'm getting for Christmas, I won't spoil it.

And then it comes to Christmas time and she opens this what looks like what a square box, and she opens it and it's Joni Mitchell's blue album, and she puts it on the record, you know, she puts it on and it plays Both Sides Now, one of her very other very beautiful, famous songs. Um, and um, she walks into the bedroom and just starts to weep because she realizes her husband's having an affair in that moment, you know, and it's such a beautiful, beautiful scene. And um, yeah, a whole new generation of people then went out and bought Blue because they're like, Oh, what's that song? And yeah, so Blue. If you don't know her music, Blue is the album to start with because it's just extraordinary.

[8:22] Josh Mitchell: Yeah, perfect. There we go. We've got a starting point.

[8:24] Josh Mitchell: Yeah, um, let's talk creative side of actually putting a cabaret together. How obviously you've got your starting point of having that triggering moment of connecting with the song. How do you then take your research and create a story and figure out where your songs are gonna sit throughout the show?

[8:47] Queenie van de Zandt: Well, it's quite different depending on how you do it. Like, um, you know, I teach cabaret as well because I've been doing cabaret since I was 17. It's the very first thing I ever did leaving school. My first professional gig was a cabaret show. Um, so I've been doing it for such a long time. So I also teach it, um, through my, um, through my company, um, to the Australian Musical Theatre Academy. And um, excuse me, and you know, it's interesting because one of the great wonderful things about cabaret is it's absolutely boundless. You know, there is no convention in cabaret, which just makes it so exciting. It can be absolutely anything, and in fact, so much so that the dictionary doesn't even define cabaret by what it is, it defines it by where it is.

It says a show usually done in a space where people sit down and drink and eat, you know, like it doesn't even define it in the dictionary, so which is quite interesting. So, really, um, how you put a cabaret together is like how long of the piece of string, it really depends on the particular show. So, over the years, say for example, um, one of the shows I wrote years ago, um, which was called um, Cabaret in 12 Easy Steps. I had to write a show for the Queensland Cabaret Festival, and at the same time I was teaching students at the VCA um how to write cabaret and working on their cabaret shows. And I was working with like 25 students on their shows, and I was thinking, God, I've got, you know, every good idea is going into their show, you know.

How am I gonna write my own show? It's like, oh, you know, this is too hard. And so I end up going, you know what? That's what I should write about. I should write about how to write a cabaret in 12 easy steps. And so I, because there, you know, there are some conventions that you see often, like you know, a strong opening song, you know, um, a funny song, you know, you always have to have a funny song, audience participation, you know. Um, you don't always have to have this, but if you see a lot of cabaret, you often see certain things that are included. So that's how I wrote that. I literally came up with 12 ideas, 12 how you, you know, a structure of cabaret, and then I filled it in with anecdotes and songs and whatever.

Um, with Joni, it was really different. I started by just looking at this idea of her and her daughter and that story, and started with that story and then found out about how she met her daughter again and later in life and how they reunited. I thought, right, that's the bookend, you know, there that's the beginning, that's the end. It's actually a sort of, it's kind of a her life in between these two major points, you know.

[11:17] Queenie van de Zandt: Um, and then went through. I literally went with my daughter, went walking every day and listened. I've got every single album Joni ever wrote, and literally just listened to all of her songs and went, ah, that's a great storytelling song. Ah, that's a great storytelling song. Wow, that talks about her when she's young. Oh, that story, you know, that song's about heartbreak when she broke up, you know, because I knew her life. I would just then I just pick songs that kind of helped tell the story of her life, you know.

[11:44] Josh Mitchell: Yeah.

[11:44] Queenie van de Zandt: Um, and so I, you know, there were heaps of songs that I love of hers that I couldn't include because I was like, oh, you know, because she's got about 25,000 songs about love. So I was like, I can't have all of those. And so, yeah, so it's, it's really depends on the show, I suppose.

[12:00] Josh Mitchell: I love that. Um, with doing your research for this show, like being a fan of Joni's and as you said, knowing certain things about her life. How far did you have to research to like get all the knowledge you needed, or was it all kind of front of mind straight away?

[12:19] Queenie van de Zandt: Well, um, I wrote it with, uh, I wrote the show with um a wonderful, uh, musical director called Max Lambert, who is very well known to, I'm sure your listeners for the many musicals he has musically directed and written himself. Like he wrote a wonderful musical called Miracle City, an Australian musical, amongst a whole bunch of others that he's written. And uh, so he came with me because he's, he is also originally in the band Icehouse with Ivar Davies, so he was very famous band in the 80s. So he's got that lovely combination of, you know, having a rock sensibility but with a storytelling bent, you know.

[12:54] Queenie van de Zandt: Yeah, and so I thought that's really useful for her. Not that she's a, you know, rock, you know, necessarily a rock um performer, but just being a popular performer, you know, a pop star, pop star, I suppose. Um, and so um, we, um, I've forgotten the question.

[13:12] Josh Mitchell: My god, I was gonna have to.

[13:13] Queenie van de Zandt: Um, research and how how deep did you have to go.

[13:16] Josh Mitchell: That's right.

[13:17] Queenie van de Zandt: So he read some books, um, and I read some books, and we didn't like I didn't read it cover to cover, but we skimmed, you know. Um, and we both watched a number of really great videos about her, like that have been made some documentaries about her. So yeah, we did do a fair bit of research on her. I mean, I suppose if you're writing a sort of a, a um, a show that's quite, uh, that that you you want to kind of um explore someone's, you know, someone's life and music, you do have to kind of know quite a bit about it.

[13:45] Queenie van de Zandt: But you know, there were lots of periods that we skipped over because for example, we don't really look at her besides having one of her beautiful paintings on, well, a copy of one of her beautiful paintings on set and having the set look like it's like an artist studio with paintbrushes and things like that. We don't actually look at any part of her life as an artist as a painter, for example. So anything that really had to do with that, we just didn't go there, you know. Um, and there are, yeah, we don't investigate her music in a kind of cerebral musical way, like go then she went through the jazz period, then she went through because she did go through all these different periods. So because of that, we didn't really have to read about that stuff, you know, because it was a much more personal cabaret. So um, yeah, and some cabarets, you don't have to do any research at all. Like it's just like, you know, it just depends on who what you're doing.

[14:35] Josh Mitchell: Yeah, amazing. Um, for someone like myself who has never stepped foot in a theater with a cabaret show going on. What as someone that's been around that side of the sector for ages, what um what can someone look forward to or be excited about with a new experience of a cabaret or this show in particular? What do you think someone can look forward to coming through and experiencing this?

[15:03] Queenie van de Zandt: Um unlike musical theatre, the way that they really differ, the two forms is there's in cabaret, there's usually no fourth wall, you know. So um, and it's my favorite part of cabaret, that is actually my favorite part because I love people. I'm absolutely insanely curious about people and uh just love to talk to people and get to know them and you know, um and understand how they work and how their brains work. And so I I mean, uh don't get me wrong, I love musical theatre for its own things, but if I had to choose between the two, it probably would be cabaret because I love the instant connection with your audience, and um, you know, you don't get that as much in theatre, although you get it obviously much more in theatre and and and um musicals than you do say in TV or film.

Yeah, but um, but cabaret, there's just no out of all the art forms, cabaret is the most immediately connected to to another human and that's actually my that's the bit I love you know the most because you can see the same as when you do comedy you know um you can absolutely see the effect on them immediately and you can see how it lands and what it does and you can talk to them afterwards and you can you can um often talk to them during the show you know it's part of they are part of the experience is a very immediate experience um yeah so I think that's one of the things that people can really expect when they come to see a cabaret show is just feeling very much a part of it you know like that they are seen yeah and getting to do it in like some really cool intimate venues as well like Chapel off Chapel that you're going into in Melbourne and Hayes at Sydney like yeah where you literally you're sitting on top of the show essentially in yeah that's right that's exactly right they're so close to it so you can really that and and the thing is with cabaret it's a little bit cabaret and comedy probably have a lot in common in that sense like stand-up comedy in that the person and the people that are presenting it they can't hide you know you have to be very comfortable with yourself in front of an audience and in front and and and open about yourself even if you're not talking like this show has got nothing to do with me I'm not talking about myself necessarily well I talk a couple of things about how I came to know Joni's music and things like that but but um you you can't be awkward you know you can't be you have to feel very comfortable being vulnerable and exposed and and up for anything you know that's that's and so that's kind of for me I love that I also am a comedian because that I'm not ever scared on stage.

[17:33] Queenie van de Zandt: Like if someone yells something out in the middle, I'm I not that I love that in the not that I really invite that in this show because it's so it's not a comedy show, you know.

[17:41] Josh Mitchell: Yeah.

[17:42] Queenie van de Zandt: But if people say things or they have experiences with the music, which they sometimes do, yeah. I I'm so happy to engage with that, you know, because I I I go, that's part of the experience. I would never then go, oh my god, someone's speaking in the bit that they shouldn't be speaking in. It's like you know, it's not like that at all, where you know, you you just go, Oh, what's the what this is something new? What's happened? Where's that gonna go? You know, it's exciting.

[18:04] Josh Mitchell: Was that inquisitiveness something you had as a kid as well coming into cabaret?

[18:10] Queenie van de Zandt: Excuse me. No, you're right. Oh, huh. Um, yeah, I think I think I've always been very inquisitive. I'm very um I'm a massive empath, so I'm very um I I've always feel very connected to people and to their experiences, and you know, feel like I can really understand people and what they're going through, and you know, yeah. So that's always been a very, you know, very big emotions and all those sorts of things. So that's very handy, I think, you know, being a cabaret artist. I feel like I've that's always been helpful, that curiosity, and you know, yeah, from a young age, yeah.

[18:49] Josh Mitchell: Was when you started performing, um was cabaret always your focus, or did you want to do something else?

[18:59] Queenie van de Zandt: No, when I started performing, I actually I mean, I started as a young child. My mum sort of I think I've always been a storyteller. That's what I sort of really relate to the most is that I you know, from a very young age, in fact, the very first thing I ever did was a was write. So I wrote my first play when I was in grade two, um, and put it on at school in my class and stuff like that. It was a little puppet show. Um, and from there I was always telling stories apparently at the end of the night. My mum said I used to, my dad, this is so gross, used to put his feet up on the table, the dinner table when it finished, you know, and I would make up stories with his toes. And my mum saw that and just thought, wow, she really loves, you know, she loves to tell stories.

I used to write poetry for competitions in the Canberra Times and the paper and stuff. So she said one day she saw something in the paper about this teacher who had led all these people to success at this, you know, Canberra, a Steadford. Um, and she said, Is that something you like to do? Go and do some, like go and do you know, performing and acting. And I said, Oh yeah, I'd love it. So that's how I started doing speech and drama. And so I did all those kind of a Steadfords and exams and things when I was young. So I my first love has always been acting and always been, but it's always been things like in the sense that you know it's also poetry and reading and like it, you know, reading aloud and and kind of yeah, prose and all that sort of stuff.

It's that has always been my first love. So, and that's all about telling stories. So when I started singing, I didn't really ever have any singing lessons or anything. I just started singing as an extension of that, really. Um, and then connected to again songs that told stories. So I've never in my life been a singer per se, like a band singer at gigs or like that's just I don't I don't like doing stuff like that. I find it really awkward and weird. It's like, oh god, you know, just to stand in the background and just sing. I think, ugh, but yeah, it has to be about telling a story for me, you know, singing. Um, and so yeah, so I think uh, but when I got to high school, I actually chose the school that I went to.

I chose it because it did great musicals, my last years of school, and so musicals were actually my first real that was the thing I really loved doing and wanted to do. But cabaret would just felt like a similar sort of thing, and there was no musicals in Canberra, so except for amateur musicals. So cabaret was the only way you could make money as an artist so I'd sort of started doing cabaret initially and then yeah really loved that and have always had that as a side hustle really to being on shows and and doing whatever else yeah.

[21:26] Josh Mitchell: I mean that that helps that you can fall back on that in between contracts if you would like doing bigger shows or like slide into that as well.

[21:34] Queenie van de Zandt: That's right the first 10 years of my life in my twenties really was about doing musicals I loved musical theatre and really wanted to just you know be in musicals all the time. Yeah and um but of course you know you can't be musicals all the time in this country. So whenever I wasn't performing that's exactly right I would just go oh okay well I'll write another show and put it on you know that was my fallback you know yeah and and it's sort of always I have to say cabaret has always really been that for me it's never been my like there are people like you know Dolly Diamond and Meow Meow where that's really their first thing that that's really their predominant thing that they do. It's it for me it actually hasn't always been it has always been something I do along with a lot of other things, you know but I ended up doing lots more of it just because of the way I don't know just because of you know the way that life goes and and um yeah yeah.

[22:23] Josh Mitchell: I love that. To wrap us up you've said you've taken this show on the road for five years. You would have had some pretty cool moments throughout those five years. What are some standout memories that you have from being able to perform this show to countless people?

[22:34] Queenie van de Zandt: I think the very first performance of it we I mean I was sick as a dog. It was the first time I'd really left my daughter, and it was six months after she was born. And I flew to um I flew to the Queensland Theatre to the Queensland Cabaret Festival, which I'd written the show for. And uh I was so ill uh and I could barely speak. I was like I had lost my voice, and I thought, oh my god, and I had to take steroids and I was in the airport pumping, you know, pumping my breast milk out, crying my eyes out in the toilet, thinking, what am I doing? Why did I do this? I don't even this isn't fun, like it was horrendous. You know, I had to leave at like 6 a.m. to get there at 10 to rehearse with the band for the first time ever.

We rehearsed from 10 till one, had a little break, then we did a tech all afternoon, and then we did the show. It was insane, like insane. Anyway, but it was wonderful, and and it was sold out. It sold out like weeks before it even opened to in this 550 seat theatre at the powerhouse in Brisbane, and um they just loved it. It got a massive standing ovation, and I just thought, oh my god, it's a great show. And I was like so happy with it. Um that was one really great memory, and another was doing it over in America. Um a friend of mine programmed it, he was a uh programmer at the Stanford uh at this cabaret festival they had at Stanford University, and so he programmed it there. And I I went over to America um that was you know, pre-COVID and uh and did it there.

That was so exciting just to be, you know, in this other country for a week doing my show was amazing. Um and then a bad memory was like just pre-COVID. We we after that on the on the strength of that, we then got a three week tour in America up and um we were literally four days away from I was packing my bag when COVID hit, and uh so it was like a Friday when COVID hit, you know, the 13th of May, uh March, I think it was, and yeah, we were due the next Monday or Tuesday we're I was getting on the plane it was like that was I was over there just at the end of February so I remember like it just kind of starting as I was leaving oh wasn't it yeah I literally flew from New York to LA and like New York everyone was chill about it got to LA and everyone was in masks and I was like what's happened in the last six hours what have I missed I know well my my producer was flying from Australia to New York so he was got like on the plane for like however many you know a day a day or whatever and um we started then we have associate producer in Sydney and her and I started talking and I was like shit I think this is I don't know if we can go and it was like oh and I was like no we have to go we have to go we've planned it for two years it's taken us two years to get this up you know within a matter of hours like four hours five hours we were leaving him messages saying look you know it's not looking good Neil da da da you know and then finally we're gonna have to cancel it Neil this is like like all the venues have started ringing up saying they're cancelling it you know there's we've lost too many venues it's like not even feasible and he responded to the very first message when he got off the plane he was catching up and so he put the first message plane and he rang us straight back or he chances straight back saying what are you talking about cancelling don't be ridiculous like and then and then suddenly like you know he obviously got through the message and actually started looking around and went yeah oh while I was in the plane this actually became a worldwide massive problem and yeah so oh crazy anyway yeah.

[26:15] Josh Mitchell: Good fun.

[26:16] Queenie van de Zandt: Anyway, we're doing it at Chapel off Chapel in July and at the Hayes in July. So I don't know the exact dates uh I've got them in front of me. So uh Chapel off Chapel is the 12th to the 17th of July, and then Hayes is the 19th to the 24th. So come in. Anyone listening?

[26:35] Josh Mitchell: Yes.

[26:35] Queenie van de Zandt: Get to those websites. Hayes, have it up on theirs. I'm sure Chapel off Chapel have it up on theirs. Get your tickets. Make sure you see this show. It's going to be something you're not going to want to miss. I will be there, I believe, on one of the nights. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I'll be there.

[26:52] Josh Mitchell: Um, but thank you so much for joining us, Quinny. I appreciate it.

[26:56] Queenie van de Zandt: No worries, it’ve been lovely. Thank you for having us.

[27:01] Josh Mitchell: My pleasure. And guys, we will be back next week with a brand new episode of the We Are Theatre Podcast. Bye.