Tiergarten, a Cabaret at Prototype
Andrew Ousley Gives Decadent and Provocative Evening
By: Susan Hall - Jan 19, 2026
The Prototype Festival, founded by Beth Morrison and the producers of HERE twenty years ago, has been at the forefront of new opera since its inception.
This season, a cabaret evening created by another new-performance impresario, Andrew Ousley, took a special place in Prototype.
How does a cabaret evening fit into the idea of opera? Morrison has always been open to different concepts of a story told in music—which is opera’s simplest definition.
The cabaret we first think of today comes from the world of I Am a Camera (John Van Druten), which evolved into a musical by Kander and Ebb and then became a classic Bob Fosse film.
Tiergarten tells the story of the relationship between talent and audience in a Weimar Republic nightclub.
Ousley calls his work Tiergarten, after the hall that now stands on the famous Berlin park—built by America to honor West Germany, and now a German house of culture.
For Ousley, it’s the politics of the period and its decadence that underlie the story: a confabulation of major moments in which decadence, as a symbol of freedom, and politics—the tyrannical effort of a few individuals to control their world—wrestle with each other.
Like Morrison’s other choices, Tiergarten entertains. Ousley discovered just the right MC, Kim David Smith, and knew immediately he was a master of ceremonies. Brecht/Weill’s “Pirate Jenny” anchors us in the Weimar, as the ship—the black freighter—bobs along in silhouette, thanks to Foreshadow Puppetry.
The MC is such fun that you almost forget the topic is of utmost seriousness, bringing us close to our unfortunate present moment. The question—what comes after the aftermath?—hangs over the evening, but does not dampen or dull it.
Ariadne Greif, a special figure in the opera world who you don’t see in traditional venues, gave a performance of a Handel aria in which Cleopatra mourns Caesar—jaw-droppingly beautiful. Like Iestyn Davies in Farinelli and the King, where Broadway audiences got to hear classical music at its most surprising and gorgeous, this reminds us of the old opera and makes it work today.
The creation of a fourth wall is evident in Tiergarten, and also in a hearty revival of “What Shall I Wear,” performed about two decades ago in Los Angeles. Now it’s at the Harvey Theater at BAM.
Beth Morrison convinces us that opera can pop up anywhere—and still be musically compelling and dramatically engaging.
Some feat.