DenaliUnderworld Theme Set For Weekend Cabaret

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Created on Thursday, 13 February 2025 16:53

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By GARLAND KENNEDY

Sentinel Staff Writer

    A lively jaunt into the depths of hell, complete with angels, devils, dance and kinky comedy will be on stage this weekend in Sitka’s annual Ramshackle Cabaret.

    This year’s theme, “Hot Damned,” will take the audience to an underworld where acts will hit on topics of morality, taboo and sin, all with a thick layer of suggestive humor.

    The show, which runs Friday and Saturday at Centennial Hall, combines all this with broader messages on bodily autonomy with the aim of bringing topics such as women’s reproductive rights and health care to the forefront.

    “The whole theme about hell, underworld, taboo is that we bring to light all the things that people don’t talk about all the time, and that has a lot to do with our theme this year – that it’s OK to talk about all these things,” said Ally Witherspoon, a longtime Cabaret performer and a member of the group’s leadership team.

    Her colleague on the stage, Erin Fulton, told the Sentinel at rehearsal Wednesday that Cabaret tends to highlight “things that are often hushed and you don’t talk about out loud or don’t talk about in polite company, of reproductive rights, of sexual health, of the importance of bodily autonomy as a human right, that should be something people can openly talk about, and we want it to be something people can openly talk about… This is going even further than saying yes, let’s talk about reproductive rights, bodily autonomy. Let’s just go a little bit further, talking into leaning into those kinks and taboos.”

    The four-hour show is open only to those 21 and older, and will lean into some “dark and creepy” vibes, Fulton, who is also on the group’s leadership team, added.

    The set is made to appear as if it’s in flame, an archetypically Christian depiction of the afterlife for sinners, but Witherspoon noted the setting serves as “everybody’s hell. It’s non-denominational hell.”

    Using that baseline theme, Witherspoon said this Cabaret is about “immersing yourself in a setting that some people may think is taboo, but again, we’re bringing it to the light. Bringing light to the underworld.”

    The show, Fulton added, dives into “different interpretations of what someone might consider, of like, ‘Ooh, this is someone’s personal hell, OK, yeah,’ or a taboo thing, or something that is sinful, or something that would put you in hell.”

    But hell, in this rendition, is not a universally negative place of torment.

A cabaret scene from the New Year's Eve program.

    “We’re very adamant that our underworld and our hell isn’t a terrible place to be... You can do what you want and be among like-minded folk,” Witherspoon said.

    In addition to the theme, which changes annually, the show will include all the gags and acts Cabaret fans are accustomed to. The theme of last year’s Ramshackle Cabaret was nautical -- “Sploosh: Come Get Your Deck Wet.”

    “We’ve got your classic burlesque acts, strip teases. We’ve got comedy acts. We’ve got a kind of a little bit of both strip and comedy, some gender bending,” Fulton said.

    Since its inception in 2012 – when it was a much more improvised event – Sitka’s Ramshackle Cabaret has raised about $130,000 for donations to various groups that focus on abortion access, women’s rights and health care. The organization gave money to the local Planned Parenthood clinic before that office in Sitka shut down, and now gives money to groups like Sitkans Against Family Violence, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest and the Northwest Abortion Access Fund.

    The goal is to keep the funds as local as possible, Witherspoon said.

    Fulton was grateful to see the community coalesce around the show for over a decade, and was happy for the chance to engage in simultaneous art and advocacy.

    “We see the people come out to support it, we’re creating this really positive, supported, supportive community. And then we get to write big honking checks every year to these things,” Fulton said, “and knowing that it is going to places like it’s going to help at Sitkans Against Family Violence. We can earmark at Planned Parenthood to say we wanted to stay in and help people in Southeast Alaska. This is not going to a lobbying fund. This is going to help patients who need to access health care.”

    Doors open Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and the show begins an hour later, an earlier start than in previous years. Tickets cost $35 and are for sale in cash at Old Harbor Books and at the door. The audience capacity in Centennial Hall’s main auditorium is about 300. An ID is required to enter, and a cash bar run by the Mean Queen will be at the event.

    Cabaret, for Fulton, provides both an artistic escape and a mechanism to transmit a positive message.

    “It’s escapism in some way, (the audience) can have a fun day, they can see some crazy art, but it’s also going to be something more than just fun, crazy, escapism – it’s with a purpose,” Fulton said. “Cabaret has always been really political. It’s a pressure cooker for progressive ideas and politics, and it’s still the same here, and it’s a place where we are among like-minded people who are very supportive and uplifting of each other, to have each other’s backs.”