Yale Cabaret Lands The Parachute

by DONALD BROWN

Blood-spattered limbs. Wigs and heels. A marriage in trouble. Angels and demons, birds and fish. All of these and more are part of the Yale Cabaret’s current season, as it has returned to in-person dining and theater under an inspired and historic artistic team pursuing the venerable old goal of delivering the shock of the new.

The Yale Cabaret, located in a basement at 217 Park St., has been through some changes of late. Founded in 1968 as a location for experimental theater and run by students at the then-Yale School of Drama, the Cab, as it is generally known, had to close its doors in March 2020 when the pandemic prevented Yale students from returning to school from spring break. Like many theaters in the area, the Cab had to find ways to cope — including online productions in 2020, and in 2021, productions mostly created on campus but streamed to an audience. Into 2022, masked attendance was allowed in the Cab space with masked performers. Then, toward the end of last season, the performers were allowed to be mask-free. Today, the audience must still mask while the show is on.

The Cab, which had long established its reputation as a place for offbeat theater together with convivial food and drink, was unable to reopen its kitchen until the current season. Which means that, as of fall 2022, the Cab returned to what many old-timers remember it as — which hasn’t been the case since March 2020. A long time, as student populations go.

Another major change occurred in 2021 when media mogul and philanthropist David Geffen donated $150 million to the Yale School of Drama, since then rechristened The David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. The donated funds allow the school to offer tuition-free admissions. To cope with pandemic interruptions to normal instruction and scheduled productions, enrolled students were permitted an extra year for what is typically a threeyear program.