Episode 22: Paulus The Cabaret Geek, Part 2

My guest today is Paulus The Cabaret Geek. Known for his 2018 and 2019 appearances as one of the judges on the BBC talent show "All Together Now," Paulus is (at his core) a cabaret performer, working in the world of variety entertainment for 30 years. He has performed in musicals, plays and on television, but his passion for cabaret, vaudeville, review and music hall has dominated his career, whether it be as a performer, promoter, agent or producer.

Drag has been a recurring theme in Paulus's workmen's cutting his teeth at the world famous Madam Jojo's in 1999 as Trinity Million. He made his New York debut in 2005 at both Don't Tell Mama and Birdland. He has performed at venues throughout the world.

In this episode Paulus talks about his favorite history, Cabaret.

Today in part 2 of my interview with Paulus The Cabaret Geek we go deep into the bigger implications of cabaret, historically and today. If you haven't done so already, we strongly recommend you go back and listen to part 1 of this interview.

Be sure to stick around to the end for the big reveal of Paulus singing "Tribe" from the forthcoming "Making of Paulus," You won't want to miss it!

Paulus's Youtube

Paulus website

Up Yer Arts podcast

Paulus on social media:
Instagram
Facebook
Twitter

Resources:
Le Chat Noir
Rudolphe Salis
The Cabaret by Lisa Appignanesi
John Major
My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall
Space Oddity, David Bowie
Otto Dix

Pirate Jenny, 5 versions:
Lotte Lenya
B. Arthur
Nina Simone
Amanda Palmer
Sasha Velour

Pop Culture:
Cabaret, 1972 film starring Liza Minelli

Movies/Series that Break the 4th Wall
Michaela Coel, Che

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 0:16

Thank you for joining us today for armchair historians. I'm your host, Anne Marie Cannon, armchair historians is a Belgian rabbit production. Stay up to date with us through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Wherever you listen to your podcast that is where you'll find us. You can also find us at armchair historians.com armchair historians as an independent, commercial free podcasts. If you would like to support the show, you can buy us a cup of coffee through cofee or you can become a subscribing member through Patreon. You can find links to both in the Episode Notes. Today, in part two of my interview with Paulus, the cabaret geek, we go deep into the bigger implications of cabaret historically and today. If you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend you go back and listen to part one. Check out the Episode Notes to find out more about Paulus and the history of cabaret. Be sure to stick around to the end of the episode. For the big reveal of policy singing the song tribe from the forthcoming making a palace. You won't want to miss it.

Paulus: 1:58

My name is is from the history of cabaret itself. And it is and it's very weird. It won't surprise anybody to hear that my real name is Paul. And I'm now called Paulus. And from a very young age, we go around to my friend's house. So one particular friend called Michael and his dad would answer the door and in this very sort of 1980s, English jokey, Daddy doesn't make any sense and never explains their weird jokes way. would call me call us the words No, and then wander off. And Michael would come to the door. And I was like, what, what is the word? Why am I being called Paul as the witness and he would never explain what it was when we didn't have the internet back then. So I never found out until recently. And then fast forward like 10 years and I meet my friends there, Louise, who's directing my current cabaret show and is also a cabaret performer herself. And she does Latin at a posh school and I went to and she starts calling me pull this bang jewelers and I was like, what's that name again, like, I never elected to be called this name, but it's coming back again. And then I moved to London and I went to drama school and I lived with a girl called Becky and she just started to call me Paulus Martinez, My surname is Martin. And none of these things were brought up by me I had never tried to sort of get make this a fit. We just kept coming back again. And again and again when I was 1020, Geneva, and then about, I suppose six or seven years ago, read this book by our old Prime Minister john major. You remember though it used to be in the 90s. We had a prime minister in the UK, who was often caricature just being gray and only liking to interpeace because he was saved down. His name was john major, but he wrote a book about the history of music hall. And he wrote it partly because his father was a music hall performer called Tom major, or sometimes known as Major Tom. And David berry got the line, Ground Control to Major Tom from seeing an old poster for Tom majors Music Hall act, he was magician It was a magician and magician's assistant that his secondary system was john major's mother, this sort in an old venue. And that's how he came to write the lines Ground Control to Major Tom.

Anne Marie Cannon: 4:23

So we know that that's Yeah,

Paulus: 4:26

I read so I read this book about the history of cabaret. And six years ago, I was very bored of my onstage clown when I felt it had run its course it done its job and I liken my old onstage persona as a host of these to a one of a very eager puppy that wants everybody to love them. And it was very over that as I was turning 40 I don't want to do that anymore. Or this pleasing people. I'm done with that. And as I was morphing into Paulus and finding this sort of cat like you Yes, I'm fabulous. No, you can't touch sort of attitude in contrast, rich, which is what I do when I'm hosting. I came upon this part of the book, which was about a French music hall performer in the late 1800s, around 1888 as well, they used to work both in France and in London and this thing was Paulus. Ah, and it's back again that night is back again. That's amazing.

Anne Marie Cannon: 5:28

So I don't worry. Yeah,

Paulus: 5:31

yeah, so I've adopted it from a dead Frenchman.

Anne Marie Cannon: 5:33

So 1880 is that when we see the first cabaret 1981

Paulus: 5:40

is the year that Rudolph Salus opened the first lush and while the Chateau itself lasted until 1887, but it moved and went up that road to the Walmart in that time. So even even that wasn't the same place. Yeah, and then it just this amazing sort of World Tour, sort of like, and then it disappears from Paris and then cabarets up in Hungary. And then there's one over there in Russia and there is in Belgium, I believe, is part of the street before it settles into the 1920s in German cabaret, or cabaret, cabaret with a K and two T's on the end. And this, this sort of Otto Dix inspired aesthetic on the wall was and again, that's very much referred to in the movie of the musical cabaret as well.

Anne Marie Cannon: 6:32

So where do you see cabaret? Well, now Not now, because we're in the pandemic. But where is it being done? Well, besides what you do,

Paulus: 6:46

that's not for me to say that. I'm doing it well at all. Not many places. If I'm completely honest with you, obviously, I'm based in London and I have been now for 25 plus years. And so my experience is largely of London and the UK. But I have to stay in spite of that. And you know, having come to the US to teach and try and see what I could have the cabaret scene performed in Australia, and done the thing there, Paris, Berlin, Nicaragua, I think the people that are doing it the most true to know fourthwall a dialogue with the audience, a platform, a dissent, from the populist view, the avant garde, the satirical, I do believe it's in London, and I do believe it's been in London for a couple of decades. Now. A lot of people don't want to recognize us and have been trying to ignore us for almost 20 years, I've gotten into enormous arguments with me, you know, critics and reviewers who 20 years ago, were writing articles. You know, when we had things like newspapers and journalists in this country, which we don't know, really, we're writing articles saying that cabaret is dead, and I'm writing them in email going, sorry, I just put one on last night. And there's another one on tomorrow night, which you please stop saying why didn't come and see what these people are doing rather than saying, no cabaret is dead. There's a huge divide. And this is very particular to America. There's the Great American Songbook. There's the songbook style of cabaret there's two pretty extremely glibly, you know, people rocking up in their best black dress singing the their favorite songs, or the songs they can sing best, which I don't think of is cabaret that may I think maybe that's more of a cafe concept, which is pre cabaret. And I don't think anybody needs to hear your best song. Most cabaret performers the really famous cabaret performers aren't the best vocalists, but the best storytellers. Okay. Marlena Dietrich. Elaine Stritch, br author, they are tremendous. Writers Really? Yeah. Yeah. Can Google the Google br for singing or be Arthur cabaret? Oh my god. Singing from Golden Girls. Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 9:17

Oh, that's just a shocking okay. I didn't know that.

Paulus: 9:20

Right. Yeah, yeah. So find be officine pirate Jenny. One of the things I like to do with my students, especially in drama schools during the week that I work with them. I play them the same song I play them a YouTube video of the same song performed by five different people. And pirate Jenny is a very good example because pyrogenic was written by Bertolt Brecht for the Threepenny Opera, and there is a video of Lottie Lamia singing it to was Brookes wife and one of the very first people I believe to perform if not the first person to perform that song. There is the artist version. There is Nina Simone's version. Amanda Palmer's first And, and taking your write up today there's Sasha, the law of drag races version and we watch them all during the week and we explore how you can make something your own. And yeah, from the same place that the same origin. You know,

Anne Marie Cannon: 10:21

Tom Waits, you know, he's him and his wife, amazing songwriters. And I don't know if you listen to Johnny Cash, but he's covered quite a few of his songs.

Paulus: 10:31

I just remember the name of it. That song we were talking about earlier. It's Martha. Martha. Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 10:39

And that's, that's what people do with his songs. And you did that with a new coat of paint. Yeah, you know, I love that idea of the same song but making it your own.

Paulus: 10:51

Yeah, absolutely. I growing up in Kent, in a very small minded, middle part of middle England in a very small minded period in history as well. Very white, very conservative, very curtain twitching, and being very calm, very feminine. What people would probably now called queer. I mean, they did then, but not as a positive. It wasn't that it wasn't a celebration. I didn't want to sing songs for men or boys. I wanted to sing the songs that Bette Midler and Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera was singing, they were the people that the characters that spoke to me and they were the songs that spoke to me and when you I trained in musical theater, and a lot of people I meet in cabaret come from the musical theater. slipper, which we spend our lives as musical theater performers being put into little boxes, as far as what your your certain weight. So you're the you're the funny best friend, or you're asserting height. And even though we think you're great, you're too tall to play opposite the leading man here, or, you know, age or sex or sexuality. It's the tick box exercise. And I know a lot of people that work in the West End, and often, I'm very sorry to say this, but it is true. Often, you know, who gets the roll in lame is a Rob will be down to whether they fit the existing costume or not, as opposed to whether they are better than the other person left in the final two on that. And that's business. And that's commerce. And that's the way the world is. But with cabaret, none of that matters. And often, I think people are attracted to our world, from musical theater, not just nice, good data, because we celebrate the difference. We celebrate the diverse we celebrate the free, we let our freak flag fly.

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:50

So is it possible that all of that is characteristic, a distinctive characteristic of cabaret is that it is going to ruffle the feathers of the mainstream and therefore the mainstream are going to criticize it. So it almost seems to me that from what you've explained to me what you've really covered a lot and explained it very well is that if the mainstream or whatever, you know that the politicians or whatever, Simon Cowell, if they're criticizing it, then that means that it's cabaret.

Paulus: 13:30

Yes, My work here is done. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think what what's what was angering is that there was the suggestion that the quality of what we're doing isn't good enough. Where is the fact of the content I think that most naysayers have an issue with, you know, to have the balls to stick your head above the parapet and say, I don't agree with that. I don't want you to wear that super dry outfit. So this everybody else is wearing, or I'm not going to be a masculine male because I was born with a penis, you know, I don't have any desire to have my Venus taken away, but nor do I have any desire to act like a bloke is supposed to act all the time. I mean, who's the one that's living in a cage here? If we are, if we're dissenting, again, I use that word very deliberately from the majority. And there's something that you want to stay which is gonna be a bit of a fly in the ointment, then you can you can stay on Twitter and do it anonymously and hide behind your screen or you could you could put on a lash and and stand in a spotlight and own in front of people who know who you are, and have the right to reply because there won't be a fourth.

Anne Marie Cannon: 14:54

That's brilliant. Well, you know, so, George Floyd, I think you probably are aware of that whole evolution after his murder by police officers. Somehow I'm getting back to everything that we're talking about. And I hope I can meander back there. As a white woman who grew up, my father was a police officer. And I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, which was a very white community. My father was racist. And I, I do remember him yelling at the TV and raising his fists, and I would go in the corner and cry because there was so much hatred coming out of him. And so I thought, well, you know, that means that I'm not racist. And what I discovered after this last, I mean, how many times do we have to be reminded of how racist our society is? I mean, it's all rooted also in slavery. I mean, you know, you don't recover from that. And so there's something about this last go around, that really made me uncomfortable, because there's a part of me that when people are saying, Oh, you know, systemic racism, blah, blah, blah, for some reason, it punctured into that racist part of me this last time, and it was really uncomfortable. And I knew that I had to be in the discomfort and own that, you know, the discomfort that people feel as a result of it. That is a really good place to start with yourself to become a more authentic person, I think is looking inside of ourselves. And seeing, you know, I my best friend is a gay man who's you know, married to a lovely man, Paul. And Paul always talks about his homophobia. And I'm like, What are you talking about?

Paulus: 16:43

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So internal homophobia? Absolutely.

Anne Marie Cannon: 16:48

So a lot. Yeah. And I think it's about not being one or the other. But it's, it's, you know, for me, the place that is going to help me to grow is to be in that discomfort. And it seems like cabaret offers that in a lot of ways.

Paulus: 17:05

Well, again, going right back to Paris in the in the 1880s. The person who was who was the owner, or the proprietor or the manager was often the emcee and the host on the stage for a lot of these shows, because, partly because for financial reasons, you know, you can't afford to pay a separate compare. So people like Rudolph Salus and a rusty blue on after him who turned the shaft wire into the middle the time, they were extremely rude to their customers. And the richer the customer, the more famous or the more genuine by the customer, the ruder they were to them on entry, and people thought that it was a joke. And you know, it's very well documented that wasn't really a joke. It was a tremendous amount of design. Because, again, going back to I really should have chosen 1881 is my Yeah. Going back right there. The the coverings were, firstly, for the for the artists to gather and share ideas and opinions and and creations. And then it started to quickly be opened up to people who were fascinated by these people have different opinion. And, and of course, what you never really know is whether somebody's showing up because they're fascinated by your difference of opinion and what are interested in learning, whether they've just come to point and laugh at the monkey in the cage. And, and you never know, which that's going to be to this day, when you step out on a stage of the rise show a cabaret burlesque show, I certainly don't anyway, but speaking to no discomfort and and what's going on in both yours and my country. As far as Black Lives Matter. We're also having an enormous conversation about women and women's voices and being better represented and the pay gap and all of that. In January this year, I became a podcast of my own, which is called up your arts. And it's a 45 minute conversation which I co host with a woman, Emily who is a burlesque teacher, and she employs me to host her cabaret show as well. And, and and a guest, and that guests might be a stand up comic or a burlesque dancer or a fire eater, or what have you and embarking upon being the middle aged white man in almost all of those conversations, and being well aware that the only thing I had on my side is the fact that I'm gay. Otherwise, the permission to speak there's there's almost It is not our time it is not it is not the width of the middle aged white man's time to speak. Right is the time for other people to speak and the fact that I am queer, proudly queer and different, is I think the only reason why I am still hosting things in sharing things and comparing things. And if I can move forward, giving a spotlight and a platform to people who don't feel that their voices being heard or that feel they are missed or under represented, and I can use a guess my power, being a white middle aged man, for that kind of good, then then there's something really promising about my potential future as a cabaret host and facilitator. And I just want to keep an eye on making sure that other people have the thing you know, and get the spotlight, you were speaking earlier on, about about the future, and about how cabaret may shape it. And you know, we've already lost tremendously old, tremendously well loved theatres up and down this country, and we're gonna lose a lot more. They are stunningly beautiful historical buildings with hundreds of years of theatrical history in them and how government could not care a shift. It's almost like they wish this had happened earlier. And the low fine, easy to throw up in a tent or a basement or cellar nomadic cheeping cheerful spit and sawdust nature of cabaret. Here's the good news. Here's the lemonade, could well be the path back to impart at least, to the arts in this country, and possibly further afield. I don't know because I'm too busy going oh my god, but let's just close down.

Anne Marie Cannon: 21:50

Well, that's what I love about England. I lived in London in 2012. Just for three months, but it's all the history everywhere you like yeah,

Paulus: 22:00

great years to be here. That's the Olympics, isn't it?

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:03

Yeah, but everything was under construction when I was before. But um, it was. Yeah. And we we were supposed to be coming in. May we were coming for three weeks. Because my fantasy is to live in England for three months out of the year, like I did in 2012. It's It's a hard thing to figure out. But we were supposed to come in not. May for three weeks. And thank you COVID. But I started a podcast. So there's my lemonade, I guess.

Paulus: 22:36

Absolutely. Yeah.

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:38

But yeah, it just breaks my heart when I hear that because the history there. That's the thing I love the most you get off the tube station Tower Hill. And if you walk the right way see a Roman wall? Yeah,

Paulus: 22:51

yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it's,

Anne Marie Cannon: 22:55

that's very sad.

Paulus: 22:56

Well, they wouldn't, they wouldn't allow the building to be bulldozed. Because we have listed buildings in in the UK, they can be grade two listed or grade one listed building and so they're protected. But as far as when we talk about theatre being dark when there's no production in it, and and the entire theatre industry has been dark for almost entirely dark in the whole of the UK for six months. Yeah, yeah. And, and just hearing on a daily basis that another one won't reopen. Or that pantomime, you know, we have a huge, rich history of pantomime in this country is really one of the only places in the world that pantomime happens. And for a lot of theater venues in the UK. I mean, almost all I would say especially regional theaters up and down the country. The money they make on a pantomime will bankroll the rest of the year. So even if you don't like pantomime, there are a good few people in the country that don't. But you like to see an Agatha Christie play or a jukebox musical that's coming to your town or whatever it or stand up comedian that you love from the TV or whatever they've bankrolled, but the pantomime has bankrolled those things. The may may make a loss. So it's the knock on effect is going to be enormous. And it's going to take years and years and years. And I I will be very interested to see which practitioners are suddenly keen as mustard to be on a cabaret stage, when it's the only stage available to them, because it's the one that can be thrown back up or hers soon enough. And they already are. People are already performing and cabaret again in London and other parts of the UK as well. And I myself will begin back on stage with my new show about Victoria wood who you probably don't know, but she was a huge, huge

Anne Marie Cannon: 24:57

I did a little bit of research. Yeah, yeah, that's Was it was part of my rabbit hole and I did do a little research who was a comedian and she was an entertainer a singer. Yeah.

Paulus: 25:06

Yeah, absolutely. And interestingly enough, I I've been in love with her since I was 10. When I first saw Victoria on on television, and she came to prominence originally in the 70s, through a talent competition, not dissimilar to the one I used to judge on one of the judges say this is the late 70s. on ITV channel three. In our country, one of the judges said of her act, they said, This woman is doing sophisticated cabaret, and there's no such thing. So even as far back as the late 70s, we have this history of British television talent judges issuing the existence or the validity of Cadbury as a genre war, Victoria wood went on to be the most beloved entertainer that this country has, arguably, this country has ever seen. Certainly the most beloved female and saying, this country's ever seen and probably the most diverse entertainer that this country's ever seen. So I rest my case. So I'm getting back on a cabaret stage with a perspex glass. This is the irony there is okay, a fourth wall between me in the audience later this month, because we have to have a piece of perspex glass between me and then I just found out say I'm very sad about it, but it's getting on the stage and doing the show is more important than been arguing about a bit.

Anne Marie Cannon: 26:28

I'm excited to hear that you are getting back on the stage. I'm going to ask the question, Where do we see this in pop culture this history?

Paulus: 26:36

I would suggest that you look out for TV and movies that are breaking the fourth wall. And the most famous example international example I think at the moment is Deadpool the movies at the Deadpool movies, because he that character breaks the fourth wall on a regular basis in both the sequel and the original. Have you had the TV show? fleabag in the US?

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:03

I know. I haven't watched it I you Did you get it? Everybody keeps telling me Yeah, you got to watch this. You got to watch this. Okay, yes.

Paulus: 27:10

So Phoebe Waller bridge made this this sitcom, I guess, for want of a better phrase called fleabag. And she breaks the fourth wall on a regular basis. And she talks directly to the audience. But it's important to note that she was not the first person doing bad in this. In this era, there is a person of color, what is the prize, they got overlooked, and a rich white woman got instead called Michaela Cole, and she's amazing. And her first TV show which isn't the best or the second one better, but how fessed up showed chewing gum that was doing what fleabag did a couple of years before. So I would just say look out for anything that's breaking the fourth wall that's talking to me that's inviting a dialogue. And it's saying, I'm a performer, because if we go back to the Threepenny Opera, and Brett Albrecht and pirate Jenny as performed by Greg's wife, Laci lainnya that I mentioned earlier on Brechtian theater is all based around constantly reminding the audience that this is a piece of entertainment, and I am a performer here. We see it in Shakespeare with certain characters, not all the characters. And of course, we sit and stand up comedy all the time, they talk directly to audiences, and pantomine does it loads and loads and loads and loads and loads. So just keep an eye out for that. And it's happening more and more in Hollywood movies and on TV all the time, actually.

Anne Marie Cannon: 28:38

Wow. Good answer. Yay. What's the most important thing that you want to leave people with that you want people to know about cabaret?

Paulus: 28:49

I think the opportunity to meet a performer intimately is unique to cabaret. There aren't that many performers who can do it really well. I remember, a long time ago, I met up with a mate who we'd gone to the same drama school he'd gone off and been very, very successful in many, many musicals. I'd gone off and done cabaret almost immediately and never come back from from it. And I said, to call this friend of mine as that, because he'd come to see me in a cabaret theatre venue I used to promote and put on shows that and I said to him, we you should come and do a show with me or at least guest and come and get up and sing a song. This man who played Phantom in Phantom of the Opera in the West End, he toured around the country around the world and very famous shows playing very, very big roles. And he said, Tony, I could never do what you do. Not in a million years. I was 15 years into my cabaret career by then, and I had offered and work to and given work to hundreds of people at that point, many of whom had come from musical theater. And not once that I heard that reply before. And the acknowledgement that is a different skill, and a scary role early exposing thing to do as a performer was, I will be forever grateful to Carl for, for making that abundantly clear to me, because the only people that think that they can just rock up and show off their voice got very little to do with that. It's sharing sharing an intimate part of yourself. And how often do do we get the opportunity to me to complete stranger in 45 minutes, two hours and go home going? Wow. It's a completely different point of view, you know, a view of the world didn't agree with everything they said. They're not the best thing I've ever heard. Something's downright annoying. But it made me think, yeah, unless there's the patent.

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:04

That's really beautiful. Beautifully put.

Unknown: 31:07

Thank you.

Anne Marie Cannon: 31:11

Okay, so I do like to give my guests if they have a platform, but you have a huge platform, currently creating content, I could never keep up with that, like doing putting out as much content as you have been doing, especially since the pandemic, but what are you doing? What are your projects?

Paulus: 31:34

Too much, is kind of the answer and has been for all of my career. Really, I wish I could just choose one thing, and stick to it. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a magpie, I get too excited about different things. But I'm 45 now. And I feel the need to sort of pare things down a bit and just focus in at least for a little while on on one thing, and maybe the lack of performing opportunities that are clearly going to be around for a good couple of years because of Coronavirus is a reason to finally write that book on how to be a cabaret performer. Certainly for the rest of this year, I'll be giving my first one hour version of my tribute show to Victoria wood across the UK. And I think I've got five different venues between now and Christmas. So I'll be I'll be very happy to get back on stage and do that with my pianist Michael roustan. And then he'll go off and get busy with the much much more talented people that you work with, that can guarantee, do their show. And I'll write the two apps version and get Jordan Clarke to be my company has never heard of Victoria Woods because he's too young to be part of the story.

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:52

And I did want to ask you about thrift Are you a thrifter

Paulus: 32:57

I, I've been working for the last five years with a festival called the Festival of Thrift which is in the northeast of the country. And this year had to be online and I hosted the five hour live stream of the of the festival without a script. And that was really great. I learned loads and loads of stuff are very, very steep learning curve very fascinating. So I have ended up because the professor has been very aware of you know, waste, and the cyclical economy and recycling or the lack thereof in this country. And yeah, I'm really, really into it, I'm looking over at my dressing room table, we have a we have this product, I'm not going to say the name of it. But we have this product in the UK, I wonder if it's if you have I'm sure you have one similar, if not the same name for spraying fabrics that you can't put in the washing machine easily. Right to like get out upon the smell. And a lot of my costumes are hand made, and the one covered in badges is very, very difficult to clean. So this bottle, that's like I mean it's so thin now I think you get 50 mils of it. And it's three pounds, and as another bottle of going into the world. And I found out that you can make your own from a tiny, tiny bit of concentrated disinfectant with a nice smell to it, and loads of water and to save yourself seven quid and save the planet from another bottle. And my other fabulous, fabulous thrifty tip. I love this tip, because I have spent a lot of time in hotels and bed and breakfasts when I'm working. And, surprisingly enough, I don't use the shower caps very often. But one of the people at the festival turned me on to the idea of taking the shower caps home that you get in hotel rooms and using them. Instead of clingfilm of Saran wrapping, you might call it just a cover plates, and bowls of leftovers and stuff and you can wash it and reuse it like six, seven times. It's really brilliant.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:01

festival is not just about thrifting. Like, for fashion, it's about thrifting and upcycling. I guess I didn't understand that part of it.

Paulus: 35:11

Yeah, it's about sustainability. Really the right to repair is a big conversation that we have on on an annual basis what throughout the year as well, of course, and what businesses are doing or should be doing to to be greener themselves. Yeah, it's, it's award winning brilliant festival. I'm tremendously proud to be involved with it for the last five years.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:34

Thank you. I cannot thank you enough. It's been a really nice. Thank you. I hope I get to meet you someday in person.

Paulus: 35:41

Yeah. That would be lovely, very lovely.

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:45

persevere through the Java thing. And they're having lemonade. Keep making lemonade. All right. You take her. Oh, thanks for being here. Thank you so much.

Paulus: 36:00

My pleasure. Okay.

Anne Marie Cannon: 36:03

There you have it. That was my interview with policy, the cabaret geek. For more information about policy and cabaret, be sure to check out our episode notes. And now without further ado, I leave you with Paulus singing tribe. Music and Lyrics by Paul L. Martin, and Jordan Clark. Thanks for joining us. Have a great week.

Paulus: 36:33

Where's my crew? my tribe who are my people? Where to reside. hopes and dreams are now tropes and me. Well, my T shirts or skin stripy are spotted I'm the leader you want to follow me? How can I approach risking that show ghost even if I knew what's my sign? What's my rising? Is this the right key? How's my crazy? making choices. I'm stuck without those voices. Still to me. You can adjust to but what the hell square peg. last straw, last leg What is my What is my where's my group? Where's my try? How do I survive hopes and dreams