ABOUT TIME. With Michaela Dudley

When it comes to her roles – most recently, for example, for an appearance in the film “Geschlechterkampf: Das Ende des Patriarchats” (“Battle of the Sexes: The End of Patriarchy”) by Sobo Swobodnik and Margarita Breitkreuz – Michaela Dudley prefers to tailor them to herself. She also writes the music and lyrics for the songs she performs, translates films for American audiences, and writes columns and commentaries that take an unusually sharp and clear stance against anti-Semitism from an intersectional perspective in current discourse. “Eingefleischt vegane Domina zieht vom Leder” (“A vegan dominatrix incarnate lets rip”) is the title of her cabaret program, and Dudley’s public persona is that of a self-declared “diva in diversity” and a “woman without a menstrual background”. One might say that she dishes it out in all directions, never sparing her own environment – lovingly, but with all due seriousness.

Here, Michaela Dudley discusses the beauty of small clubs, cabaret as a supreme discipline, the humor in the German language, the danger of the zeitgeist, and how social media have radically changed her own work.

Michaela, do you remember your very first appearance on stage as a cabaret artist?

Michaela: Oh yes, although it’s now fifty years ago! It was in the USA, and I was thirteen. As a child I was chosen to read on Sundays during Mass – after all, I was top of the year at the Catholic school. Dear me, I was such a slight thing with Coke-bottle glasses, lanky, but incredibly mischievous –which helped me deal with the bullying.

One Sunday, when I approached the pulpit a violent storm was raging outside. You could even see the lightning through the stained-glass windows. Suddenly the lights went out. The priest took the opportunity to take a swig from the bottle and gestured for me to continue. But I couldn’t see in the candlelight. So one of the altar boys handed me a flashlight, and it glowed like a scarlet lamp. To make matters worse, I accidentally bumped into the Bible, and when I picked up the book of books again, the bookmark ribbon had been displaced. The lesson I was supposed to read was John 3:16 from the New Testament: “For God so loved the world ...”

But I couldn’t find the passage anymore, so I had no choice but to find another lesson. It happened to be Corinthians 6:13, which was almost elliptical in terms of the numbers, but the content was rather more explosive by comparison. I, still in puberty, read out: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord…” Then I concluded with the improvised addition: “Reading from the red-light district.” I was alluding to the flashlight, but also to the biblical fascination with the world’s oldest profession. Pretty bold for a thirteen-year-old.

I had the devil in me at church. I thought I’d be beaten immediately. My mother, who was sitting at the organ, commented with a gloomy minor chord. The priest had a coughing fit – I can still see his quivering stomach. All of a sudden, though, the people burst into embarrassed laughter.

These days, presumably not to the liking of the church community, you regularly appear on stage with your cabaret program “Eine eingefleischt vegane Domina zieht vom Leder” (“A vegan dominatrix incarnate lets rip”). Did you have any role models?

Michaela: I had influences, yes. Joan Rivers, Don Rickles, Dick Gregory, Flip Wilson. Jewish and Black women. Always with a combination of self-irony and social satire. Biting and brutal, but witty. Plus the great Mark Russell, the musical satirist. All of them have now sadly passed away, but they inspired me.

You’ve been a guest on television several times, watched by a quarter of a million people, but at the same time you also perform in small clubs to audiences of barely 100. Which do you like better?

Michaela: Both kinds of experiences motivate me. On TV you get a huge impact straight away, but in the small clubs you can actually see people. You can hear them breathing. You can even smell the ones who like garlic. And feel them. With the ones in the front row, you can really get up close and personal. I had that recently, doing stand-up in Hamburg-Ottensen. The intimacy is great.

How has cabaret work changed for you since you started out – your own performance, but also the business, the audience?

Michaela: The internet – and especially “social” media – mean that younger people expect crisp sound bites. “Let’s skip to the good part.” Instant thigh-slappers. Unfortunately, that’s like sex without the foreplay. Because cabaret is about storytelling; there’s a certain drama to it, which isn’t always concerned with being broken down into 15-second clips. Of course, I have one-liners in my repertoire, but they’re like salt and pepper, seasoning the dish.
In a completely different respect, some changes are very welcome: I’m an enthusiastic supporter, for example, of the efforts made by my amazing and award-winning colleague Gesine Cukrowski when it comes to the visibility of women over 50 and gender diversity in film, television, and theater.

You are an author, lawyer (Juris Dr., US), diversity expert, translator, actress, and you’re even ex-military. But cabaret is, as you say, the “supreme discipline” for you. Why is that?

Michaela: As a queen, I love the “king’s discipline”, as it’s called in German. Cabaret is entertainment with socio-critical relevance. It challenges both the intellect and the audience’s laughter muscles. But cabaret is there to be a dig at both the system and those who blindly enthuse for it. Yes, not just the machinery, but the mob itself. Because hardly anything is as dangerous to the future as the zeitgeist.

How dangerous is the current zeitgeist?

Michaela: Very dangerous. Since October 7, 2023, long-simmering anti-Semitism has been flaring up viciously, under the guise of criticism of Israel. But what does “guise” mean? By now, left-wingers in particular are carrying hatred of Jews around like a monstrance. The left-wing firewall once hoped to be a barrier to anti-Semitism has gone up in flames. At the same time, it’s cool in the woke community to give Jewish rape victims the cold shoulder. Where’s the solidarity in that?

In your newspaper commentaries, you denounce the lack of empathy for Jews from an intersectional standpoint. Recently, you were also a guest at the Jewish Community in Frankfurt.

Michaela: I do what I can. Educate, act, agitate. You know, this is the homeland of the Holocaust. “Nip it in the bud! Never again is now!”, as they used to shout at the protests. When I was growing up in the USA in the 1960s, I played with the children of Holocaust survivors. It welded us together. Anyhow, I miss the compassion of many in the entertainment industry when it comes to the suffering of Jewish people.

Notably, almost no one born in Germany has had this experience of growing up with Jewish survivors. This brings us to another biographical peculiarity, at least from a West German perspective: You grew up in the USA, but your father taught you a few German phrases early on.

Michaela: My African-American father was born in 1917, and during his childhood German was the primary foreign language at school. Afterwards, when he was in the US Air Force during the Second World War, it came in useful to a certain extent. Anyway, I learned German from him, even before school, but also from German-language radio broadcasts such as RIAS and SFB. Later, as a teenager, I enjoyed watching German-language films in the original language, whether by Fritz Lang or Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  

Problems don’t disappear when they are exterminated superficially. But isn’t the counter-extreme also a free pass to vent all kinds of resentment against other people?

Michaela: But then it’s no longer a discipline. Then it’s no longer cabaret, but agitation. And agitation is not an opinion and therefore not worth protecting. 

Speaking of disciplines: You also work as a journalist and lawyer, both very language-based activities, like cabaret. Do you see these as two different ways of working and looking at the world? Where do they go together, and where do they clash?

Michaela: Both disciplines, law and journalism, require quick-wittedness and objectivity. And these two qualities are also crucial for cabaret. Yes, cabaret demands objectivity. It’s all about analyzing. Moreover, you need to have a sense of drama, regardless of whether it’s on the stage, in the courtroom, or in the editorial office. Although the scope is different in each case, these dramatic abilities are important wherever structured argumentation and rhetorical persuasion are required.