This Friday, GC Players held their third Miscast Cabaret, in which the participants performed a song or a scene intended for a gender other than their own.
Audience members were also invited to dress up. The show began with a public service announcement from GC Players and emcees for the event Lea Ramer, a junior, and Martin Flowers, a senior, who said that the point of a Miscast Cabaret is not to mock those who are transgender, but to have fun and embrace a character for the audience to see.GC Players is a club that began about three years ago. Miscast Cabaret was one of the first events they organized, and that first performance was both popular and well-received. The event was brought back the following year and once again this year. “We’re trying to make Miscast a regular thing,” said Flowers.
Friday’s event featured 19 students and nine acts, varying across different mediums.
Christina Hofer and Paul Zehr, both seniors, started off the night with the song “A Stud and a Babe” from the musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change.”
They were then followed by Diona Beck, a sophomore, lip-syncing to the Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” while dressed as the Weeknd.
Elizabeth Franks-North, a senior, followed Beck with a monologue from the movie “Manhattan.”
Up next were Mark Kreider, Simon Weaver and Jacob Zehr, all sophomores, performing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Pie Jesu,” with Kreider playing piano while Weaver and Jacob Zehr danced and sang dramatically.
James Lang, a sophomore, performed an Eliza Duhamel poem entitled “Fornicating,” while wearing a pink Victorian nightgown and bonnet.
After this, Wade Troyer and Galed Krisjayanta, both juniors, performed Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love.”
Ramer and Flowers then took the stage, performing a dramatic reading of a scene from a one act play while Paul Zehr read the stage directions.
AJ Delgadillo, a sophomore, and Ali Medellin, a junior, performed the song “Another Day” from Rent.
The evening ended with Naomi Peters, Lukas Thompson and Zach Ganger, first-years, and Ben Ganger, a senior, performing “The Schuyler Sisters” from the musical “Hamilton.”
Miscast Cabaret was relaxed and there was no need for perfection.
Ben Ganger said, “Often in performance [actors] feel this incredible need to be polished and perfect. With Miscast it’s more about having fun and sharing a performance with friends, which is refreshing because so many of us are performing a lot.”
Ramer, who gathered acts for the event, said that she loved having no idea what people would really bring until that opening night in a dress rehearsal.
“When people say what they are going to do, I only get to see it the night of the performance,” said Ramer. “That’s really cool. There’s a good amount of variety in Miscast. You have this emphasis on a relaxed night but even then there’s a lot of talent.”
Flowers said, “One moment that happened in a lot of scenes was that you forgot [the performers are] performing as another gender. You just get drawn into that performance as it becomes something wonderful.”
A final invitation from the members of GC Players was to get involved. “Do it next year,” said Flowers. “It’s a cool thing to perform as a gender you aren’t. The moment when you find that natural humanism outside of gender is amazing.”