Deadly, disturbing … and you can dance to it

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This article was published 22/07/2024 (742 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One show at this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival has a perverse premise, even in the context of the event’s established baseline of “out there” offerings.

Take a sampling of some of the most vile murderers of the last 100 years, give or take.

Now: reveal their attempts to be creative.

That’s the crux of Cabaret of Murder, a dark, dark comedy/musical at Venue 4 (Centre culturel franco-manitobain) running through Sunday.

The musical-murder melange was written and directed by Blair Moro and performed by a trio of high-energy actresses, Paulina Pino Rubio, Katie-Rose Connors and Bella Ciccone, all Vancouver residents.

For a sampler, listen to one song performed in the show, titled Home Is Where You’re Happy. You wouldn’t necessarily guess the “home” in question might be referring to Charles Manson’s sun-baked, acid-burned communal abode at Spahn Ranch.

Manson is just one member of the show’s rogues’ gallery, which also includes John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Cho Seung-Hui, a.k.a. the Virginia Tech killer.

The subject matter arose from playwright-director Blair Moro’s admitted fascination for true crime, including a hearty appetite for podcasts, books and documentaries on serial killers.

But apart from the songwriter Manson and serial self-portrait-painter Gacy, the murderers’ swing at creation is rarely discussed, he says.

“It’s something that is rarely bought up was their art,” Moro says in the CCFM auditorium following a rehearsal.

He recalls listening to a podcast on spree killer Cho and was fascinated to learn he wrote plays.

“I was like, what?” Moro says.

The podcast host then read out the first two minutes of one of his works.

“So I went seeking out two of his plays and they’re both about 10 minutes long. I thought, if there’s plays, there must be other things,” Moro says.

The playwright spent the next six months combing Google and true crime sites trying to find pieces of art he could link back to heinous people.

“I found over an hour’s worth of material — poetry, music, play, screenplays, so I started compiling it all,” he says.

He spent three more months putting his assembly in order.

“I built the order of the show, putting pieces into what I consider to be the best-to-worst in terms of art.

“The first couple of things you hear are incredible … hauntingly beautiful,” he says. “And then it gets worse and worse and worse.”

“As a performer, it’s challenging to make peace with it,” says Mexican-born actress Pino Rubio when asked about any discomfort in taking on a show about serial killers.

“What we do in the show is we present art pieces that these killers did, before, during or after their crimes. It’s an opportunity for us to open up their brains and see what was going on in there. Art is a way to pour your soul into something — poetry, a play, a script, whatever — so it’s very interesting to see these glimpses of darkness, even before they did anything.”

Connors asserts the show has a positive side.

“What we do in the show is we present art pieces that these killers did, before, during or after their crimes. It’s an opportunity for us to open up their brains and see what was going on in there.”– Pino Rubio

“It certainly highlights the importance of mental health, of being open and being able to discuss it. Hurt people hurt people. With more awareness, a lot of these individuals perhaps would not have committed these crimes and created so many victims,” Connors says.

Ciccone says stories about serial killers often share significant common denominators from their childhood.

“Very often, there’s a head injury or there was some type of trauma in the past. If they had received some kind of help, maybe these crimes could have been avoided,” Ciccone says

Moro is careful to stress that Cabaret of Murder is not intended in any way to glorify murderers.

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“This is not a way to showcase their talents. This is about showing another side,” he says.

“There’s so many podcasts and documentaries about these people where they talk about their childhoods, growing up, who they married, what they did, but it doesn’t delve into their artistic side, and it’s fascinating.

“When you hear these pieces, it really shows another piece of the puzzle: Oh, yeah, this person was really starting to lose it.”

Tickets and showtimes available at winnipegfringe.com.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com

Randall King
Writer

Randall King writes about film for the Winnipeg Free Press.