Cabaret act hire in Australia: the complete guide

Cabaret wants a seated room and a bit of intimacy. It came out of small venues where an audience sat at tables close to a performer who could see their faces, and that shape is still what it works best in. Put a cabaret act at the far end of a hall with everybody standing and half the material stops landing, because the craft is in the timing between the performer and a crowd they can read.

The acts listed here are based mostly in Sydney and Melbourne, with performers in Adelaide and Brisbane. Not many publish a price, so the enquiry does the work in this category. Send your date, the room, your guest numbers and the occasion, and you will get real numbers back quickly.

Cabaret is a staged variety performance with a personality holding it together. In practice that means singing, comedy, patter between numbers, sometimes burlesque, sometimes a speciality skill, and usually direct address to the audience. Some acts are a solo performer with a pianist. Some are an ensemble with costume changes and a running order. Both are cabaret and they are very different evenings.

Because so few acts here publish a rate, ask each one for a quote built around your night rather than a headline number. How many performers, how long they are on, whether a musician comes with them, and whether they need a technician. The answers vary enough that two acts you thought were similar will quote quite differently, and both can be fair.

Tables and chairs facing a performance area, with the front row close. That is the arrangement cabaret was built for, and it beats a big stage at a distance nearly every time. If your venue is a long room, seat the audience across the width rather than down the length, so nobody is forty people back from a performer who is working on facial expression and timing.

Get the performer up a little if you can. A low riser or a shallow stage means people three tables back can see a whole body rather than a head. Ask the act what they would prefer at your venue and send them a photo of the space, because the answer changes with the ceiling, the pillars and where the bar is.

A lot of cabaret is adult, and that is the point of it for the rooms that book it. Innuendo, frank material, audience interaction and the odd person pulled up from a table are all normal. What matters is that everybody knows which version they are getting before the night, in the same way you would agree it with a comedian.

So say plainly who is in your room. Ages, whether it is a work event where people did not choose to be there, whether there is a guest who would be mortified at being singled out, and whether anyone should be off limits as a target. Every experienced performer has a cleaner set and a sharper one and will pitch to the brief. It only goes wrong when nobody asked.

Cabaret needs a microphone that works and a vocal sound that is not fighting the room, because the talking between numbers matters as much as the singing. If the act performs to backing tracks, somebody has to run them in the right order at the right moment. Ask who that is. If it is the venue's duty manager, get them and the performer talking before the day.

Lighting is worth more here than most people budget for. A performer lit properly against a darker room pulls attention without asking for it, and house lights up full flatten the whole thing. You do not need a rig. A couple of lights aimed at the performance area and the rest of the room brought down is usually the difference between a show and a person singing near the bar.

Most cabaret is sold as a set piece rather than by the hour. Something in the range of a short feature to an hour-long show, because the material and the costume plan run to a length. Asking an act to stretch across a whole evening is asking for something that was not built, though many performers will also host or do a second shorter set if you ask at the enquiry stage.

Put it after people have eaten. A seated audience with a drink and nothing to do next is the best crowd cabaret can get. Before dinner they are hungry and arriving, and after the dance floor opens you are competing with your own party. Fix the slot with the venue at the same time you fix the act, and make sure service is not carrying plates through it.

How long does the show run and what is in it? Is it one performer or several, and is there a live musician? How adult is the material, and what version suits a room like ours? What do you need in staging, sound, lighting and a changing space? And is the quote for the show alone or does it include hosting either side of it?

Cabaret is built on pacing, so an edit of the best moments tells you almost nothing. Ask instead for an uninterrupted recording of one set, all the way through, including the talking between numbers. That is the part that either works or does not, and a short reel is designed to hide it.