Rogue Reviews 2026: “Madeline Minx Cabaret,” “Watch Party with Black Patti,” & “Cassini LIVE”
By Casey Ballard
The Madeline Minx Cabaret: Still Not Domesticated – Noemi Zeigler
Venue: The Lotus Room
Noemi Zeigler – Madeline Minx Cabaret
In theater, there is something known as a “stumble-through,” which occurs in rehearsal once all the blocking has been given and lines are supposed to be memorized. The actors stumble through the show, probably forgetting blocking and having to call for their line multiple times. Stumble-throughs are supposed to be rough (and at times—speaking from very personal experience—awful) so that they can get cleaned up in rehearsals to ensure a smooth production for the paying audience.
“The Madeleine Minx Cabaret” felt like a stumble through. There is a story there, but at the performance I saw, it felt disjointed, unrehearsed, and low energy, and frankly, the mic was too hot. Which is a crying shame because Zeigler has led an absolutely fascinating life I would love to hear more about. However, even those brief vignettes of spoken story were still being read off a script, and she seemed to lose her place more than once. Her crowd work was still very firmly of the self-deprecating type common in the 90s and landed strangely when mixed with the hyperconfidence of the songs. Zeigler has a beautiful singing voice, and some of her original songs were delightful, but when combined with the interstitial spoken pieces, the whole thing was incongruous.
As a fellow performer who has mounted productions before they were fully baked, I would love to know the context of that specific performance. Perhaps that is naive of me, as a novice reviewer, but when you can see that someone has talent, and then the performance doesn’t match the potential, I am always curious. “The Madeline Minx Cabaret” has two more shows.
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Watch Party with The Black Patti – Cassandra and Olyvia Stafford
Venue: Hart’s Haven (Indoor)
Watch Night with Black Patti
What a gem this show was. It combines singing, dance, audience participation, and an introduction to lesser-known aspects of Black history. Through monologue, Cassandra Stafford acts as the lesser known African American soprano, Sissieretta Jones, who received international fame for her singing in the late 1800s. Racist whites, rather than using her birth name, assigned her the moniker “Black Patti” to compare her to a white Italian opera singer with the surname Patti. Stafford, as Black Patti, goes on to explain that rather than fight it, she claimed the name and used her fame to spread awareness of the Black experience through the songs of her people.
I love nothing more than when theater teaches me something, and Stafford leads her audience through the history of Negro Spirituals, from 1619 and the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade to Emancipation and beyond. Stafford uses her beautiful soprano voice to lead songs while also playing recordings of audio that gave me chills. Woven throughout, Stafford’s daughter Olyvia performs corresponding dance pieces. The younger Stafford also uses American Sign Language in a number of pieces, an important piece of inclusion not to be overlooked.
This was one of two self-selected shows I saw because I wanted to support the artists. I had zero clue what the title, “Watch Party with Black Patti,” meant prior to seeing it. Thanks to Cassandra and Olyvia Stafford’s fantastic storytelling, I know exactly what it means and why it’s important, but I don’t want to rob you of the joy of experiencing this show, so you’ll just have to watch it for yourself and report back. There are two more performances.
Cassini LIVE – Tony Imperatrice
Venue: Hart’s Haven (Indoor)
Tony Imperatrice, Cassini Live
The original multimedia film, “Cassini,” used year-one Measure P funds and was “created for Fresnans, by Fresnans” (per composer Tony Imperatrice), providing an original experimental score to images from the NASA Cassini mission that showed us Saturn. It is available to watch for free on youtube. In this iteration, audiences are treated to the film projected on a large screen, with Imperatrice accompanying and vocalists Anne Webster and Bernadette LaMontagne-Schenck performing live alongside the images of the Cassini space mission.
It’s an intimate setup in Hart’s Haven, and that only benefits the overall experience. This was my second self-selected show because I love when artists apply creative narratives to science-y things like space. I also love when people create original scores to serve as a soundtrack to existing footage (one Rogue Festival years and years ago, someone created and performed a live soundtrack to go along with “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” and I was hooked). “Cassini LIVE” was beautiful. The only note I took while experiencing it was, “Look at what we can do.” Not only the beautiful music and vocals, but also the sheer science involved in any space mission. Look at what we as humans can DO when we aren’t bogged down by greed, selfishness, fear, hatred, and war.
If you would also like to be reminded of humanity’s potential, “Cassini LIVE” has two more shows.
Casey Ballard has read too many books and performed too much theater to not assume she knows how to write a review. This is her first outing with The Munro Review. You can find her haphazard book reviews on Instagram @bookishballard.
