Interview by Jeremy Kinser
Photography by John Skalicky
www.skalickyphoto.com
Styling by Frank Morales

“What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play” at Upright—L.A. Cabaret, a hip, musical social whirl of an evening that Christopher Isaacson (our interview subject) co-hosts and co-produces with Shane Scheel and where Trapper Felides is the musical director. Fear not—this ain’t your grandma’s cabaret! Upright moves to La Boheme (8400 Santa Monica Blvd., W. Hlywd.) beginning June 10 and will take place every second Saturday of the month. An Upright signature pre-fixe dinner and drink specials begin at 8 p.m. and the show starts at 10 p.m. For reservations, call (323) 848-2360.

For more information, visit www.uprightcabaret.com.

I’m glad to know there’s a young, hip version of cabaret in town, but I’m curious about how Upright come to be. What inspired you and Shane to create it?

We started Upright because Shane and I wanted to own our own cabaret in Los Angeles, something like Don’t Tell Mama or Joe’s Pub in New York or Martini’s in San Francisco. We looked at spaces and they were very expensive so we thought, “How do we do this without having our own club?” We went to the owners of Mark’s and they let us bring our own show in.

Props on recently celebrating your one-year anniversary. How did word spread about the evening and what was the response like in the very beginning?

When we started it was our friends and the friends of the performers. Our first show sold out—it was standing room only. Everyone was excited about there being a cabaret experience that was unlike anything else in L.A. It was crazy and fun. Every month we gain more fans for the show. The success we’ve had has been due to word-of-mouth. People who’ve enjoyed the show have told their friends and they tell their friends.

For our readers who’ve never had a cabaret experience, explain how what you do differs from karaoke?

What we do is even different from most cabarets. Our show is an auditioned and rehearsed monthly production that has harnessed an incredible talent pool that gets lost in Hollywood while people are pursuing a career in television and film. We cast the show by calling performers and telling them we’d like to have them on the show or new performers will contact us and say they would like to perform. We choose the songs and rehearse the show and put it together. It’s a whole performance being done. There’s no one just showing up and singing a song.

The list of performers you’ve had onstage at Upright reads like a who's who of Broadway's best. If someone famous just happens to show up, do you let them get onstage and sing?

Yeah, we’ve had people like Eden Espinosa, who’s in Wicked on Broadway right now. She was in the audience for our Christmas show and we asked her to sing. She came onstage and knocked it out of the park.

The cabaret scene seems to be associated so strongly with New York. Do you guys put some sort of L.A. spin on it?

In New York, cabaret has become somewhat synonymous with piano bars or one person shows at piano bars. Because a majority of the cast are somewhat young Hollywood types, our show has become a hip and fashionable thing to do. Also, the Upright crowds often have a solid industry presence as well, due to many of the cast member’s affiliation with agents, managers, and producers. No one is doing cabaret like we are here in L.A., that’s for sure. To make it different we add pop music (and) make it more accessible. I think the youth element and the Hollywood element makes it different from traditional cabaret. We’ve had people from New York tell us there’s nothing like this in New York.