I'm producing a Dark Cabaret show
Get ready to embrace The Faustian Spirit
Big news today, boys—the update below is nearly a decade in the making.
Long story short is I’ve taken the first steps towards producing a theatrical revue in the tradition of Vaudeville and Dark Cabaret. If you aren’t familiar with this genre, imagine a Broadway musical where each individual song is its own thematically and narratively distinct performance—that’s basically a revue.
The majority of songs are written at this point, and while I’m obviously quite biased, I unironically feel this is shaping up to be a damned good show.
But I’ll let you assess that for yourself—at the end of this article I’ve included eight songs from the production. Please give them a listen and let me know your thoughts.
Though by now you’re probably wondering what I’ve decided to call this thing.
And fam… did you even need to ask?
In today’s update I’ll discuss what you can expect from the show in terms of both content and production timeline; how I intend to get this fucker funded and staged; and how anyone inclined can contribute to the project as a collaborator or donor.
But first we’ll get some bullshit out of the way.
Yes, I’m a lifelong fan of musical theater— a “Theater Kid” to my bones. Were you expecting something else from the dude who made all those Disney parodies?
No, I am not Gay or Jewish or a Gay Jew—I’m just incredibly left hemisphere dominant in my cognition, which leaves me annoyed / disgusted by any song without a “story”—so much so that I used to drive my family up the wall during road trips by insisting they explain the underlying narrative or lyrical subtext of every solitary dadrock jam or ooga booga bass-boosted rap song on the radio. That shit is what I actually like in music—not the “beat.” And that’s why musicals have always appealed to me.
Anyway I’ve intended to return to musical satire for ages now; I likely would have started this project years ago had I not been unpersoned by Wojcicki / Dorsey in 2017. Unfortunately I lacked the necessary skillset in music composition at the time, while losing access to my platforms more or less obliterated any motivation I originally had to cultivate or expand beyond existing talents—why bother if I can’t get an audience?
But between the Vibe Shift and rapid emergence of generative AI, we’re just playing in an entirely different ballpark now. Cutting-edge functionalities like Suno mean a talented Gilbert is no longer obliged to find his Sullivan prior to creating great music, and even something like branding has become quite trivial thanks to tools like Dall-E. There’s also just more than enough runway now on both Substack and Twitter for a genuinely capable person to cultivate exactly the audience he’s looking for without any serious fear of censorship or prohibitive algorithmic suppression.
…which means it’s no longer technical skills or even social capital that truly limits success in today’s art world—it’s more a function of the artist’s curatorial ability (basically having good taste in a scalable and operationally efficient way).
Thankfully this is something I happen to be quite good at.
—THEMES—
So what exactly is The Faustian Spirit about? What themes do I intend to explore?
If you’ve read this publication for any length of time you can probably surmise most of them… but below I’ve listed the most conspicuous topics:
Faustian bargains and asymmetric life strategies
Boundaries and frontiers (physical, mental, identitarian, sexual…)
The interplay between predation and victimhood
Resettlement / Immigration / Colonization and attendant tensions
Jewish people and their peculiar relationship with Western Civ
The extent and limits of personal agency (particularly in the fairer sex)
— PHILOSOPHY —
I won’t be framing The Faustian Spirit as “Right Wing Art”, and the rest of you guys should stop saying this as well—both because it will always sound super gay to anyone who actually values art, and because art doesn’t even work like that and never will.
Look, there’s nothing valuable about creating something rigidly didactic or moralistic and trying to pass that off as “art”—such content is always masturbatory dross that fails to engage with anyone or anything on a mythic level. It also never says anything original or insightful about the world and human nature.
Art is fantastic at raising novel questions but famously hopeless at solving them—that’s why it’s infinitely more powerful for the artist to provoke than to proselytize. The thing is leftists understand that principle intuitively, while the average rightist can’t grasp it for shit. He also has atrocious taste, which means he’s easy placated by garbage like God’s Not Dead and The New Norm or shitty Daily Wire movies.
It’s also worth noting that very overt propaganda only ever works on dullards and crazies who lack a stable sense of self. I know this because in 2015-2017 I was a highly successful propagandist whose racist meme videos drew tens of thousands of young men (including Spencer’s right hand) into white nationalism. During those years I’m proud to say I learned a great deal about what tactics actually work to spread ideas.
But I also learned what doesn’t work, having watched scores of capable young men in all the same lanes as me fail to create effective propaganda—specifically because of their earnest and direct approach to rhetoric. This tied them down stylistically and made it a million times harder for anyone to get inside their head. Without tools like metaphor / allegory / poetry you start to ghettoize your own interiority and make it far easier for bad actors to isolate you (recall this happened after CVille).
Meanwhile with rhetoric in your back pocket you can engage the interlocutor on multiple levels at once: subtext and implication can obfuscate, distract, confound, beguile, or run cover; bluster / strategic vulnerability can performatively raise and lower status to smooth more fundamental tensions in status /power dynamics; humor can help defuse tension or rapidly establish a bond; metaphor and simile facilitate seamless communication across cultural boundaries… and so forth. As your rhetoric grows ever more sophisticated it’s almost like armor growing ever more robust.
But for all of rhetoric’s undeniable power, it seems that art grips us far more powerfully. Deeply engaging with another person’s art is very much like getting hypnotized by that artist—the more you genuinely understand his art, the more you’ll come to understand him as a human bean and how he sees the world.
And as you’re absorbed into the artist’s personal mythos you’ll eventually begin to see the world through his eyes—not just via empathy / pair bonding as happens with other relations, but in a manner that seems to approximate the artist’s actual first person experience of the world far more closely than would ever achievable with a non-artist.
And that, my dear reader, is the real value of art—it dignifies mankind by framing our interiority as far less revolting and contemptible and inherently sort of fallen than it really is. It bridges the Other Gap between the individual as perceiver and everyone else, liberating most of us in early childhood from the demon of solipsism before he ever had the chance to rear his ugly head. This in turn allows for empathy beyond our close tribe and kin-group, and also helps us negotiate and transact honorably with each other in situations where it would never be achievable sans artistic mediation.
Meanwhile for the spiritually-inclined spergs among us this is where art offers a truly valuable path out of the woods. Because art also lets us “bootstrap” virtue in direct emulation of the intentional / curated version of our persona we artfully present the world as a more palatable image of that scuzzy little shadow in our noggin. We genuinely start to believe that image—the artistic ideal of ourselves—is our real self. After a while it might even become true—which in practice must be hugely adaptive.
Anyway, wrapping up this section I’ll opine that art is deeply psychologically necessary for both identity formation and socialization, and in multiple crucial dimensions. Contra retard conservatives, art does not exist simply to be pretty—the higher order benefits are clearly more important than aesthetics alone.
Art is the only way to seriously understand the weird and exotic problems faced by the opposite sex, let alone entirely separate races and ethnicities. It’s probably the only way to meaningfully “know oneself” in a way that transcends a more bestial cynicism. I also hypothesize that cargo culting artistic superego domesticates man even in his animal self by pulling on his id gently and silently through cultural osmosis.
Anyway, The Faustian Spirit will engage deeply with all of the above themes, but never in a heavy-handed or ideological way. When I’m writing a character piece, for instance, I’ll generally place a huge premium on reflecting their interiority, challenges, and traumas in a manner that feels true to life and true to human nature.
— CONTENT —
At times the show will engage with dicey topics—things like race, sex, and even Jews.
In these situations I’ll usually lean into being provocative, often taking refuge in audacity by being even more offensive—this allows me to sidestep any tricky mental roadblocks so the audience can consider novel possibilities about the world or human nature.
Pease remember this is not an ideological show and won’t promote “hate speech” as it is often defined. That said, one song so far does include a single instance of the word “nigger” and that’s it. This production will be rated R for dark situations involving drug addiction, ethnic strife, sexual coercion, organized crime, blah blah who cares. Lot of bad words but no titties / dicks flopping around. Just lots of skimpy outfits.
Overall I want the vibe to be good for a date night with your girl—think provocative, energetic, sort of sleazy sexy but not some gross leather club, plus *just* gay enough for straight girls to find it cool and transgressive without making straight dudes grossed out. The key is to thread the needle with boobs.
I also want drinks delivered between songs, a certain level of audience interaction (not much though it gets too gay) and tons of narrative ambiguity with a lot of storytelling conveyed through subtext associated with costuming, props, choreography, etc.
— FUNDING —
So let’s talk turkey—how is Walter getting this funded?
I envision a combination of three sources:
My first source of funding will be paying out of pocket.
and I are currently in the midst of operationalizing our staffing venture, and once this is up and running each of us should be clearing quite a bit from placement fees. That said most of our initial revenue here will immediately be reinvested in operational instructional and Walter’s Mortgage, so there isn’t much liquidity in my financial projections to toss at musical theater until probably July or August.The secondary source of funding will be the Tortuga Fundraising Network. Most of you will recall that from the very beginning I framed Tortuga in terms of getting my men rich so over the long term I’ll amass a huge network of rich SWEs who are personally loyal to me and will invest in my cool art projects… well, it just so happens that The Faustian Spirit was one of those projects I had in mind. Anyway we probably won’t be able to mobilize the network to serious effect until Q3 or so, but things are moving in the right direction and a charming ginger filmmaker in Tortuga has recently volunteered to be my lieutenant in building this out, so I’m feeling quite optimistic it can help finance TFS’s expenses come 2026.
Finally I’ll be relying on private donors. The current plan is to avoid crowdfunding and focus more on big ticket donors behind the scenes. Gonna take this slow and steady and do it the right way… Once we have the full catalog of final draft songs ready to go I’ll be more proactive, but until then if you’re interested in helping me hire some guys to work for me and expedite this please drop me an email at the link below: faustianspiritshow@gmail.com.
— COLLABORATION —
Would be interested in hearing from any of the following:
Anyone who’s produced a show before and understands the economics well
I need trained singers for all songs at the bottom of this post. None of them are ready yet, but it will be good just to get some solid people lined up.
I’ll eventually need the help of someone who understands costuming and also (more urgently) someone who knows choreography. There are certain things in life you can’t expect a straight dude to do a decent job at, even with the help of AI.
Someone who knows music theory and has a good mind for narrative to help me brainstorm over the next few months and get these songs finalized.
I need some autistic Zoomers to run Suno processes for me and curate the audio files that actually sound good and meet specifications.
Anyone interested in collaboration please drop me a line here:
faustianspiritshow@gmail.com
— SCHEDULE —
So here’s the basic plan:
STAGE 1 - March 2025 thru June 30, 2025
Want 12-15 songs written—land on Suno final draft of each song
Collate final drafts in some attractive artifact for donors
Distribute roles across songs to a troupe of 6-8 archetypal players
Identify human singers and formulate plan to record
Tortuga will take up most of time net few months
STAGE 2 - July 2025 thru September 30, 2025
Implement plans for producing official version of each song
Recalibrate calendar / fundraising strategy based on staffing revenue situation
Aim to have the TFS concept album complete by September 30 (aggro goal) or December 31 (conservative goal)
Then STAGE 3 (too early to estimate chronology) would almost certainly involve securing a venue (looking for peeps in Central FL bc I want to build a troupe here), perhaps releasing a video of one act and making it go viral, etc.
Ultimately I can’t give a ton of specifics past June 30 because so much is contingent on the speed and scale with which Tortuga expands over the next year. If we start pulling in cash hand over first I might not even need to approach external donors.
But until then it’s wise to be conservative.
— MUSIC SAMPLES—
Below I’ve included eight songs I currently intend to include in the show, which together comprise roughly forty minutes of content. The actual show will likely contain 12-15 songs in total, for a total runtime of approximately ninety minutes1.
Please note these are fairly rough drafts and you can expect a tremendous amount to change over the coming months as I perfect the final draft of each song and start to think more about performance / staging logistics. Meanwhile the “official” version of each song will ultimately be recorded entirely by human performers.
With all of the songs below you can click the title card to access the individual song page here on Substack and discuss specifics of the piece or give WB a warmhearted like.
Happy listening!
For this one I quite like the idea of the singer being undressed by nuns/cops between verses—first he’s an Irish peasant, then in potato famine Angela’s Ashes garb, then dressed like a union boss in 1940s Boston, then he’s in a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirt, and then finally at the very end he’ll rip off his shirt to reveal an enormous Celtic tribal tattoo all over his chest.
Haven’t figured out staging for this one yet… let me know if you have any cool ideas.
Still need to add the Drowning Child Sequence to give this one some heart...
I’m thinking for this one we’ll have the singer be the pageant girl in the mirror, with the foreground girl acting out each scene. The one exception will be in the fourth and final verse, where Mirror Girl turns around with her back to us and the foreground actress takes over singing… until those last few lines, where Mirror Girl comes back with a vengeance.
Zero notion how to handle staging for this… just know I quite like the name “Methistopheles.”
In all honestly though I actually intend to complete my detox before I make any significant changes to this one. But perhaps I’ll experiment more overtly with Faust and Methistopheles sort of merging into the same figure.
Not long ago a buddy (man of tremendous fortitude) told me he’s genuinely afraid of my temper once I reach Day 3 of an addy bender… that was actually a major reason I decided to get clean. So perhaps engaging more overtly with that scary side of the addiction could make the final verse more impactful? Will be sure to explore the angle either way.
This thematically layered act will feature two leitmotifs—the WK Leitmotif (hummed at the start or before verse 2), and the Bluebeard Leitmotif (the aggro jaunty fiddle tune that follows). For this song we’ll also have a violinist who looks like the singer / actor playing the eponymous character following him around and playing the BB leitmotif. Meanwhile “Amanda” will be played by a singer/dancer trained in the clarinet and “Alexis” will be a straight guitarist.
During the humming sequence at the beginning BB theatrically throws a music box into his fireplace and watches the aforementioned violinist emerge from the flames as Mephistopheles. This music box is both Checkhov’s Gun and a callback, because in verse three BB addresses a specter of Katie from Not My Fault and it’s revealed he was actually her ex/orbiter from the second verse of that song (which ends with Katie handing him the music box).
Then at the end of verse three Bluebeard gets in a whistling-violin duel vs. Mephistopheles, which concludes with a bang and lights out. The lights come on to show them each bruised and conflicted. At this point BB bumps into Amanda, and it’s only following their duet together (where the song ends now) that Mephistopheles decides to give BB back his music box.
But instead of just accepting it, Bluebeard and Amanda decide to deconstruct the music box mechanically as the two of them hum the Bluebeard Leitmotif together. Mephistopheles watches in confusion, and by the end of the piece begins to seem intimidated by the pair.
This one I’m not sure about. The French we can handle with subtitles on a screen or in a playbill, but the current ending is honestly quite kitschy and inconsistent tonally with the other songs. So I’ll only include this if I can replace the ending with something interesting.
But the plot is tricky, and reconciling these characters might simply be impossible at this point. I think if it *does* happen it’s because the chevalier calls upon something quite a lot more sophisticated / meaningful than a little performative humility per the current ending.
Let’s see if I can’t think of something.
Went for more of a Lana vibe with this one.
Still not certain this will even fit in the final show, but currently thinking it might work as a sort of aperitif between two of the more flamboyant pieces.
There’d be no choreography or staging here—we’d just be forcing the audience to sit alone with the dissonance as they try to parse the lyrics and she walks through them singing.
Hopefully these songs give you some idea as to what I’m capable of as an artiste.
As mentioned above, anyone wanting to collaborate or d’nate can email me at faustianspiritshow@gmail.com.
From the rest of you lads I’ll not demand anything exorbitant… just that you give this article a brotherly like and restack so it gets a bit of traction. Happy Sunday, boys!
Note the acts will take longer to execute onstage than in Windows Media Player
Very excited about this. You should look into what Spiegelworld has done with some of its cabarets/revues in Vegas (mostly Atomic Saloon and Absinthe), which are always the top-rated shows there and run for years.
Absinthe is easily the best show I've ever seen (and despite what it looks like online, it's not mostly about the acrobatic stuff, it's about the fact that it's completely un-PC, unacceptable, audience-provoking humor throughout -- did get into a bit of trouble after bringing a friend who objected to the rape jokes). Very much in a similar vein aesthetically though with more physical stuff and comedy and only a bit of singing.
I only realized about halfway through that Bismarck's intention was a theater performance, which would be quite interesting to see! I have absolutely no experience in choreography or dance, but I understand there are entire organizations that exist in any major city for providing that talent.
It also doesn't hurt to scan the credits of good productions and, once you have enough of a screenplay and concept described and visualized, sending out letters to prospective artists and/or their agents. Physical letters make a greater impression today than emails alone, and I imagine for artistic-types it would make a particularly strong impression. Even if you don't end up snagging any of the creators of those works, it might supply you with visual fodder and reference material for whomever you do get to design your visuals.
My favorite is still Speedy Little Friend, and I personally think some of the sections between the verses could be expanded a bit to give more opportunity for scene-shifts and other dramatic tonal shifts in the visual rendition of it. As a process of energetic overreach and its dark dissolution, it would be quite the highlight scene underlying the overall themes of Faustian desire and Mephistophelian bargains.