Mark Dundas Wood

Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing for BistroAwards.com in 2011. Currently, he writes the "Bistro Bits" column for the site. Other reviews and articles have appeared at theaterscene.net and talkinbroadway.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.

Bistro Bits: Jazz and Cabaret…. Kissing Cousins or Estranged Siblings? Veronica Swift and Mary Foster Conklin Shed Some Light

Mark Dundas Wood
Jazz and cabaret—two spheres, almost adjacent, yet set just apart. I’ve often thought about the ways these two musical performance genres intersect and the ways they don’t. I have so many half-formed (and possibly half-baked) ideas about what each sphere consists of… some of them rooted in cliché and stored in cabinets of the brain...

Bistro Bits: A Greeting—Plus, What Makes for Super-Great Cabaret?

Mark Dundas Wood
As you may have noticed, cabaret singers customarily perform two songs before greeting their audience at the top of a show. Occasionally, though, a performer will break the unwritten rule and make opening remarks after the first song. I’ve decided to follow that bit of “alt” protocol and extend a greeting now, at the top...

Bistro Bits: This New Memoir Is Not a Drag; A Roundup of Cabaret Confessions

Mark Dundas Wood
Charles Busch spills it. A cabaret venue can sometimes seem pretty chameleonic. Monday, you'll find a singer performing a Burton Lane tribute. Tuesday you’ll get a comedic sketch show with no music at all. Wednesday’s headliner may turn out to be an entertainer whose work is indescribable but probably best tagged with a “performance art”...

More Songwriters Explain How Their Artistry Has Evolved

Mark Dundas Wood
A few weeks ago, we shared with you the thoughts of four songwriters associated with cabaret: Amanda McBroom, Michael Holland, Tim Di Pasqua, and Joe Iconis. (Read our earlier feature HERE.) They talked about how their ways of working and their ways of getting their songs into listeners’ ears have changed over time. We then...

Changing Their Tunes…or Not: Cabaret Songwriters Adapt in a Volatile World

Mark Dundas Wood
All sorts of people in cabaret circles can put “songwriter” on their résumés: singer-songwriters in the tradition of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell; cabaret artists who long to write songs for musical theatre; the musical director who occasionally creates “special material” for singing clients. But, often, crafting songs is just one of such a cabaret...

“Does This Song Look Good on Me?”—Four Singers Discuss Their Approaches to Repertoire

Mark Dundas Wood
It’s one of the central issues that cabaret and jazz performers face throughout their careers: How do you best go about picking material to sing? And that initial query prompts several related questions: -How do you decide if and when a song is right for you to perform? -How do you know when you’ve outgrown...

“Barbra Streisand: the Music, the Albums, the Singles”—a Conversation with Author Matt Howe

Mark Dundas Wood
It was Yentl that turned Matt Howe into a Barbra Streisand aficionado.  He’d been in high school when A Star Is Born came out in 1976—too young to see an R-rated film. Before that, he was only dimly aware of the acting-singing star. He heard the Yentl cast album before the film’s release in 1983....

Cabaret Setlist: “Let’s Not Talk About Love” – Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter

Mark Dundas Wood
Repertoire for the Once and Future American Songbook Article #24 in this ongoing series. In 23 installments of Cabaret Setlist, how have we not yet looked at a song by Cole Porter? One of musical theatre’s most respected composer-lyricist hyphenates—along with Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerry Herman—Porter was exceedingly prolific. A 1983 collection, The...

“The Real Ambassadors”: New Book Recalls an Anti-Segregation Jazz Musical Starring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae

Mark Dundas Wood
Say, show tune lovers—did you ever hear of The Real Ambassadors, a musical developed by famed jazz pianist Dave Brubeck (“Take Five”) and his wife, Iola, in the late 1950s and early 1960s? The show was envisioned as a Louis Armstrong vehicle, with Carmen McRae as his love interest. The celebrated “vocalese” trio of Lambert,...

Cabaret Setlist: “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” – Music by Ray Henderson, Lyrics by Lew Brown

Mark Dundas Wood
Repertoire for the Once and Future American Songbook Article #23 in this ongoing series. When times get tough, people look for escape routes, right? Think of those 1930s Warner Bros. movies with their intrepid gold diggers and elaborate Busby Berkeley production numbers. Those films have long been cited as vehicles that helped people forget their...