The Yale Cabaret may have been founded during the “Summer of Love” in 1968, but it took 2020 and a summer of pandemic proportions to drive the venerable Yale Cabaret from stage to screen as former Newtown resident Nicole Lang helped steer the organization through this uncharted theatrical conversion.

Armed with a BA in psychology, Lang — a third-year MFA candidate specializing in lighting design at Yale School of Drama — and fellow “Cab” co-artistic directors Maeli Goren, Matthew Sonnenfeld, and Jisun Kim have mustered on and successfully brought a number of virtual products to fruition.

For the many fans of this self-proclaimed “intersection for curious audiences, invigorating stories, and artistic excellence” at 217 Park Street in New Haven, the show must indeed go on.

“The creative director turns over every year, so for this year I applied for the position in March — then things changed drastically,” Lang told The Newtown Bee during a recent phone chat. “We had to do a big pivot over the summer when we got word we couldn’t be in our space in the fall, our lovely and wonderful basement.”

According to its Facebook page, Yale Cabaret is a basement performance venue and haven for the creative spirit that resides in every student at Yale School of Drama. For Lang, jumping in without hesitation was the way to go.

“A cabaret show was my first production at the Yale School of Drama, and it was as lighting designer,” she said. “Since then I’ve done around six others as a lighting designer, as well as a load of projections work here and there, but this is my first gig as an artistic director.”

Behind The Curtain

Lang has dug into other subjects, including costume and set design, as part of her training, and said she really developed a love of the backstage world at Wooster School in Danbury. So when she headed to Yale to study psychology as an undergrad, it made perfect sense to go looking for a job at the School of Drama.

“I’d done some theater work in high school, and I was positive I wanted to be a stage manager — being very organized — but they wouldn’t let me work as a stage manager. I was able to join the electrics crew, though. It’s where they needed people, and they said maybe at some point I’d get to stage manage something.”

On that crew, Lang became fascinated with all the designers, especially the lighting pros she was able to work with.

“I just kept wanting to get closer and closer to that world,” Lang said. “It’s something that marries the creative parts of my brain with the technological parts of my brain in a really wonderful way.”

Unlike acting.

Lang suggested perhaps her aversion to the acting spotlight was cemented the year she performed in The Wizard of Oz at Newtown Middle School.

“I was not very good,” she recalled, “I bombed at my audition so I guess I was not meant to be an actor.”

The following year, however, Lang got a taste of stage managing at the NMS production of Beauty And The Beast.

Since she has been at Yale, Lang said one of her most exciting projects involved designing lighting for Fun Home, the first musical she got to light on her own.

“It was a thoroughly wonderful experience — I learned a lot about the craft and the collaboration. It was such a meaningful, impactful, and fun show,” she said.

Another favorite is a show she just produced as a virtual outing.

“It was called Ambient Dreams for Sleep Deprived Teens. It was a satirical health and wellness show,” Lang explained. “Being able to really support this as an artistic director was an eye-opening experience — for the kind of collaboration you need not only in-person but talking to a bunch of people online every day.”

“I think that’s where the psychology degree really came in handy,” she added, laughing.

Relationship Building

Lang says relationship building was among the most important things she wanted to accomplish right off the bat once the production was set to move forward.

“Being able to find my way through that was really challenging — to be nurturing to different folks at the same time, while keeping an eye out for continuity and the direction the production needed to go,” she said. Once that weekend production wrapped, Lang moved on to a series centered around food called “Cab Pot Luck.”

“We have four cooks and four hosts and they have to choose their ingredients and have to make a dish live on Zoom while a bunch of audience members are firing questions at them about what they’re making,” Lang said. “It’s totally improvisation and a real community-building experience because the audience doesn’t really know what it’s in for. They don’t know what to expect.”

Lang’s next production was A Voice In The Dark, which was conceived by a Yale Drama School acting student. And she hit the holiday break following a Black Theater Festival — drawing material from students, faculty, and community. It also incorporated a meditation workshop, a yoga workshop, a cooking class, and a DJ as well, all uplifting the joy of Black artistry, she said.

When she and her three fellow artistic directors first pitched to serve in that capacity, Lang said they centered that pitch around the idea of collaboration and the process of making theater, versus the product that is theater.

“So when we found out most or all of our work this year was going to be virtual, we had a choice to continue on with this project, or put if off for the year. And we decided the opportunities we were given in this strange time to reinvent what a collaboration looks like and the form of theater. It was too good an opportunity to pass up,” she said.

Unlike the dozens of creative directors before them, Lang and her cohorts had the daunting, if not historical charge of continuing a 52-year-old tradition in a brand new, never-before-used medium.

“One of the things we also have a chance to do now is a lot of archiving the processes we are using, not only using Zoom, but things like radio plays presented through other platforms. Because you never really know what the future could bring,” she said.

“We were always trying to look at the ‘glass half full’ part of it. And I’m feeling very positive with what we’ve done so far, finding some new and innovative ways forward for the medium.”