A scene from Cabaret.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK: Big Apple Productions

While a Vernon theatre company enjoys a completely sold-out run of the musical Cabaret, the show's producer is receiving messages full of vitriol.

Among the hundreds of positive messages producer Melina Schein has received about the current performance of the iconic musical, there have been some that are disturbing.

"Claims that I'm a heathen and I need to take my freak show somewhere else and I'm going to burn in hell," Schein told iNFOnews.ca.

"Rude and utterly disgusting," read one message. "Take your perverted BS back to... where it came from," reads another.

Schein doesn't want to repeat some of them.

"I won't even give the energy to such incredulous horror that people spew," Schein said.

Melina Schein.

Image Credit: FACEBOOK: Melina Schein

Some messages say the musical is distorting history.

"Obviously these are holocaust deniers, homophobes and transphobes," she said.

As the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, Schein takes some of the hateful messages personally.

"I grew up hearing my grandparent's stories of what they went through," she said. "So to have people actually believe that... this piece of history, this most horrific piece of genocide never happened, that part gets fairly personal for me."

Schein's company, Big Apple Productions is putting on an eight-night run of Cabaret, a musical set in 1930s Berlin during the rise of the Nazi Party. The action takes place in the Kit Kat Club, where an assortment of characters — some bisexual, some homosexual and some Jewish — mingle unaware of how the world around them will soon change.

"In the 1930s... they would go to these clubs and be able to be free, and that threatens a lot of the right-wing very phobic among us that are rallying against all of the things that we are currently fighting for, equal rights, acceptance for everybody," Schein said.

"The biggest subject it tackles is the price of ignorance and the price of following a group mentality... It holds the mirror up to humanity."

While the musical is decades old – it made its Broadway debut in 1966 – it has still created controversy, at least in Vernon.

Schein, an opera singer, estimated she's received about a dozen or so messages, full of anti-Semitic insults along with homophobic and transphobic slurs. She blocks the messages and doesn't reply.

She has however shared the messages with the cast and crew to let them know what effect their hard work is having on some.

Schein said she was surprised at first, but knows that Cabaret brings out the "bridge dwellers."

A scene from the musical.

Image Credit: Kiss the Monkey Photography

Sadly, Schein isn't the only one in the Okanagan to receive abuse recently.

Last week, two Grade 4 girls were verbally attacked and accused of being boys or transgender at a Kelowna sports day event. The accuser, who is a grandfather, was later banned from School District 23 property. Kelowna RCMP is now investigating. The nine-year-old who was being tormented is neither a boy nor transgender.

Following the leafletting outside schools by extreme right-wing conspiracy group Action4Canada, the Central Okanagan Parent Advisory Council is asking the school board to take action.

Action4Canada spreads homophobic and transphobic messages and has falsely accused school boards of having pornography in school libraries.

Former Vernon Parents' Voice school district candidate Jewlie Milligan was issued a no-trespass order from the Vernon School District after she filed bogus "notices of liability" taken from Action4Canada's website.

Societies around the globe have seen a recent rise in populism and Statistics Canada reports a 27% increase in hate crimes between 2020 and 2021.

However, the disturbing comments Schein has received are nothing new.

She put on The Rocky Horror Show in Vernon between 2014 and 2018, and had to hire security for the last two years.

She received messages saying she shouldn't be exposing the community to the "freakum."

During a comical homosexual scene, two men walked out.

"I can only assume it just made them so acutely uncomfortable that they could no longer sit there. Whether that's because they were just so horrified and offended because it struck a chord in them that perhaps they are not living with their own full truth, maybe that's it, I try to have compassion if that's the case," Schein said.

Even her recent performance of Monty Python's Spamalot got complaints.

Several years earlier the Vernon church where the musical Jesus Christ Superstar was performed for two years wouldn't let them back for a third year.

Schein once found a swastika drawn into the dirt of her car's rear windshield where she'd pinned a poster for an upcoming performance of Fiddler on the Roof – a play whose main character is Jewish.

Cabaret being performed in Vernon.

Image Credit: Kiss the Monkey Photography

As Cabaret is set in Nazi-era Germany it's spurred the anti-semitic crowd and others.

"Because of the sexual content and because of the raunch of some of it... the religious folks have come out of the works telling me I should enjoy by slow burn (in hell)," she says.

However, none of this has put her off.

"I love offending people because that is what great art should do, it should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable," she said. "I'll take the odd hate comments any day to be able to continue doing what we do."

While the number of hateful comments is a mere fraction of positive ones – and the performance of Cabaret sold-out faster than previous shows – there's no denying the messages of hate are a disturbing reality for some in the community.

Schein doesn't know any of the people who sent the messages and it's unclear whether they are fake profiles or not.

"Someone is so angry or scared or uncomfortable that they actually cower behind their computer screen... and take the time to send me a message filled with hate," Schein said.

She reiterates it doesn't put her off.

"On the contrary, it fuels my flame," she said. "I believe receiving comments like this is proof that we are doing something right."

Cabaret runs at the Powerhouse Theatre in Vernon from June 7 to June 17. However, tickets are all sold out.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Ben Bulmer or call (250) 309-5230 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. 

News from © iNFOnews, 2023