Ari Shapiro and Alan Cumming's 'Och & Oy!' cabaret brings storytelling and subversion to San Diego

You may recognize Ari Shapiro's voice as host of NPR's All Things Considered. But did you know he shares stories with the world in many other (more artsy) ways? Shapiro is the author of the memoir "The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening"; he hosted the latest season of reality TV show "The Mole"; and in his free time he sings in the band Pink Martini and performs a cabaret-style show with actor Alan Cumming. Cumming, the beloved Scottish actor, has multiple Emmys and Tonys, an Olivier Award, a BAFTA Award and more to his name. He's noted for his performance in the 1998 stage production of "Cabaret"; movies like "Circle of Friends," "Eyes Wide Shut," and many more; and on television, "The Good Wife" and the reality TV show "The Traitors."

Their show is called "Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret," and it's coming to San Diego to perform at Humphreys Concerts by the Bay on Saturday.

KPBS spoke to Shapiro this week about journalism, performance, subversion and storytelling.

Ari, I want to go all the way back to when you first started mixing your public radio career with performance — you've toured and even recorded with Pink Martini, which is an American pop, jazz, world and kind of retro orchestra. How did that collaboration begin?

Ari Shapiro: Well, I grew up in Portland, Oregon, which is where Pink Martini is from, and I became friends with them over the years. When I moved to Washington, D.C., they would come through town on tour and I would have a cocktail party or brunch or cookout for them whenever they had a free night. And one year — it was about 2008, I think — one of those cookouts turned into a late-night sing-along around my piano with the members of Pink Martini and the members of another Portland band that happened to be in D.C. just then called Blind Pilot. The next day, Pink Martini's bandleader, Thomas Lauderdale, called me and said, "You know, we're in the process of writing this song for the next album that we want a man to sing. Why don't you come out to Portland and record it with us?" The song was called "But Now I'm Back."

I first thought it would never happen, and then I thought, well maybe that would be the one and only time I ever do anything with Pink Martini. That was about 15 years ago, and now I've done one or two songs on each of the albums they've released since then. I performed with them at the Hollywood Bowl just this past summer, and I'm joining them on a few select dates on their 30th anniversary tour — which is just wild to think about this band, 30 years old and still making great music and attracting audiences who are still interested in what they have to do. 

Like you said, you're on several of their albums, but my favorite track is one from 2016's "Je Dis Oui." It's an Armenian ballad called "Ov Sirun Sirun." Let's take a listen.

Ari, you have this life as a journalist, and then this life on stage. Where do those lives intersect for you?

Shapiro: For me, it's about storytelling and connecting with an audience. You know, singing with Pink Martini is very different from practicing journalism. But at the end of the day, both of them are about trying to create a connection with people who are listening. Radio is a very intimate medium where it's just kind of you in your car or your kitchen or wherever you happen to be, being spoken to by one person who is on the radio. While live performance with a band is a collective experience; everybody is in the space at the same time having a shared experience of the music. But ultimately they're both about making connection, and maybe seeing the world a little bit differently — particularly with a band like Pink Martini that sings in so many different languages and so many different musical styles. It's a way, I think, of helping people connect to each other — making the foreign seem a little bit less strange, which is also what journalism can do at its best.

I want to talk about cabaret. You're touring with Alan Cumming for a show called "Och & Oy! A Considered Cabaret." What draws you to the cabaret genre? 

Shapiro: I love the unexpectedness of cabaret. Like I have admired lots of cabaret performers for a very long time — long before I ever started to make a cabaret show myself. And the thing about cabaret is it takes you on a journey and it swerves and veers and lands someplace interesting. And it can pivot from pop to Broadway to classical to whatever genre you want to include in the mix. I think it's a very personal art form, where inevitably cabaret involves storytelling in addition to singing — and doing it with somebody like Alan Cumming, who is such a legend and such a kind of charming witty … he's almost an older brother figure to me. But I think so many people have so many different associations with him whether it is from "The Good Wife" or "The Traitors," or "Cabaret" — the musical "Cabaret" — I could keep going on the things he's done over his career. It's really fun to share the stage with him. And I think we're kind of this odd couple. We're not an obvious pairing, and yet what we do has a certain spark to it. That is, I think, hopefully more than the sum of its parts.

JJ Geiger

What significance does cabaret have in LGBTQ+ history, and in those communities?

Shapiro: You know, my dear friend — who I have admired since long before we were friends — Justin Vivian Bond, who is a legendary cabaret artist primarily based in New York, but performs all over — just won a MacArthur Genius Grant, and as a MacArthur Genius gave a quote that I'm probably going to butcher right now, but it was something like: Creating beauty in the face of hate is a revolutionary act. Like I said, I'm paraphrasing. There's something about cabaret that is both inclusive and subversive — it welcomes people in even while undermining their expectations, taking them on a journey that they don't necessarily know where they're going. In our cabaret show, Alan and I are a little bit bawdy and crack some jokes that are maybe not appropriate for children, and I may even drop an F-bomb or two, which is so not what people expect from the Ari Shapiro they hear every day on public radio. I love that subversive quality to it. I am not going to destroy my credibility as a journalist. I'm not going to contradict the image of myself that is out there in the world on All Things Considered every day, but I might tweak it a bit and that's part of the fun, I think, both of, you know, living with a queer identity and of playing in the sandbox of cabaret as a genre.

I love that. We all gasped out loud.

Shapiro: When I said I drop F-bombs?

Yes.

Shapiro: It comes at a specific moment in the show. One of the nice things is having done the show for a few years now, like we've honed the jokes. We've tightened the stories. We've figured out how it works best. And so we don't waste that F-bomb. We deploy it thoughtfully.

OK, so take us there. Describe a moment on stage in the show.

Shapiro: Well, the thing that's really fun is that it changes a little bit every time we do it. The basic structure is the same, but there are moments — you know, when we started doing the show, he was not host of "The Traitors," and I was not host of "The Mole." When we started doing the show a few years ago, I had not written a memoir; he had already written a memoir. The show was loosely structured around the things that he and I have in common, and what's funny is that that list has grown and grown and grown. And so he recently for the first time joked that it felt a little bit like "All About Eve," like I was coming for his gig and I suggested that maybe he should try hosting a nightly news program.

I would listen.

Shapiro: I would absolutely listen.

Gregory Pace

What is it about reality TV that clicks for you?

Shapiro: It's funny. I was never a massive reality TV fan, but I've always been a huge fan of "The Mole" since its earliest days. It was this competition on ABC that Anderson Cooper hosted. It has always been hosted by a journalist. Netflix, a couple years ago, revived it with the MSNBC journalist Alex Wagner, who's a friend of mine, and I was so jealous just because I've always loved the show. And then when I found out that she wasn't coming back for the next season and they were looking for a new host … For me, it was not "I want to host a reality show," it was "I want to host 'The Mole.'" It's so fun and glamorous, and there's this kind of espionage, intrigue aspect to it. And I love that every season is in a different country and every episode is in a different location within the country. So my season was set in Malaysia and we filmed for six weeks in the middle of the summer. It was very hot, but I just got to see this country in so much depth and range from islands to jungles, caves and skyscrapers, big cities. It was an incredible experience. People can watch it all on Netflix now — all 10 episodes are there.

How does that fit into your approach to performance — but also storytelling?

Shapiro: I believe in doing things that are scary, and having fun while I do it. And I like to challenge myself and try new things, and if they're not for me then fine, I don't have to keep doing them. But I love hosting All Things Considered, and I've now done it for close to 10 years, which is wild to think about. I still enjoy doing it. But I also want to do things that I don't know whether I can do it or not. I don't know whether I'm good at it or not. I've never done anything like it before, and hosting "The Mole" is exactly that sort of thing. This wild, crazy, out-of-character experience that took me on an adventure, and that afterwards I was then able to return to kind of like the life and job and, you know, people and places that I had always known.

So what is it then about public broadcasting that anchors you and keeps you doing it, despite all of these alternate lives that you're sampling along the way?

Shapiro: Oh, I just love the range of things I get to do. I mean, in one day alone, I spoke with this really thoughtful, incredible Rabbi named Amichai Lau-Lavie about the anniversary of the October 7th attacks. And on the same day, I spoke with Al Pacino about his new memoir. There are so few jobs in journalism — or anywhere — that encompass that range, and to me one is not like the dues you pay in order to be able to do the other. To me, it is the "both and" that is really fulfilling, and so hosting All Things Considered is a job where I know that every day, I will learn something new. I will wake up in the morning knowing that by the end of the day, I'll know about something I didn't know when I started the day. And that's such a privilege. It never gets old.

I love that. Your memoir came out last year, it's called "The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening," and throughout the book you talk about how being a journalist is a little bit like moving between worlds and sharing those worlds with others. Can you talk about that approach to storytelling?

Shapiro: I think just to take specifically the example of war. Most Americans have not experienced war firsthand. And so when we hear stories about people living through war, I think it's very easy for us to kind of dismiss those stories as being about people who are somehow profoundly different from us, when in fact humans are all the same no matter where we are. We are much, much more similar than we are different. So when I am covering war as a journalist — and that's just one example — my goal is to try to find details and points of connection that will help the person who is picking up their kids from school or making dinner or commuting home from work relate to that individual who might seem distant and different and foreign — and see the commonality that we share with those people. And it doesn't only apply to war; it applies to every story I tell. I'm trying to find those ways to help listeners relate, and make it more difficult for listeners to just dismiss them. And that's also true of people with different political views in the United States or just different life experiences.