While the Performing Arts Department production of “Cabaret” may be officially opening on Friday, there will be an unofficial chance for students to see the action early. Thursday, Oct. 18, there will be a free dress rehearsal open to students, with 18 seats on the actual stage of the Edison Theatre.

Cadenza sat down with four of the cast members from the show for a lively question and answer session: Pete Winfrey, a senior, playing the Emcee; Sarah Palay, a junior, playing Sally Bowles; Ariel Saul, a junior, playing Fraulein Schneider; and Anna Richards, a sophomore, playing Fraulein Kost. Find out what it was liking working on the show, whether they prefer plays or musicals and what makes Sarah Palay soil her pants.

Cadenza: What is it like working with the director, Annamaria Pileggi? Pete, you’ve worked with her before. Was it different at all?

Pete Winfrey: I think she’s just very attentive to detail in a way that not many directors are. Especially in terms with musicals, paying as much attention to the scenes as the music so everything is much more integrated than is often the case with musicals.

Sarah Palay: First of all, I love Anna. She’s amazing. She’s super open to what we feel as actors and, like, she’ll definitely be willing to listen to suggestions. What I also really like is that everything needs to be specific, down to all the choices that we’re making, and that really helps me and her acting techniques, like making sure you have the other person pulling you through… that’s just like something tangible to grab onto that has helped me to find this character.

Anna Richards: She just gets it. My part isn’t even that big, but she works through me with every little thing that motivates me and motivates my character, and she’s just so good. So good at everything.

Ariel Saul: I’m a big Anna aficionado. I’ve made it a goal to have her once a semester until I graduate. I’ve worked with her before also in “As You Like It.” She has a very unique rehearsal style, which is the “block-work-run” schedule, so you’ll block a scene, you will go back and work it later, and then run it later. I think it really allows you not only mechanically to memorize the show in a very unique way, but it puts the journey together in a very special way that only comes through when you get to the end and you start running it. I think it’s cool because it gets you very well rehearsed and in terms of Anna’s directing style, I love how she places a lot of emphasis on connectivity between the actors in the scenes, and, like Sarah said, letting yourself get pulled through, and that it shouldn’t be the same every time.

Palay: Also, her rehearsal hall is so warm. She really, really cares about her students, and at the same time she expects a lot from everyone, so everyone there really wants to be there and is really serious and committed, and it’s a really good balance between having high expectations for students but also really listening to their wants and needs and desires and how they feel.

Cadenza: Have any of you worked together before in PAD shows?

[They all laugh and say yes.]

Winfrey: Sarah and I were in “Camden and Lily” last year.

Palay: We were also in “Midsummer!”

Winfrey: Oh, and in “Midsummer.” I guess I remember “Camden” better since it was more recent. They’re both kind of odd in terms of working with Sarah because I interacted with her very little, which is the case in both of these shows (“Camden” and “Cabaret”). And the relationship was different where she was my mom [in “Camden”] and now she’s a performer in the club that I’m working at [in “Cabaret”].

Cadenza: Is that jarring—to have your mom be a performer at the club you’re working at?

Winfrey: No.

[Everyone laughs.]

Winfrey: But I think just, like, what each of us can do artistically in terms of doing a straight play in a confined physical environment, where the staging was much more sparse whereas in this, we’re covering the entire stage and dancing and everything. So it’s really great to see what everyone else can do. It’s really fun.

Palay: Yeah, I’m really sad that [Pete and I] never get to interact that much. It’s just so cool to see how versatile you are, not only being in plays with you and being in all these different plays during the season and the many season we’ve had. And Ariel [Saul] and I have worked together, but it’s the same kind of thing where we never really interacted onstage.

Saul: Yeah, but backstage a little. This is the first time I’ve worked with Pete [Winfrey], and that was exciting, having seen him in previous plays. We don’t really interact much onstage, but we have this one beautifully poignant moment that no one else is a part of that I don’t know if anyone is going to notice it, but I really like it. It happens in the final scene of Act One where Ernst Ludwig tells me not to marry my fiancée cause he’s a Jew and I flip out silently and I go over and Pete gives me a, uh, what would you say that look is?

Winfrey: It changes. It used to be more of a mocking thing—

Saul: That’s how I took it. [laughs]

Winfrey: But now it’s not as mocking. And now I have my boa.

Saul: He gives me this look and it just breaks my heart and I have to go on…and then Sarah [Palay] and I worked together in “Anatol,” but since none of the women are ever onstage together in that play, Sarah and I only interacted backstage, but it was still fun, and we both played very wacky characters. We interact somewhat in this show, and I’m very glad for that. It’s just two scenes, but we bargain.

Palay: We have some nice little eye contact moments.

Saul: She gives me a present.

Cadenza: Do you prefer plays or musicals?

Winfrey: I couldn’t choose. I feel like every time that I end up in a musical I feel like it’s time to have music back in my life. [laughs] I enjoy plays a lot, too; they’re completely different beasts, but you use the same mentality to approach them, and it’s so fun to be able to do both.

Palay: Oh, gosh, yes, same with me. I have a hard time picking. Musicals are kind of a double-edged sword for me ’cause I’m a horrendous dancer, but I love music and I love dancing, so even if it looks really stupid, it’s so much fun. And I love the big spectacle of the musical. I like plays because it’s smaller casts usually, but it’s also nice to have a bigger cast and have a sense of camaraderie.

Richards: I’m definitely more comfortable in the world of just plays because singing is not my strong suit, but musicals are a whole new thing. You bond with everyone around you like nothing I’ve ever been involved with and singing and dancing and having tons of fun, and it’s a great experience. I’d probably choose musical theater over regular drama.

Saul: I’ll say musicals. Musicals musicals musicals every day. I freakin’ love musical theater so much I can’t even explain it. I love the style, the grandeur, the spectacle of it. I love to sing, although I am also a horrendous dancer, but I don’t have to dance in this show at all. This is how bad of a dancer I am: I had one sixteen-count dance sequence of just moving my feet side to side, and they cut it. [laughs] It was so hard for me! But yeah, I really like musicals, being in plays is really fun too, but speaking to the size of cast thing, with this show in particular, I feel a huge cohesiveness and camaraderie. Everyone gets along, everyone’s friendly, no one is exclusive and everyone comes together into this big ensemble show, not in the sense that there is a big ensemble, but that the ensemble is a huge part of it and has a lot to do.

Palay: It just feels like everyone is supporting everyone. It’s such a family.

Cadenza: Pete, this is your last musical as a student on the Edison Theatre stage. How do you feel about that? Are you sad, nostalgic, happy?

Winfrey: This show feels like it’s so uniquely different than any other thing that I’ve done. I’m just really excited to have an audience out there. Yeah, it’s the last musical that I’ll do here, but that’s not the foremost thing on my mind. I’m just really excited for the opportunity, and it feels pretty special.

Cadenza: Ariel, counter to that, this is your first musical at Wash. U. How do you feel about that? Did you prepare differently at all? I know you said you loved musicals, so are you more excited than usual?

Saul: It was a very different experience from all the musicals I’ve done in the past because every other musical I’ve done almost was in the same place with my high school theater group, which was really fun but super, super different from how theater is run in college. There’s a level of professionalism here that I didn’t find in high school. In terms of preparation, I had a really hard time with this role, as anyone will attest to, ’cause I got talked to about it a lot in front of people. It was really difficult…for me to fail so I could succeed, and Anna [Pileggi] had to whip my butt into shape. But other than that, since that talk, I’ve been trying to fail as hard as I can so I can move forward, and that was different. All the musicals I did in high school were very campy, and this is—

Winfrey: Grungy.

Saul: Yeah, grungy. It’s also very exciting for me ’cause since the show list came out, I knew I wanted to do this show over any other show; it was by far my first choice, so I’m very happy with the way things turned out. I love doing the accent too.

Cadenza: Would you be more nervous performing for a hotshot Broadway producer who could give you your big break or your favorite Broadway star (say, Idina Menzel)?

Palay: I don’t know. Probably the producer, although it would feel very strange to have a big-shot Broadway actor in the audience while I was performing. I think if Liza Minelli came to this show I would be s—ing my pants ’cause she is the iconic Sally Bowles.

Saul: Is she alive?

Palay: Yeah, she’s still kicking. Maybe if she came, I’d be more nervous. Maybe not! It’s my Sally, so it’s very different from her Sally. And I don’t even know if it’s comparable ’cause the movie is so different from the musical. And honestly, though the context of the movie gave me a nice springboard, it kind of did me a disservice because for a while I had Liza Minelli in my head, and it’s my role and not the one she had performed, so that was a challenge.

Winfrey: I would say the producer as well ’cause that’s more of an employment thing whereas having a star there it’s more of like a pride and wanting to impress them, but a producer—you could work or not work in the real world based on their reception of the show, which is more of a do-or-die situation.

Saul: I have the same answer as Pete for the same reasons.

Richards: Probably my Broadway idol. I’m not really planning on being employed in the “Broadway” world. I guess if that was my intention that would be nerve-wracking, but the Broadway idol would be perfect and amazing in my eyes, so that would be scarier for me to perform in front of them.

Check back on Monday for our continued Q&A with the “Cabaret” cast. Find out more details about the roles each actor is playing and what role they would steal from someone else in the show.

Part 2 of Cadenza’s Q&A with the cast of ‘Cabaret’