Feature: The Days Of Cabaret Gratitude - Day Twenty-Five - The Visionary

The Days Of Cabaret Gratitude

Day Twenty-Five: The Visionary - Thomas March

My friend, the singer-songwriter, decided to try their hand at standup comedy.  They took a class with a famous comedian and began performing in clubs.  They were doing really well, too, getting the audiences, getting the laughs, and getting the attention.  And then, rather abruptly, they quit.  When I asked them why, they said to me, “I can’t get people to come hear me play my music.  Now I have to go out and drum up audiences to watch me do standup?  Do I need this in my life?”  For a long time, thereafter, I thought about the struggle of putting (as my high school drama teacher used to say) “Bumms in seats, luv, bumms in seats.”  For decades my actor friends pedaled their plays, my club kids handed out postcards to cabarets, and my dancers talked to me of ballet.  What, I asked myself, is the hardest show to sell?

Thomas March is a poet.  It is his passion.  It is his art.  It is his vocation.  Thomas has had success as a poet which, if I’m being honest, sounds almost impossible.  The world of poetry seems very specific, it sounds niche, and it feels exclusive.  Nevertheless, Mr. March has made a go of it, and quite a good one, with publications, projects, and always something innovative and new to tout.  And with all of those laurels hanging around his neck, why would Thomas March just stay in the lane that was carrying him?   Why not innovate?  Nobody is just any one thing, and the multi-faceted scribe having spent some time in the spotlight, he hit on an idea called POETRY/CABARET. 

You can attend a poetry reading in a bookshop.  Sometimes coffee shops have poetry open mics, and some venues host poetry slams.  There are even poets with enough of a following (and enough material) to do a solo show all their own.  But the concept of cabaret and poetry combining efforts for audiences over cosmopolitans and canapes seemed off the beaten path… but the audiences beat a path to Thomas March’s door.  As far back as 2018 Thomas March began presenting Poetry/Cabaret as a series at The Green Room 42.  With March as Master of Ceremonies, the variety show presented poets, comics, storytellers, and music acts, staggering the genres to create the ‘variety’ vibe, but always using the poetry as the connective tissue for the evening, and often with a focus on social consciousness of some sort.  It was a new way of entertaining nightclub audiences - interesting, exciting, fascinating, and inventive.  The casts of the productions were diverse in every way, with BIPOC artists, gender-fluid performers, differing demographics of every nature, both on the stage and in the audience.  Poetry/Cabaret was an elegant, sophisticated, sexy, and sometimes even silly way to spend a night out… a new kind of night out, a different sort of adventure for a New York City crowd.

Poets seek to tell tales in new ways.  They go inside of themselves and cultivate a vernacular that is all their own so that they might open the eyes of their readers to new experiences and new points of view.  Poetry/Cabaret (which has ended its residency at TGR42) was just such an inventive and fresh look into life and nightlife, and Thomas March made it possible, an impressive achievement in cabaret artistry.  It will be interesting to see where this inventor goes (and what he devises) next.  There is no question that it will be fresh, new, and quite unexpected.

Read a Broadway World Cabaret review of Thomas March HERE

Thomas was named a National Arts Club Fellow for 2023-24. He will soon start working on the next show, Puppetshow Apocalypse, with Music Director Drew Wutke. It's a show about a sparkly but moody gay boyhood that features Boy Scouts, rotting fruit, a time machine, a magician, and a puppet show featuring Jesus Himself.

After becoming a Certified Integral Coach, Thomas started a new coaching practice with a special focus on working with creative artists. The website for that is thomasmarchcoaching.com

Thomas and his longtime partner, architect Josh Padgett, got married in August, after almost 12 years together.  Congratulations, gentlemen!

Thomas’s pronouns are he/him/his.

Thomas can be found online at the following links:

Website:  HERE 

Instagram:  HERE 

Facebook:  HERE  

Twitter:  HERE  

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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