Raymond Schwartz - Cabaret

Cabaret

Serious and competent in his profession, he showed an altogether different face in the Esperanto cabarets, where he created many skits, creating for Esperantists the character of a merry drunkard. Since 1881 there had been in Paris a famous cabaret known as Le Chat Noir ("The Black Cat"). At Montmartre, on the outskirts of Paris, he founded in December 1920 an Esperanto cabaret called La Verda Kato ("The Green Cat"), which he directed from 1920 to 1926, as well as La Bolanta Kaldrono ("The Boiling Cauldron"), which ran from 1936 to 1939. In 1949 he was joint founder of Tri Koboldoj ("Three Imps"), which continued in existence until 1956. His skits and books were amusing, spiritual and sometime risqué. "If people cannot laugh at themselves, they have not grown up" was a favourite saying of his.