The Wild Stage is a collective of international musicians and performers, based in London.

All artists bring the expertise in their respective fields to the creation of outstanding concerts and cabaret shows that explore music from the Weimar Berlin Cabarets to the tango universe of Astor Piazzolla, by way of the European songbook of the 20th century, chanson and the protest songs of South America.  Together we combine a wealth of experience and years of performing at the world's greatest concert halls and theatres - including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Carnegie Hall, Barbican Centre, Wigmore Hall and Gewandhaus Leipzig and in the field of cabaret the Ruhrfestspiele, Edinburgh Festival, GREC Festival Barcelona, Don't Tell Mama New York, Cafe Sabarsky New York and in 2021 the Arcola Theatre.

Our aim is to devise themed theatrical shows that tell stories about the past and present through the music and poetry of artists such as Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Friedrich Hollaender, Hanns Eisler, Horacio Ferrer, Piazzolla, Jacques Brel and many more.  We explore the European and Latin American songbooks in new arrangements and performed by some of London's most extraordinary and talented musicians.

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1921: The Wild Stage, Die Wilde Bühne  

In 1921, the German actor and singer Trude Hesterberg opened The Wild Stage Cabaret in the basement of the Theater des Westens in Berlin.  Hesterberg was one of the many prolific artists of Weimar Berlin, performing in film, cabaret and theatre.  She founded this literary cabaret at a time when the arts flourished after the end of the war and invited some of the country’s best writers and musicians to work with her.  

Authors Walter Mehring and Kurt Tucholsky would write lyrics and satires and Werner Richard Heymann and Mischa Spoliansky composed music.  Some of Berlin’s greatest performers would appear on the cabaret’s stage, including Rosa Valetti, Blandine Ebinger, Margo Lion and Kurt Gerron.  Bertolt Brecht presented one of his political ballads in his only Berlin cabaret performance.