Interview: The Artistic Director of the Hitchcock Hotel

Once you experience an evening at the Can Can, you very quickly realize that there’s nothing out there quite like the Can Can. From sequined brassieres flying over the heads of grinning patrons, to beloved songs sung in a whole new light, what you see on our stage will absolutely convert you.

In the founder and Artistic Director Chris Pink’s own words, you will walk into the “Pandora’s Box” that is Can Can and walk out “with a new perspective.” 

Read on to learn how Chris went from being an operatic studies major to conceiving the sexy lovechild of all our favorite spooky classics and, best of all, figuring out the business of using art to convert people into humanists.

Jonathan Betchtel as Jon Kingsley in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: Before we ring the bell at The Hitchcock Hotel, I would love to hear how you came to be a storyteller of lust and laughter. Was cabaret always your stage of choice?

Chris Pink: I grew up in a musical family. My father was a touring musician, so I've been around music my entire life. I then sang in choirs all the way through various schools and studied music in college as a vocal performance major. 

Ever since I was a little kid, I was always obsessed with opera. So, I essentially did operatic  studies. Then, I worked for a music festival that specialized in classical music and opera. From there, I went to a company called the Lyric Opera of Chicago and worked as the auditions administrator for their apprentice program. I worked with, and I became obsessed with, a composer called Kurt Weill, who did opera for the people–this idea that it was for everybody. 

The Threepenny Opera and all of these sorts of works were, in my mind, the beginnings of like, “Oh, wow–this can be done in a small stage format in a really interesting way.” I didn't realize any of this even existed in the world, but then I started working with and producing a few shows that were kind of along those lines. So, it mostly started off in the realm of opera, and then it converted to cabaret perfectly.

Tori Gresham as Madame Maybell in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: You’ve referenced The Addams Family and The Munsters as sources of inspiration for The Hitchcock Hotel. What is it about a ragtag bunch of ghoulish misfits that made you want to create your own? 

Chris Pink: We had several different ideas of how this group of people would come together. Was it a family? Was it just a general group of misfits? We conceptualized all of these different ideas, like, “What if a family ran a brothel?” – which we thought was kind of funny. Then, it just naturally told its own story once we began to implement the musical elements. It started showing hints of shows like The Munsters, The Addams Family, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We were like, “Oh, okay, we can implement some of these inspirations…Maybe there's something from these other ideas that can come into the trajectory…” Then, we felt like we had this stable, conceptual idea that would work.

THECANCAN.COM: Speaking of bringing ghoulish misfits to life, what’s the process of adapting these characters from page to stage? How inspired are you by the Can Can cast, themselves?

Chris Pink: The cast 100% influence the characters. Like, having the haunted twins was so natural based on how the casting worked. When you see the show, you'll see that all the characters are dramatic extensions of the human. Even the story itself, all the stories, and the characters integrated into itself. 

The process of how that works is I usually developed a concept with a pile of music, name, imagery, etc. Then, Jonny and I riff on each other to further develop those concepts, which ultimately turns into the script of the show. I usually leave some open gaps, and Jonny fills in those gaps with his moments. Then, we take all of that and re-configure the whole thing for everything to work together. 

I essentially rewrite it several times before it becomes a working script. But then, part of the process, even within the rehearsal process, we start to get the actors, singers, dancers involved in their characters, which opens up a whole other world of, “Oh, they can do this! They can do that! You can do that, or not that.” That’s the process even a couple of weeks leading up to the show. It is super rewarding and very stressful. Because we're changing lines, we're adding lines, we're adding songs – full songs – two days before a show. It's a wild process, but I think the end result is pretty exciting.

Richard Peacock as Frankly Mydear, Jonathan Betchtel as Jon Kingsley, Shadou Mintrone as Shadow and Sasha Voyt as Silhouette in The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: Many of the Can Can’s fans gush about how uniquely interactive and intimate these shows are. When putting performances like The Hitchcock Hotel together, how do you keep your audience in mind? Are you often thinking of new ways to keep them on their toes?

Chris Pink: Yeah, with all of our shows! It goes back to the formula of having a skeleton of things that we generally like to do in all of our shows. Every number, every song, there's usually some sort of intent for it – you know, that's the sexy moment, and that that's the funny moment. That's the heartfelt moment. The audience is always number one in all of this. They are always thought of 100% first. The delivery of everything is always based on audience interactions. People that support us and have supported us over the years become familiar with what we do and how we do it. Our mission is to continue to deliver things that these folks will digest, enjoy, and change them while remaining super true to our artistic visions.

THECANCAN.COM: More audience reactions I’ve seen are folks feeling empowered, seen, or even liberated by the story being told on the Can Can stage. What do you hope audiences take home after experiencing The Hitchcock Hotel?

Chris Pink: I think that’s always in the back of my head. I think this is the case for our whole artistic team – we want people to know us, understand what we do, and understand how we work, and to understand our work is to be acclimated to the love and good energy we try to convey and put out into the world. We get a lot of people that have no fucking clue what they're getting themselves into – which is great because you might have this sort of stereotypical idea of what guests might come in, and what they look like, what they sort of put out and might think, “Oh, that's a jock, he's gonna react or act a certain way.” Or, “That’s an 80-year-old lady, she’s going to react this certain way.”

I, over the years, have just seen so many of our audience members become different humans within the length of the show. There's a conversion process where these people come in with a point of view, and, by the show's end, their pendulum has moved. They walk away like they have a new understanding of how to interact in the world. Through art, they've been converted into better people and more understanding and they have a different interpretation of the stereotypes that they may have come in with. 

I've seen it happen over and over and over and over again. Jonny, our host, is like a genius at converting tight-laced people that are afraid of everything and afraid of what we do. They end up being avid fans that come year after year. They end up putting better things and energy in the world and have a better understanding of all the humans that exist, not just the people that sound like them or look like them.

The Cast of The Hitchcock Hotel | Photo by Nate Watters

THECANCAN.COM: And, finally, how would you encourage someone who may be hesitant (or perhaps just a teensy bit shy) to grab a ticket and book their stay at the Hitchcock Hotel?

Chris Pink: I guess it sounds kind of hokey, but there really is something for everybody in the show. I think some of the outside perceptions of what we do is people are like, “Oh, Can Can’s a burlesque place, right?” People that come here and know us know that that's one micro element of what we do, like the tiniest element of what we do. But people can come and feel alive, feel literally changed through tears from a beautiful song or laughter from a lighting-up dick on the stage. Or, it could be through dance where you've got these extraordinarily beautiful dancers literally as vulnerable as you can possibly be dancing to gorgeous music. There are all of these things that we touch on that can touch many different audience members in many different ways. And no matter what, whether you come in and you’ve never seen anything like what we've done before, you’ll walk out with a new perspective and hopefully want to understand more about what we do, or the people that are involved in what we do, or the types of characters that exist in what we do, our motivation, and why that’s important to the world… especially now. It opens up this door – it's like Pandora's Box. They can explore life in a different way.

The Hitchcock Hotel will be awaiting your arrival now through November 27, 2022.