Colin Cabot

Colin Cabot began his association with the Skylight Opera Theatre in 1974 fresh out of graduate school, as assistant to Managing Director Clair Richardson. In 1977 he worked with Gian Carlo Menotti at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy. He returned to the Skylight as managing director the following year and remained in that capacity until 1989. Upon his return, he devoted his time to planning and raising money for the creation of the Broadway Theatre Center. Colin served as project supervisor, design arbiter, and fundraiser for the new facility, which created a new home for the Skylight Opera Theatre, the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, and Theatre X. The $5.9 million project involved both adaptive reuse of an existing six-story warehouse building and new construction. Opened  to the public on time and on budget in October 1993, it includes a 375-seat baroque opera house, a 99-seat studio theatre, and shops, offices, and rehearsal spaces for the tenant companies.

Colin's tenure at the Skylight included many roles, among them Managing and Artistic Director. He performed as actor, music director and stage director with not only the Skylight but also the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, the Body Politic Theatre in Chicago and Theatre X (including a tour to the Toga International Theatre in Japan). From 1989 to 1992, he served as Chairman of the Fine Arts Department of the University School of Milwaukee, teaching courses in Shakespeare, European Art History, and Music. He produced James Valcq's Zombies from the Beyond, which opened to critical acclaim in 1995 Off-Broadway in New York.
 
In addition to his work on and for the stage, Colin has developed and executed budgets for non-profits and has been a member of both Actors' Equity Association and the American Federation of Musicians.  He has served as co-chair of several capital campaigns and on several non-profit boards of directors.

In 1997 he and his wife, Paula Cabot, moved to rural New Hampshire to begin a career in historic preservation and environmental conservation. Though deeply immersed in issues surrounding regional sustainable farming, he found time to return to the Skylight as Interim Artistic Director in the summer and fall of 2009.

He is honored to grace the boards of the (much in need of improvement) Studio Theatre in the aforementioned Broadway Theatre Center, and would like it to be known, by the way, that it doesn't always have to be called the Broadway Theatre Center -- the naming opportunity is still available.

Paula Cabot

Paula Cabot was brought up in college towns around the United States and spent two wonderful years at a missionary school in India.  She was educated at Pomona and Kalamazoo Colleges and received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Florida State University/Asolo Conservatory at Sarasota.  She was encouraged by her family to sing at a shamefully young age.  Since then she has been seen on stages in Florida (Asolo Theatre), Chicago (Body Politic Theatre), New York (York Theatre, Musical Theatre Works) and in Milwaukee (Skylight Opera Theatre, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre). 

Paula’s various musical roles for the Skylight have included Polly Peachum in The Threepenny Opera, the title role on Oh Kay!, Polly Potter in The Cocoanuts,  Molly Gray in Girl Crazy, Anna Held in Tintypes, Josephine in HMS Pinafore, and Amalia Balash in She Loves Me, among others. Other musical roles include Cunegonde in Candide, Liza Elliott in Lady In The Dark, the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods, and.  She has also played Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,  Jackie in Hay Fever, Gert in Lost in Yonkers, Jessie Mae in Lost in Yonkers, Olive in Voice of the Turtle, Henrietta in Smash, and several characters in The Apple Cart and Mere Mortals.

Paula also appeared in concert versions of The Mikado (as Yum Yum), The Music Man (as Marian Paroo) and My Fair Lady (as Eliza Doolittle) with the Milwaukee Symphony where she also appeared in programs featuring the music of Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim , and Leonard Bernstein.

In 1992 and 1993 Paula was part of a five-person performing group sent to Central and South America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East under the auspices of the USIS/USIA and the Skylight Opera Theatre.  The tour visited 13 countries in quick succession performing a program called Broadway Cabaret. 

When she isn’t appearing in “legitmate” venues she has been known to dabble in pop singing and has even sung jazz in smoky dives – and has a closet full of slinky dresses to provie it.  She also has appeared in cabaret both in Milwaukee and at the Lyric Opera Cleveland where she performed a solo cabaret evening “I Don’t Think I’ll Fall In Love Today” with pianist/arranger Jack Forbes Wilson.

Now she lives on a farm in New Hampshire with her husband, Colin; her dogs, Vivie and Toby; her cats, Maxfield and Milo; 4 sheep, 7 chickens, 3 oxen, and a pair of work horses.

Special Guests

Fourteen guest artists will appear with Paula and Colin Cabot in The Long and Short of It: A Night with Colin and Paula Cabot. The guest artists are: Elaine Parsons-Herro, Ray Jivoff, Mark-David Kaplan, Pam Kriger, Kathy Magestro, Norman Moses, Kurt Ollmann, Ellie Quint, Molly Rhode, Carol Greif Schuele, Kay Stiefel, Chase Stoeger, Bill Theisen, and Jack Forbes Wilson.

Collectively, Paula’s and Colin’s guests span four of the Skylight’s five decades and have appeared in dozens of productions, from The Fantasticks in 1972-73 through shows scheduled for the current season. Theisen, who got his start in the chorus of the Skylight’s 1981-82 production of The Mikado, is now the company’s Artistic Director and is also directing this revue. Jivoff, whose first Skylight performance was in 1990’s Girl Crazy, is Associate Artistic Director.