Sept. 26, 2026, will mark the five-year anniversary of Pinch Cabaret, Waterloo Region’s wacky and explosive monthly variety show. The cabaret will take place at Button Factory Arts in Waterloo, and the lineup will include a large dance ensemble, musical puppets, dramatic theater, improvised electronic and bass clarinet music and a poetic anatomy lesson. If that sounds like a strange mix, then you clearly aren’t familiar with Pinch! Past lineups include poets, songwriters, clowns, puppeteers, pole dancers, drag creatures and even physicists.
“The promise and the ambition is that each show is different,” Ben Gorodetsky, Pinch’s host and founder, said. “The line up never repeats.”
Gorodetsky threw together the first Pinch Cabaret in 2021, after moving to Kitchener from New York City. In the depth of pandemic lockdowns, Gorodetsky was faced with existential panic, loneliness and hunger for an artistic community. for an artistic community.
“My world didn’t exist right then. There was no musical theater, there was no comedy, there was no art that I was allowed to engage with. We were all watching Zoom shows and it was hellish,” Gorodetsky said.
After a year of thinking, preparing and being encouraged by his wife, Gorodetsky realized that the only way for him to grow roots in KW was to form a community and produce a show. He reached out to a few local performers, and Pinch #1 was organized. To comply with social distancing guidelines, the show was held in the backyard of The Branches yoga studio.
“Rather than it being an annual festival or an irregular series, having it every month means people make more work, audiences get hungry and stay hungry for seeing new work,” Gorodetsky said.
“I have this insatiable desire to always be making something new, and I think you can stimulate that insatiable desire in others.”
If Pinch’s goal since 2021 has been to stimulate art in the community, it has certainly seen success. To meet the overflow of demand for the cabaret, Gorodetsky also produces other monthly events such as the Together We’re Boisterous Comedy Show and the summer open mic series, Show and Tell. These events routinely sell out, and the wait to perform is months long.
“I was struggling to fill bills and now we’re booked to May 2027,” Gorodetsky said.
Fortunately for local artists, however, that 10-month wait is the only barrier to entry. Pinch’s central operating principle is one word: Yes. Anyone can apply; anyone can perform, and to date, five years on, no one has ever been turned down.
“The only prerequisite is that you want to perform. You want to be on stage, you want to be seen, and the only response is ‘yes,’” Gorodetsky said.
Keeping Pinch’s slightly lonesome origins in mind, this open ended, chaos-inviting approach makes perfect sense. Pinch’s openness serves artists and audiences alike. It is designed to introduce people to new ways of making art and pockets of their community they did not know existed.
“Each act does ten minutes, and they get to share a bill with people who they normally would not encounter,” Gorodetsky said. “This blows [artistic pockets] open in a way that I think is awesome because it shows audiences what’s out there in our community, who’s making work right now, here.”
In the words of Gorodetsky’s mentor Gerry Morita, Pinch exists to “turn on the freak magnet and see who shows up.”
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