We are so very excited to invite you to our 21st show! We’re old enough to drive a heavy goods vehicle! So get ready for a juggernaut of an event. ACHTUNG: IT’S A MITTWOCH, BABY!
On Wednesday 10 April, 8pm, We’ll be kicking off our new season, built around outstanding Berlin writers who will share stories of awe-inspiring women who’ve fascinated them and influenced their work. Join us to learn about a groundbreaking children’s writer, an actor and screenwriter who helped save lives, and an adventurous journalist and novelist (more on all three below). Presented by top German writer Daniela Dröscher, shooting star Amanda DeMarco, and your beloved co-host Florian Duijsens. All held together at the seams by your other beloved co-host, Katy Derbyshire. Come on up to the ACUD Studio for an evening of entertainment, inspiration, and fabulous females.
As always, presented in a messy mixture of English and German. €5 or €3 reduced entry. Once again generously supported by the Berliner Senat. The ACUD Studio doors open 7:30pm – come on time to get a good seat and a good drink!
CHRISTINE NÖSTLINGER grew from a “wild and angry child” in a socialist household in wartime Vienna into a multiple-award-winning writer best known for her children’s books. Her first was written at the kitchen table as a housewife and published in 1970, but she graduated to three different desks for her radio, newspaper, and book jobs. Nöstlinger’s stories were far removed from the “pedagogical pills” of the past. Parents are fallible, children are disobedient but not bad people, and her language is both funny and shocking. She was not afraid to admit that she found some children very unpleasant, but she wrote with great empathy, wisdom, and humanitarianism.
SALKA VIERTEL was another Austrian, in this case originally an actor. She worked in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg, and Düsseldorf, and raised three sons. Feeling “neither pretty nor young enough” to move from the stage to the screen after she and her husband moved to the States, she switched to writing Hollywood scripts, especially for her friend Greta Garbo. Her credits include Hollywood versions of The Painted Veil and Anna Karenina. Having helped fellow Jewish artists to escape the Nazis with emergency visas, she was put out of work by McCarthy-era suspicion and ended up moving to Switzerland.
EMILY HAHN was the first woman to graduate in mining engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As if that weren’t cool enough, she then drove across the U.S.A. dressed as a man, before working for the Red Cross in Belgian Congo. Hahn spent an eventful decade writing for the New Yorker in Shanghai and Hong Kong, before returning to the West with a small child and a newly divorced British intelligence officer. Family life was not for her, however, so she moved to New York and visited her husband and two daughters occasionally, turning up at the magazine’s office every day. Her publications list runs to countless articles and 54 books, including biographies of top dead ladies Aphra Behn and Fanny Burnley.
The Dead Ladies Show 