Celebrating ladies who were in some way fabulous during their lifetimes
Episode 22 features our beloved co-host Florian Duijsens giving us the low-down on the multi-talented entertainer Josephine Baker. Recorded live at ACUD, and produced and presented by Susan Stone in April 2019.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.
Show notes & pics:
Our 20th episode features our beloved co-host Florian Duijsens spilling the details on Hollywood actress and Berlin favourite Anna May Wong. Recorded live at ACUD as part of our series on dead Berlin ladies, and produced and presented by Susan Stone in February 2019.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.
This time we have two guest presenters from New Zealand, recorded live at an edition of the Dead Ladies Show presented as part of LitCrawl Wellington, which was produced by Andrew Laking and Claire Mabey of Pirate and Queen. First, renegade historian Jessie Bray Sharpin talks about pioneering mountaineer and journalist Constance Barnicoat. And then we have playwright, poet, broadcaster, book reviewer & theatre critic Maraea Rakuraku telling us about Dr Irihapeti Ramsden, a Māori nurse, writer, educator & anthropologist.
All put together by producer and presenter Susan Stone in January 2019.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.
Show notes:
Continue reading “Podcast #19: Constance Barnicoat & Irihapeti Ramsden”
Part 3 of our 4-part FRANKENFRAUEN miniseries, produced by Susan Stone in December 2018.
Professor Laura Scuriatti of Bard College Berlin presents the story of Ada Lovelace, accomplished mathematician. She fits into the Frankenstein puzzle by being the only legitimate child of Lord Byron, who was present at the story’s inception. But of course she achieved a whole lot without ever really meeting him. With a live intro from the Dead Ladies Show at the ACUD Studio.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.
Show notes:
Part 1 of our 4-part special FRANKENFRAUEN miniseries, produced in December 2018 by Susan Stone.
Your beloved DLS co-host, translator extraordinaire Katy Derbyshire, gives us the low-down on proto-feminist and mother of Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. With lots of live atmo from the stage presentation.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.
Show notes:
Our second season of podcasts is coming right up! Find out more in 2 minutes and 39 seconds…
You can peruse all our previous podcasts on our Podcast page. We’re pretty proud of our prolific production.
The very first NYC edition brings you not just your usual three ladies, but an extra bonus lady as well! These incredible women include a radical Catholic, a history-making dressmaker, a forward-thinking chemist, and a codebreaker extraordinaire. Presented by marketing maven MARY KATE SKEHAN, fashion guru CANDACE MUNROE, doctor and performer CHIOMA MADUBATA, and your host, MOLLY O’LAUGHLIN. Join us as we toast these groundbreaking women at the KGB Bar on Wednesday, 5 September, at 7pm.
Free admission; please buy a drink or two to ensure the future of DLS NYC at KGB.
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DOROTHY DAY was a journalist, social activist, and political radical in New York in the 20th century. During the Great Depression, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist and social justice movement comprised of direct aid for the poor and nonviolent political action on their behalf. The Catholic Worker Movement continues to be active throughout the world. Day is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.
ANN LOWE dressed pirate queens, American royalty, and silver screen starlets during her career that spanned over 50 years. Born in the South, to a long line of dressmakers, she took over the family business at the age of 16 by designing a gown for the Governor of Alabama’s wife. She worked her way from Alabama to a studio on Madison Avenue. Her work is featured in museums around the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and CUlture adn the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
ROSALIND FRANKLIN’s research helped elucidate the structure of DNA, the molecule that determines the growth, development, and reproduction of all living things. She was a chemist and an expert in X-ray crystallography whose results were essential in Watson & Crick’s final model of DNA—but her data were shared with them without her knowledge, much less consent. Franklin also studied viruses, visualizing the first viral atomic structures and studying the structure of polio. At age 38, she died of ovarian cancer, possibly due to her long work with X-rays. During her lifetime, fellow scientists recognized her valuable work on coal structures and viruses. However, her essential work on DNA has only recently been recognized.
Through the course of ELIZEBETH SMITH FRIEDMAN’s lifetime, she went from being a Quaker schoolteacher in Indiana to being a master cryptanalyst whose work laid the foundations for the NSA. She went up against Shakespeare conspiracy theorists, rumrunners, and even J. Edgar Hoover. Her work in World War II helped prevent the Nazis from taking over South America, but nearly all of it was a national secret until after her death.
A few highlights from our June show, including Isabel Cole and Binnur Çavuşlu, Bettina von Arnim, Halide Edip Adıvar, Anne Lister, and some of our gorgeous guests from the audience. Thanks to Rosalie Delaney for the photos.
Spring is upon us, so we’re celebrating renewal with a killer combination of dead dames. And this time, we reckon you’ve probably heard of at least one of them! We bring you a Berlin-born film director and animator, a translator of Dante who wrote a spot of classy crime fiction on the side, and a fairly famous Mexican artist, presented by journalist and podcast producer Susan Stone, your regular co-host Florian Duijsens, and storytelling shero Dorothea Martin. All kept on the rails by your other beloved co-host, Katy Derbyshire. Think fairytale outfits and a whole lot of skulls and flowers, as we raise a glass of something to three thrilling women at the ACUD STUDIO on 24 April, 8pm.
Presented in a messy mixture of English and German. €5 or €3 reduced entry. Now generously supported by the Berliner Senat. Doors open 7:30 pm – come on time to get a good seat!
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LOTTE REINIGER was born in Charlottenburg in 1899 and went on to combine her two youthful passions, silhouette puppetry and cinema, making the world’s oldest surviving animated feature film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). A whizz with the scissors, she made more than 45 films using her animated cutouts and special camera technique, most on fairytale themes. In 1933, she and her husband left the Germany of Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt, and Fritz Lang and spent eleven years trying to get permanent residency in London, Paris, and Rome, before reluctantly returning to Berlin to care for Reiniger’s elderly mother. She won major awards for her life’s work, and also has her own star on the pavement at Potsdamer Platz.
DOROTHY L. SAYERS is probably best known for her crime novels featuring posh amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey. But she also gave us an impressive English translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, much loved to this day. Something of a child prodigy, she learned Latin at six and studied at Oxford before women were actually awarded degrees. She made an early living in advertising and later wrote essays on both Christian and feminist subjects, including the fabulously titled “Are Women Human?” All this while publishing sixteen detective novels, plus numerous plays and short stories, and leading what might best be called a turbulent private life.
Does FRIDA KAHLO need an introduction? Probably every feminist’s favourite 20th-century folk-art-inspired Mexican Communist painter, she found a visual language for the pain of her physical and mental existence, using her art to raise questions about identity that don’t feel dated today. Her very face has become iconic – Fridamaniacs can buy Frida Kahlo socks, shoes, nail varnish, cookbooks, tarot cards, aprons, tequila, and anything and everything in between. In June, London’s V&A Museum will be showing her personal artifacts and clothing for the first time outside of Mexico. But who was she?
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The Dead Ladies Show 