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Dead Ladies Show #28

We’re going live again! Dead ladies, live on stage, next Tuesday, October 5, 8pm at ACUD.

We’re going to try and do it outdoors but if the weather doesn’t play along we’ll move inside! We have limited space, so please book in advance via Eventbrite. 3G entry only – geimpft, genesen, getestet. In the event of rain, sleet, snow or cold weather, we’ll move indoors to the ACUD Studio, so please bring a mask to use when you’re not at your seat.

Join our guest presenters, awesome academic AGATA LISIAK and jubilant journalist THEMBI WOLF, along with our podcast producer SUSAN STONE, to learn about three fascinating females who shaped our world. All held together by your familiar hosts, FLORIAN DUIJSENS and KATY DERBYSHIRE. You’ll learn about three revolutionary women – in fields as diverse as politics, sex, and architecture. We’ll be rocking the ACUD courtyard as the sun goes down, celebrating ladies who changed other people’s lives.

Presented in a messy mixture of English and German. €8 or €5 reduced entry. Generously supported by the Berliner Senat. Doors open 7:30 pm – come on time to get a good seat!

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ROSA LUXEMBURG was a Polish Marxist and co-founder of the anti-war Spartacus League in 1915 Germany, which became the KPD. Having started out as a political activist at the age of 15, she had organized a general strike before she left school. She wrote prolifically and travelled widely in the service of the revolution, all while on the run from the tsarist police. Luxemburg moved to Berlin in 1898, where she “hated the stifling conservatism, despised Prussian men and resented what she saw as the grip of urban capitalism on social democracy.” After Germany’s 1918 revolution she was tortured, murdered and thrown in the Landwehr Canal by Freikorps soldiers. Today she has her own square, though, so there’s that.

DR. JUNE DOBBS BUTTS was an African-American sex researcher and therapist who argued for greater openness about sex in the Black community. The youngest of six daughters of a civil rights activist, she grew up playing with Martin Luther King Jr. After years of study and breakthrough research, she eventually had her own practice in Maryland, hosted a radio show, and wrote articles and columns for Black magazines like Jet, Ebony and Essence. “I realize that there are a lot of critics,” she said, “but I’ve found out that nine times out of 10 they have a sex hang-up themselves.”

ZAHA HADID was a British-Iraqi architect. Dubbed “the queen of the curve” and “a planet in her own orbit”, she received awards by the truckload for the buildings she left us. Hadid studied in Baghdad and London and opened her own firm in 1980, only three years after graduating. Many of her ambitious plans went unbuilt while she established her unique style, until she designed a fire station near the Rhine. From then on, her projects grew bigger and bigger (and often curvier). She taught and painted and designed interiors and products, and was also on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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Dead Ladies Show #27

Tuesday, 7 September

8:30 pm

We’re back! We’ve got new ladies to tell you about! And we’re doing it outdoors!

We’re tentatively extending a toe into the live-event waters, since it seems safe to us under Berlin’s restrictions. So come along and enjoy some fresh air and edifying entertainment.

Join our guest presenters, the awesome writers SHARON DODUA OTOO and NADIRE BISKIN, along with old stalwart KATY DERBYSHIRE, to learn about three fascinating females who did their own thing. All held together by our prodigious podcast producer SUSAN STONE. There’ll be a royal rebel against colonialist rule, a woman who rethought the binary and the borderland, and a lady who was seriously into bees. We’ll be rocking the ACUD courtyard as the sun goes down, celebrating lives lived to great effect.

Presented in a messy mixture of English and German. €8 or €5 reduced entry. Generously supported by the Berliner Senat. Doors open 8 pm – come on time to get a good seat!

We have limited space, so please book in advance via Eventbrite. 3G entry only – geimpft, genesen, getestet. In the event of rain, we’ll move indoors to the ACUD Studio, so please bring a mask to use when you’re not at your seat.

YAA ASANTEWAA led the 1900 Ashanti war against British colonialism in present-day Ghana. Born in 1840, she was a skilled farmer and mother, before ascending matrilineally to the title of Queen Mother in the 1880s. That made her a key advisor and king-maker. When the British governor demanded the kingdom’s emblem of power, the Golden Stool, she encouraged the Ashanti government to fight back through a powerful speech, and was chosen to head an army of 5000 at the age of sixty. Though she was captured and died in exile, and the war was lost, her mortal remains were returned home for a royal burial. She lives on in many imaginations today, especially in Ghana.

GLORIA ANZALDÚA was an American scholar of Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. Born in the Mexico-Texas border region, she thought deeply about marginalization and the in-between. She began her working life as a schoolteacher and went on to live from her writing and academic work. Her ideas often challenged binary notions – in language, identity, sexuality – and the status quo of the movements she was part of. She spoke of herself as a “Chicana, tejana, working-class, dyke-feminist poet, writer and theorist”. Her collection of figurines, masks, rattles, candles, and other ephemera used as altar objects is held at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

EVA CRANE was a British expert on bees and beekeeping. Her education took her from a southeast London grammar school to a PhD in nuclear physics, which she taught at Sheffield University. Having been given a beehive as a wedding present in 1942, she quickly shifted her attention from atoms to apiculture. She founded the Bee Research Association and edited both the Journal of Apicultural Research and Bee World, while travelling to sixty countries to investigate local bees and the long history of human honey cultivation. To the delight of many translators, she was also general editor of ten multilingual dictionaries of beekeeping terms.

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Podcast #44: Irmgard Keun

In this episode of the podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire introduces us to daring German writer Irmgard Keun. As an ingenue, Irmgard’s writing debut was much more consequent than her acting debut, and she garnered praise and a film adaptation. Her books explored women’s lives in Weimar-era Berlin with a humor all her own, which of course meant the Nazis banned them. There’s dark wit, wild parties in the face of danger, and fabulous costume changes — oh, and an unreliable narrator. It’s a bit of Babylon Berlin meets Cabaret, perhaps.

Irmgard Keun is also one of the original Dead Ladies (along with Dorothy Parker) that sparked the creation of the Dead Ladies Show in the first place!

Our other DLS co-creator Florian Duijsens joins podcast producer and host Susan Stone for the introducing duties in our last episode of DLSP Season Four!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Annie Musgrove, here.

Notes:

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Podcast #43: Bebe Barron

This episode presents a first: our presenter (our very own Susan Stone!) actually met the lady in question. Bebe Barron was a bohemian, composer, and electronic music pioneer. She and her husband Louis worked avant-garde art-makers like John Cage and Maya Deren, and hung out with Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Joseph Campbell, and more. The pair is credited with inventing the tape loop, and possibly the audio book. It’s certainly the case that they composed and created the first electronic music — or electro-acoustic — feature film soundtrack. Electronic music as we know it would not exist without Bebe, nor would the sounds we associate with outer space.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Notes:

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Podcast #41: Annette von Droste-Hülshoff

In this episode, Anneke Lubkowitz introduces us to the brilliant and strange 19th-century writer and poet Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. This Dead Lady was a Lady in the literal sense – she was born into nobility, and the life her family expected for her was far different from the one she led. Choosing the male occupation of poet, and the unladylike hobby of fossil collecting, nature devotee Annette could often be found wandering the muddy moors or writing away in a turret. Her ahead-of-her-time way with verse included timeless poems and a work of gothic fiction considered by some to be one of the first murder mysteries.

Via Zoom from the bright green rooms of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s former home Haus Ruschhaus, Anneke also reads some newly translated poems from Droste’s collections (thanks to the translators: Shane Anderson, Daniel Falb, Monika Rinck, and Annie Rutherford!).

Anneke live from Annette’s study, Katy and Florian smiling from their homes in Berlin

This show was created in collaboration with StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, with help from the Burg Hülshoff Center for Literature. Thanks to both!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can read the transcript here.

Notes:

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Podcast #40: Beryl Gilroy

The star of our 40th (!) episode is author, educator, and therapist Beryl Gilroy. Born in what was then British Guiana, she trained as a teacher before migrating to London in 1952 as part of the Windrush generation and worked all manner of jobs until becoming one of the very first Black head teachers in the UK. Her groundbreaking debut, Black Teacher (1976), documented her journey up to that point, and she’d keep publishing until her death in 2001. Telling her story is Berlin-based author Divya Ghelani.

And if you want to attend a very special live Dead Ladies Show via Zoom next month, join us at StAnza, Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, on 11 March (free tickets available here).

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.

Show notes:

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Podcast #39: Gráinne Mhaol (Grace O’Malley)

Episode 39 introduces Gráinne Mhaol, also known as Grace O’Malley, the legendary Irish pirate queen. 

Translator Laura Radosh presents the rollicking tale of this tremendous woman, who has been lauded as “a most famous femynyne sea captain,” and “the dark lady of Doona.” Gráinne Mhaol was head of the O’Malley dynasty in 16th-century Ireland, owning up to 1000 cattle and horses, leading men on land and sea, and allegedly wreaking cruel vengeance for the murder of a lover. When her sons and half-brother were captured by the English, she is said to have met with Queen Elizabeth I and negotiated their release in Latin.

Enjoy!

You can also find a transcript of this episode, by Annie Musgrove, here.

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Podcast #37: Chevalière d’Eon

Our 37th podcast episode celebrates a legendary spy, writer, and fencer whose very existence caused such a public uproar that it caused a grumpy British judge to outlaw all betting on a person’s gender. Although her story has been told many, many times before, most versions either invent her life story entirely or do not honor her own identity. Though she wanted to be recognized as the woman she was, that didn’t mean she was happy with society’s expectations of what a woman could or should wear, look like, or be around the time of the French Revolution. Mary Wollstonecraft was a fan, ranking her among the likes of Sappho and the Empress of Russia, and we think you’ll enjoy her story too.

Dead Ladies Show co-founder Florian Duijsens joins podcast host/producer Susan Stone to discuss our first episode about a woman we would now probably call a trans woman. Note that she is best known in the literature and all around the internet as the Chevalier d’Eon, Chevalière d’Eon is probably the more grammatically correct title 🙂 We also discuss the Dead Ladies Show’s famous three rules, and talk about about another unruly rulebreaker, Anne Lister.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can find the transcript here.

Show notes:

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Podcast #36: Shirley Jackson

Our 36th podcast episode brings you a glimpse of the acclaimed author of some of the most chilling tales in contemporary American literature, Shirley Jackson. Her short story “The Lottery” has been a true classic since its publication in 1948. Jackson blended gothic and horror elements with explorations of women’s alienation and search for identity. In her real life, she was forced to balance her tremendous talent with the everyday duties of a wife and mother and societal expectations of femininity which she defied at almost every step.  Our presentation from Krista Ahlberg comes courtesy of Dead Ladies Show NYC, and was recorded live by Christopher Neil in the Red Room at New York’s KGB Bar in 2019.

Dead Ladies Show co-founder Florian Duijsens joins podcast host/producer Susan Stone to discuss some of Shirley’s stories and the films and series in the extended Shirley Jackson universe.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can read the transcript here.

Show notes:

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Podcast #35: Ida B. Wells

We’re back with Episode 35! In this program, we’re coming to you live, limited, and socially distant from the courtyard of our beloved Berlin venue ACUD! 

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript here.

On this sultry September evening, DLS Podcast producer and host Susan Stone took the stage to present the life and times of the unstoppable Ida B. Wells! This pioneering African-American investigative journalist, suffragist and activist was a pint-sized powerhouse. Born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, Ida’s world opened up with the Emancipation Proclamation, and she became a teacher, newspaper editor, and international lecturer, fighting injustice and racism all the way. Her hold-nothing-back editorials and books exposed and documented the horrific practice of lynching in the American South. On her steely path to justice, she accepted no compromises, making friends and enemies along the way. 

DLS co-founders Katy Derbyshire and Florian Duijsens take up the introductions as we get back into the podcast swing of things after a summer break.   

Show notes:

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