Category: NYC

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Dead Ladies Show NYC #22

At this, our twenty-second show (Wednesday, March 29, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar), be regaled with the tales of an inventive storyteller and librarian who has had a long-reaching impact on children’s literature; a stylish designer who gives new meaning to the phrase eco-conscious; and a supposed femme fatale who was one of the most maligned women of the 21st century. Presented by three women with a deep love for literature, with a smattering of commentary by your devoted hosts.

In bittersweet news, this will be our last show at the Red Room for the time being before we move to a super-special new venue in May—details to come!

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PURA BELPRÉ (1899–1982) was a New York City librarian from 1921 through 1944, during which she ran storytimes and performed puppet shows for children, sharing the folktales she’d grown up with in Puerto Rico. She was an early proponent of diversity and representation in children’s literature, as well as an author of numerous short stories, picture books, essays, and a novel. Today the American Library Association gives the annual Pura Belpré Awards for children’s and young adult literature.

ELIZABETH HAWES (1903–1971) was a gifted American designer, a prolific author, and a vocal labor activist. Over a career spanning five decades, she fought to bring high-quality garments to the masses and championed timeless style over passing trends. Although largely forgotten by the public, Hawes is beloved by fashion historians — in part for her role as an outspoken critic of the garment trade. Several shows are now giving Hawes her due, including Elizabeth Hawes: Along Her Own Lines, the first exhibition centered on her radical re-conceptions of the fashion industry, on view at the Museum at FIT through March 26.

MATA HARI (1876–1917) was a Dutch exotic dancer, courtesan, and spy who duped both Germany and France through her liaisons and allegedly brought down 50,000 soldiers during World War I. Although her innocence is contested, her life is a story of great risk and ambition including traveling far and wide, bearing children, forging relationships with high ranking officials, learning several languages, performing Asian dances, and trading secrets as well as gossip on invisible ink! How old was she when this occurred? Did she make it out alive? What happened to her husband and children? You will find out more at The Dead Ladies Show!

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Your presenters:

KRISTA AHLBERG is a copyeditor and writer living in Brooklyn. She had an actual bookstore inside her house until she was six, so her fate as a book lover was sealed from an early age.

ANNALISE GALL works for the New York Public Library and is studying textile conservation at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

SYEDA ZAIDI is a Brooklyn resident who loves a good old world scandal, apart from more innocent activities like listening to Latin music, going dancing, and baking for friends. By profession, she is an 11th-grade teacher. She wakes up everyday aiming to teach English and History, but comes home expanding her vocabulary of teen boy slang! Oh, ambition!

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Dead Ladies NYC #21

Join us, February 22, 7–9pm at the Red Room, for our twenty-first Dead Ladies Show on American soil, as we do things just a little bit differently! We will learn about two pioneering artists (an aristocrat-turned-Marxist and an Argentinian-turned-Italian) and a death-defying homemaker with a healthy respect for packaged baked goods. Presented by a postdoc, a photog, and a professional performer, respectively. Buy your tickets here, and we can’t wait to see you there!

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INJI AFLATOUN (1924–1989) was a pioneering painter and feminist in mid-20th century Egypt. She was born to a traditional family she described as “semi-feudal and bourgeois,” before joining the League of University and Institutes’ Young Women and embracing new, more communal politics. After a two-year painting hiatus that reflected this political transformation between 1946 and 1948, Aflatoun resumed her artistic work, engaged in further political activism, and emphasized in her works a growing solidarity with Egyptian working class communities of the time.

Defying all expectations about what a woman should be, LEONOR FINI (1907–1996) was one of the most fiercely independent artists of her time. Known for her fashionable presence, lion-like hair, and intriguing personality, she was one of the few female artists that the male Surrealists treated as an equal. In a flip of the male gaze, her artwork is characterized by powerfully dominant women, while the men are frail and vulnerable. Openly bisexual and polyamorous, Leonor Fini remains one of the most unapologetically provocative artists in the Surrealist movement.

ANGELINA KATZ (1936–2019) loved a good laugh. She killed bees and wasps with her bare hands, walked barefoot in the snow, and could catch our parakeet Chirpy with a dishcloth whenever he got loose. She worked at Child’s World for decades and loved the kids even though they ruined her back. Her chicken parmigiana was legendary, and she believed Entenmann’s coffee cake could solve all solvable problems. She taught us the essential life rules: a crow is a visit from the dead, and never to follow an empty hearse. She loved to vacuum, especially when anyone’s favorite show was on TV. She once drove straight through the garage without braking.

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Your presenters:

HUSSEIN MOHSEN is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and a freelance writer who focuses on science and technology and the history and politics thereof as they pertain to the Arab World.

JR PEPPER is a photographer, lecturer, photo retoucher, researcher, cemetery tour-guide and self described ‘professional eccentric”. A New York native, she is known for her spirit photography and her peculiar love of guinea pigs.

CARLA KATZ is a storyteller and comic. She is a Moth StorySlam Champion and has been featured on PBS Stories from the Stage and The Moth Radio Hour. She has graced stages all over NY and NJ. More at www.carlakatz.com.

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Dead Ladies NYC #20

We are thrilled to invite you to our twentieth DLS NYC on Wednesday, December 7, 2022, at the Red Room at KGB Bar! (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor.) You can buy your tickets here!!!

It’ll be a sister act (in fact, if you’ve been with us a while, you’ll know it’s our very own Sister Act II), featuring one nun presented and a pair of sisters doing the other two presentations! LOVE IT.

Join us as we are regaled with the tales of a nun even the pope couldn’t bar from good works, a groundbreaking American dramatist, and a Black champion of Southern cuisine. Presented by three fascinating and intrepid Women of History(TM).

NB: We are now charging a $10 cover to defray costs of the event—if this presents any issue, please contact me and we can absolutely work something out.

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CLARE OF ASSISI (1194–1253), born a noblewoman, is best known for her association with Francis of Assisi. When she was 18, she eluded unwanted marriage, escaped her parental home, and taking a vow of poverty, established a community of lay women under his guidance. She preached and served lepers and the poor—the life Francis had promised her—until a powerful cardinal set about to make her a cloistered nun. Ultimately from behind locked walls, Clare waged a decades-long fight with the papacy, upending some of its plans and blindsiding the pope who thought he had shut her from the world.

SUSAN GLASPELL (1876–1948) is the greatest writer you’ve (probably) never heard of. She flourished during the golden age of the short story, co-founded the first modern American theater company, the Provincetown Players, and earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A path-breaking feminist writer, her play, Trifles, will keep you hanging on the edge of your seat and twist your stomach into knots. It’s a real killer. 

EDNA LEWIS (1916–2006) was a self-taught African American chef and champion of Southern food, who trail-blazed the farm-to-table movement in the US—well before the model came to define the work of Chef Alice Waters at Chez Panisse. Born in Freetown, Virginia, Lewis eventually moved to New York City, where she opened Café Nicholson in 1948 with her friend, Johnny Nicholson. As the Midtown restaurant’s chef—rare for a Black woman at the time—she attracted literati, movie stars, and bohemians for decades with a pared down menu of roasted chicken and chocolate soufflé. Her mentorship and four cookbooks, based on a seasonal appreciation for ingredients, challenged America’s perception of the South and elevated its foodways.

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Your presenters:

KATHLEEN BRADY is the author of Ida Tarbell: Portrait of A Muckraker, for which she was named a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. She has also written biographies of Lucille Ball and now Francis and Clare of Assisi.

DEBORAH STREAHLE is a historian who writes about health activism, psychedelics, and death in American culture.

DR. KRISTEN STREAHLE is an expert in medieval Sicilian art and architecture. She has also worked in communities around the country to shift policy and urban design toward increasing food accessibility.

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Podcast 56: Mae West

Courtesy of our pals at DLS NYC, we meet the first meta sex symbol: Mae West. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Mae was brazen, buxom, bawdy, sensational, and sexy. She was known for her husky voice, risqué performances, and double entendres that slipped past the film censors. With over 70 years in show business on both stage and screen, she scandalized the world of entertainment in a time when women were expected to sit on the sidelines. But, as Mae West would tell you, “goodness had nothing to do with it.”

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer Susan Stone to introduce our featured Dead Lady.

Artist, lecturer, researcher, and self-described ‘professional eccentric’ JR Pepper tells Mae’s story; you can find out more about JR here.

DLS NYC is curated and hosted by Molly O’Laughlin Kemper, and was recorded by Jennifer Nulsen, all under the auspices of the KGB Bar’s Lori Schwarz.

If you’re in the NY area, why not sign up for their newsletter so you can find out when the next show will be? Find it here.

You can download the transcript, created by Annie Musgrove, here.

Show notes:

Continue reading “Podcast 56: Mae West”
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Dead Ladies NYC #19

It was wonderful seeing so many of you last month at DLS NYC #18! We are very pleased to announce that we’ll be back in the Red Room on September 7, 2022 for our nineteenth NYC show. (Can you believe it??)

At this, our nineteenth show, be regaled with the tales of an imperious librarian who fended off literary predators to protect the people’s access to great work; a Black lesbian playwright who made history on Broadway and off; and a justice perhaps best described as simply…notorious. Presented by three live ladies who have each graced the DLS stage before, now back and better than ever!

SHEILA ENRIGHT is a human woman who lives in New York. She can usually be found sitting or standing when not lying down. 

MOLLY O’LAUGHLIN KEMPER is a writer living in New York. Her work has appeared most recently in MUTHA Magazine. She also just so happens to be the host of the DEAD LADIES SHOW NYC.

EMILY KNAPP lives and works in New York. She is also the founding partner of LTDEDTN (@__ltdedtn__), a gallery that showcases emerging artists, one artwork at a time.

Join us, Wednesday, September 7, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar! (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor.)

NB: Due to an increased bar minimum at our beautiful space, we will now be charging a $10 cover. Get your tickets here!

*** If this charge poses financial difficulties for you, please email me and we can absolutely work something out! ***

Read more: Dead Ladies NYC #19

LOLA SZLADITS (1923–1990) was a librarian and curator of the Berg Collection of English and American Literature at the New York Public Library. During her 20 year tenure, she built up the Berg into one of the world’s great collections of English and American literary manuscripts and rare books. A “dragon guarding the treasure horde,” Lola was renowned for her sardonic sense of humor, and feared for her caustic wit. With an unparalleled foresight for authors who would become giants in the canon of English Literature, she wrangled with “hard hitting literary widows” and held off well-heeled collectors to ensure that the public had access to the manuscripts and papers of such greats as Virginia Woolf, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, and Samuel Beckett.

When her play A Raisin in the Sun opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 11, 1959, LORRAINE HANSBERRY (1930–1965) became the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway. At only 29 years old, she became the youngest American playwright to receive the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, and she was nominated for a Tony to boot. Her writing ranged from the intimately personal (e.g. her experience as a closeted lesbian married to a white Jewish man) to the global and political (Black liberation worldwide), and everything in-between.

Justice RUTH BADER GINSBURG (1933–2020) was the second woman and first Jewish woman confirmed to the United States Supreme Court. Guided by her Jewish identity and upbringing, Justice Ginsburg spent her entire career using her expert knowledge of the law to advance the lives of those not fully protected by our Constitution—especially women. After spending 27 years on the court, Justice Ginsburg succumbed to complications from cancer on September 18, 2020 on Rosh Hashanah; those who pass on this auspicious day are considered a Tzedek/ket or a righteous person.

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Podcast 54: Memphis Minnie

In this Episode, we drop in on our New York-based sister spinoff show, DLS NYC, which returned to the KGB Bar’s Red Room after a long hiatus. DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens happened to be visiting from Berlin, and took to the stage to introduce the fabulous Memphis Minnie. 

Tobacco-chewing blues singer MEMPHIS MINNIE (1897–1973) ran away from home at the age of 13 and made a living off music from then on, from street performances supplemented by prostitution to hundreds of now classic recordings. It was said she never put her guitar down until she could no longer hold it in her hands, and she was known to use it as a weapon when required. Her songs were about the joys and hardships of everyday black life; according to the poet Langston Hughes, she played “music with so much in it folks remember, that sometimes it makes them holler out loud.” Largely forgotten for many years while white men covered her songs, she is now celebrated for her huge contribution to blues music and what came after. 

Embed from Getty Images

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast.

You can download the transcript, created by Annie Musgrove, here.

Show notes:

Continue reading “Podcast 54: Memphis Minnie”
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Dead Ladies NYC #18

The moment you’ve been waiting for since July of 2020 has arrived! The Dead Ladies Show NYC is BACK, BABY!

Deets: Wednesday, June 1, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar! (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor.)

Join your host MOLLY O’LAUGHLIN KEMPER as we learn about a Chinese pirate queen, a scandalous siren of the silver screen, and the author of the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. Presented, respectively, by a standup comedian, a “professional eccentric,” and a writer who haunts ghost towns in her spare time.

But THAT’S NOT ALL!

We also have a *** VERY SPECIAL GUEST *** (wee-oo wee-oo)!

For the first time in NYC, we will be joined by one of the two illustrious co-hosts who created the Dead Ladies Show in Berlin, the one and only FLORIAN DUIJSENS! Florian will tell us all about a Black blues singer whose legacy has been recently reclaimed.

In lieu of admission, please plan to buy a drink or two (maybe even a thank-you drink for Florian??) and tip the staff generously! We love them!

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CHING I SAO (1775–1844) was a 19th-century sex worker in China who eventually married a pirate. When he died, she took over and was one of the most successful pirates of her time. (To add to her badassery, after her husband died she married her adopted stepson!) The British tried to get rid of her but she proved elusive and ended up living a very long and prosperous life.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, MAE WEST (1893–1980) was brazen, buxom, bawdy, sensational and sexy. West was known for her husky voice, risque performances, and double entendres that slipped past the film censors. With over 70 years in show business on both the stage and screen, she scandalized the world of entertainment in a time when women were expected to sit on the sidelines. But, as Mae West would tell you, “goodness had nothing to do with it.”

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH (1921–1995) was an American novelist and short-story writer known for her psychological thrillers. She wrote morally complicated characters who “longed to escape the drudgery of selfhood and convention.” Highsmith married a man but attempted to seduce women at her therapy group for married women who are latent homosexuals. After a chance encounter with a woman at a toy store, Highsmith anonymously published The Price of Salt, which was later adapted for the 2015 film, Carol. The book is the first lesbian novel with a happy ending. Throughout her lifetime, Highsmith collected snails, pursued unavailable women, and left behind over 8,000 pages of diary entries.

Tobacco-chewing blues singer MEMPHIS MINNIE (1897–1973) ran away from home at the age of 13 and made a living off music from then on, from street performances supplemented by prostitution to hundreds of now classic recordings. It was said she never put her guitar down until she could no longer hold it in her hands, and she was known to use it as a weapon when required. Her songs were about the joys and hardships of everyday black life; according to the poet Langston Hughes, she played “music with so much in it folks remember, that sometimes it makes them holler out loud.” Largely forgotten for many years while white men covered her songs, she is now celebrated for her huge contribution to blues music and what came after.

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About your presenters:
NATALIE KIM is a standup comedian who lives in New York City. She can be seen in clubs around town & occasionally screaming on network television (The Blacklist, Law & Order and Madam Secretary).

JR PEPPER is a New York native and self described ‘professional eccentric.” She is a photographer, performer, artist, imaging specialist and cemetery tour guide with an extensive bizarre resume that includes the Odd Salon, The Burns Archive, Morbid Anatomy Library, Brooklyn Brainery, and Green-Wood Cemetery.

HANNAH MEYER is a writer and educator based in New York City. In her spare time, she enjoys running, exploring ghost towns, and listening to Patti Smith.  

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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, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can read the transcript here.

Show notes:

Shirley and her college best friend
Here’s Shirley in 1938.
Shirley reading her classic short story “The Lottery”
One of those cartoons Shirley drew of her family
Shirley and her kids
Some of the medication Shirley might have been prescribed
The trailer for the original film version of The Haunting of Hill House
And Lili Taylor in the 1999 remake
And the Netflix version
And We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which cannot be a match for the book
To cleanse your palate, here’s the trailer for Josephine Decker’s Shirley, starring Elizabeth Moss

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Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon.
Thanks for listening! We’ll be back with a new episode next month.

Don’t forget, we now have a Patreon! Please consider supporting our transcripts project and our ongoing work: www.patreon.com/deadladiesshowpodcast

If you’d prefer to make a one-time donation, here’s the link: paypal.me/dlspodcast

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Dead Ladies Show NYC #17 – Zoom edition!

The seventeenth edition of DLS NYC is upon us! Tuesday, July 21, from 7–8:15 pm on Zoom. This month, please join EMILY KNAPP and ELIZA ROCKEFELLER to learn about a visionary artist and teacher and the revolutionary Mayor of Christopher Street. Presented, respectively, by an art historian-slash-curator and a student of government and philosophy. 

 Free admission, and an ~*important note!*~ If you can, you’re welcome and encouraged to donate what you would have paid for a drink or two to the KGB Bar/Red Room, which has been hit hard financially by the pandemic. They are distributing 30% of all donations directly to employees. Donate here: Literary Landmark KGB Bar NYC Aid

We also ask that you consider donating to the following organization: G.L.I.T.S. Inc, a nonprofit led by trans women of color that works to address “the health and rights crises faced by transgender sex workers.”

474px-Lois_Jones,_artist_and_teacher_-_NARA_-_559227

LOÏS MAILOU JONES (1905–1998) was a visionary artist and teacher who spent much of her 70-year career as an ardent advocate for African-American art. She established the art department at Palmer Memorial Institute and later became a professor at Howard University, where she mentored generations of African-American artists until her retirement in 1977. Her profound range spanned mediums and continents, from her early work designing textiles in New York to her captivating paintings of Paris and Port-au-Prince, not to mention her work as a U.S. cultural ambassador to numerous African countries in the 1970s. 

A_photo_of_Marsha_P._Johnson

MARSHA P. JOHNSON (1945-1992), also known as the “Mayor of Christopher Street”, was an activist, drag queen, performer, and sex worker. Credited as one of the initiators of the Stonewall uprising of 1969, co-founder of the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, and an AIDS activist with ACT UP, she was one of the most prominent figures in the fight for queer liberation.

About your presenters:

INDIRA A. ABISKAROON is an art historian based in New York City. She is currently on leave from her role as Curatorial Assistant, Collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

ALMA BRADLEY is a Senior at Hamilton College concentrating in Government and Philosophy. She is spending her summer conducting research on alt-right protest movements and experimenting with fermentation in her spare time. 

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Dead Ladies Show NYC #16 – Zoom edition!

The sixteenth edition of DLS NYC is upon us! Tuesday, April 7, from 7–9pm, though we won’t meet in the Red Room this time, given the pandemic; we’re meeting on Zoom. We hear it’s hip to meet online these days! 😉

In April, join EMILY KNAPP, ELIZA ROCKEFELLER, and HALL ROCKEFELLER to learn about a colossal Jewish-American literary figure, a Celtic warrior queen, and a revolutionary prison-reform advocate. Presented, respectively, by a museum director-slash-historian, a classicist passionate about very dead ladies, and a director-slash-arts activist.

Free admission, and an ~*important note!*~ If you can, you’re welcome and encouraged to donate what you would have paid for a drink or two to the KGB Bar/Red Room, which has been affected by NYC’s mandated business closures and has been hit hard financially. They are distributing 30% of all donations directly to employees. Alternatively, you can buy drink tickets to use when the bar reopens (whenever normal life returns, blessed be the day!)—just specify “drink tickets for DLS” in your donation note.

Emma_Lazarus
EMMA LAZARUS, though now most famous for her poem “The New Colossus,” an excerpt of which is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, was both a consequential literary figure and activist for Jewish causes. She spoke out against anti-Semitism and waves of pogroms. In her short 38 years, she produced some of the most recognized and relevant prose of the 20th century.

Boadicea_Haranguing_the_Britons_(called_Boudicca,_or_Boadicea)_by_John_Opie

BOUDICCA (aka Boudica, Boudicea, or Boadicea) is perhaps one of the least popularized revolt leaders in Roman history. Celtic queen of the Iceni people in the 1st century CE, Boudicca led a deleterious revolt against the Roman Empire—yes, that Roman Empire—in the year 60/61 CE. Her story has been primarily bequeathed to us by two distinctly male and Roman voices (Tacitus and Cassius Dio), neither of whom were present during the revolt. The intense inherent bias of her biographers notwithstanding, she was a fierce warrior, who fought to protect her lands and people from the tight grasp of Roman rule.

Elizabeth_Fry

ELIZABETH FRY earned her place on the British £5 note through her revolutionary prison reform advocacy and activism in the early 19th century. She kept extensive and revealing diaries throughout her life, but her best known writing came in the form of an exposé-style book entitled Prisons in Scotland and the North of England. Fry invited members of the British nobility to spend nights with her in prison to reveal the conditions and encourage political action and founded the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate.

About your presenters:

ANNIE POLLAND is the director of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York and co-author of Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration.

CAROLINE KNAPP is a lover of the ancient world, languages, and ice cream. Unlike Boudicca, she has not spearheaded a revolt against an invading foreign army to protect her beloved homeland…yet…

LEIA SQUILLACE is a Virginia-born, Brooklyn-based theatre director, arts activist, criminal justice reform advocate, and baker.