The Dead Ladies Show

September 1, 2023October 12, 2023

Dead Ladies NYC #25

Happy September! We’re celebrating FIVE YEARS of the Dead Ladies Show NYC this month—the first edition took place on September 5, 2018 at the illustrious KGB Bar. It has been an extraordinary ride—fascinating women, incredible presenters, and an audience that makes the whole labor of love worth it! (That’s you.)

And now, by popular demand, the information for our next show!

DEETS: Wednesday, September 27, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar! (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor.) BUY TICKETS HERE!

(As always, if the cover charge presents any issue, please contact us and we can absolutely work something out.)

Join Molly and Sheila as we learn about an influential mother in Christian theology, a Surrealist painter who became part of the French Resistance, and a speed racer who shattered records and expectations in the automotive world!

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MONICA OF THAGASTE (331–387 AD) was the mother, and a major theological interlocutor, of Saint Augustine, considered one of the most influential figures in early Christianity.

MARY REYNOLDS (1891–1950) was an American-born artist and advocate who became a central figure of the Surrealist movement in Paris. A “relentless bohemian” who counted Man Ray, Alexander Calder, Peggy Guggenheim and Marcel Duchamp as close friends, Mary was renowned for her bookbinding, particularly her surprising and unorthodox use of materials like teacup handles, thermometers, and kid gloves. She refused to leave Paris during the Nazi occupation of France, and became a member of the French Resistance. When she was discovered, she narrowly avoided capture by escaping over the Pyrenees on foot, before returning to Paris after the war.

JESSI COMBS (1980–2019) was an icon in the automotive world. Trained as a mechanic, Combs made her name on TV, one of the first women to host a car-repair TV show. In 2013, she set a women’s record in land-speed racing, achieving 398 mph in a jet-powered car built from an Air Force fighter plane. In 2019, Combs died while attempting to break her own record driving that same jet-powered car.

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Your presenters:

SUSANNAH BLACK ROBERTS is senior editor at the magazines Plough Quarterly and Mere Orthodoxy. She and her husband split their time between the Upper West Side and the West Midlands of England.

GRACE ENRIGHT is a Midwest transplant to New York who works in the grocery industry. She loves all things Art History and, if you’re looking, you can find her rewatching “Moonstruck” starring Cher and Nicolas Cage.

BOB SOROKANICH is an automotive journalist and a former editor at Road & Track Magazine. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

August 17, 2023October 30, 2023

Podcast #66: Doreen Massey

In this episode, we encounter the show’s very first featured geographer. Doreen Massey was a pioneer in her field. She challenged existing ideas about space, place and power, was compassionate, politically active, and hopeful.

She worked mainly at the Centre for Environmental Studies think tank, and at British early-morning TV fans’ beloved Open University – teaching students who didn’t have access to a traditional university education – and also in Nicaragua, Venezuela and South Africa. That work focused on economic geography and the geography of gender, and she spoke eloquently about place or space as “a pincushion of a million stories”. Her list of publications vies in length with her honors and awards – including a pretty impressive total of six honorary degrees.

Our talk is presented by Agata Lisiak, a professor of Migration Studies at Bard College Berlin, and a DLS regular, who has previously talked about Marie Curie and Rosa Luxemburg.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce the episode, and talk a bit about the Open University, an important place for Doreen Massey and many others.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

July 15, 2023December 8, 2023

Podcast #65: Romy Schneider

In this episode, we bring you the story of an actress whose off-screen life was as dramatic and tragic as many of the characters she portrayed. Romy Schneider was said to have the star power of Greta Garbo or Marilyn Monroe.

She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of Sissi, aka Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who she embodied in four films (some of which are still shown at holiday time every year in countries from the Netherlands to China). But though she strove to move past this very nationalistic role to play more realistic and naturalistic characters, to her chagrin she was remembered by some her whole life as “Sissi.”

A great beauty and talent, Romy was much beloved by the public for her performances, yet hounded by the press over her personal life. Our story comes from DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens, a writer, translator and educator, and devotee of tragic glamour.

Our other DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce things, and comment on the crossover with our last episode, which featured another German-speaking screen icon, Hildegard Knef.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.
Continue reading “Podcast #65: Romy Schneider”

June 18, 2023October 12, 2023

Dead Ladies NYC #24

***** FIELD TRIP! *****

That’s right, the Dead Ladies Show is hittin’ the road…all the way to 3rd and B, baybee!

BRAND-NEW VENUE/TIME: Tuesday, July 11, 8–10pm at Book Club! (197 E 3rd St, at Avenue B). Buy tickets here:.

At this, our 24th show in NYC, we are finally getting grounded and giving your knees a break—this cozy bookstore/cafe/bar is on the ground floor, so you can grab a cocktail (the “Murder on the Orient Espresso Martini,” perhaps?) and settle in for the evening as we regale you with the life stories of three new Dead Ladies.

Over the course of the evening, we will hear about a bride-turned-cannibal-turned-widow who survived one of history’s most famously gruesome road trips; a mystery lover who not only opened America’s first mystery bookstore, but also wrote the literal book on murder; and a singer-songwriter dubbed “the female Bob Dylan” who disappeared without a trace at age 50. Presented by a math teacher, a journalist, and also YOURS TRULY.

Yours truly,

Molly and Sheila

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SARAH GRAVES (1825–1871) was a new bride in 1846 when she and her husband joined her parents on their journey west from Illinois as part of a group of 81 pioneers traveling to California by wagon train. That group, known as the Donner Party, would become snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountains later that year, and its survivors—including Sarah, but not her husband—would famously avoid starvation by resorting to cannibalism.

When DILYS WINN (1939-2016) opened the nation’s first mystery bookstore, in 1972, the compact NYC shop didn’t even have a window sign. But inside Murder Ink, one could find British cozies, unsettling gothics, suspense thrillers, novels about hard-boiled detectives, police procedurals and even unpublished manuscripts—some 1,500 titles in all. She went on to literally write the book on murder (a quirky mystery reader’s compendium, which she followed with a sequel) and mastermind a brilliant series of immersive, interactive whodunits. In her work– and her life—Winn was the OG of the RPG.

CONNIE CONVERSE (1924–?) was an American singer-songwriter and polymath. She was active in 1950s New York City, writing songs that were both inflected by the folk tradition and years ahead of her time. Despite her talent, she never achieved success, though some of her work survived to inspire audiences today. After years of mental health struggles, she disappeared in 1974. Neither she nor the car she drove away has ever been found.

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Your presenters:

NORA KRULWICH is math department chair at the Berkeley Carroll School in Brooklyn, NY. Ask her about the three-day Ironman she’s planning this summer.

ALLYSON MCCABE is a journalist whose work is often broadcast on NPR, and her byline appears in the New York Times, BBC Culture, Wired, and other publications. She is also the author of Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters (University of Texas Press, 2023). Visit allysonmccabe.com for more.

MOLLY O’LAUGHLIN KEMPER is a writer and translator in New York City. Her writing can be found in MUTHA and Greener Pastures magazines, and she co-runs the Dead Ladies Show NYC. Heard of it?

June 15, 2023November 3, 2023

Podcast #64: Hildegard Knef

In this episode, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire has the story of a deutsche Diva — an iconic German actress and singer and best-selling author known for her glamour and scandal, her smoky voice and sweeping false eyelashes. Hildegard Knef was also an unreliable narrator and a serial fabulator who was alternately loved and hated in her homeland.

Producer/host Susan Stone is joined by other DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens to introduce our featured Dead Lady.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can find the transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

May 11, 2023November 12, 2023

Podcast #63: Djuna Barnes

In this episode, translator Laura Radosh introduces us to the fascinating and troubled writer Djuna Barnes. The journalist, novelist, and artist mixed with everyone from James Joyce to Peggy Guggenheim, and was at the center of Bohemian life in 1920s New York and Paris, though perhaps not quite as much as she would like. Best known (if at all) for her modernist novel Nightwood, Djuna once called herself ”the most famous unknown in the world.”

DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens joins producer/host Susan Stone to muse on Djuna and her circle of modernist Dead Ladies.

If you’d like to get advance tickets for our May show in Berlin they are here. DLS NYC tickets can be purchased here.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download a transcript, created by Rachel Pronger, here.

Show notes:

Another portrait by sometime roommate Berenice Abbott

Djuna’s experiential journalism for the *Brooklyn Eagle*

Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, who tragically picked Djuna to be her literary executor

Mary Pyne, the lover whom Djuna nursed until her death of tuberculosis in 1919

The “fountain syringe” used the bottom-left nozzle

Janet Flanner, who covered Paris for the *New Yorker*

Margaret Anderson & Jane Heap, editors of the *Little Review*

Natalie Barney, here with Romaine Brooks

You can see Natalie Barney’s Parisian home and garden with its Temple of Friendship in this documentary.

Silverpoint artist Thelma Wood, who inspired Djuna’s famous *Nightwood* (1936)

Greta Schiller’s Paris Was a Woman (1996) is well worth seeking out in full!

Listen to Dylan Thomas reading *Nightwood* here.

You can hear Djuna reading from her autobiographical play in verse The Antiphon at the Paris Review, and check out our episodes on Berenice Abbott and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.

Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon. Want to suggest a Dead Lady for us? Drop us a line to info@deadladiesshow.com or tell us on social media. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back with a new episode next month.

May 11, 2023

Dead Ladies Show #34: Paula Fox, Doreen Massey & Sister Mary Ignatius

We’re thrilled to be back on stage in Berlin on Monday, May 29th! While we await the next round of funding, we’re financially on our own for 2023, so all three of our talks will be in English, which means your beloved co-hosts Florian Duijsens and Katy Derbyshire, plus long-time favorite Agata Lisiak. Learn all about three impressive women who overcame obstacles, pushed boundaries and gave the world lasting treasures. The aim of the show is to raise money for more podcasts, so we’ve adjusted the non-reduced price to €10, but reduced tickets still cost €4. Buy them at Eventbrite. Doors open 7.30 pm, show starts at 8 pm – come on time to get a good seat!

We have more limited space than usual, since were in the CLUB (not the Studio), so please book in advance. And if you’re looking for an opportunity to get dressed up, you know we always appreciate your favorite finery.

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PAULA FOX wrote novels for children and adults, and two memoirs – always a good sign. Her childhood between the USA and Cuba might best be described as itinerant, although harsher adjectives may apply. She had three children, giving the first up for adoption at the age of 21. Her first main job was as a teacher for troubled children, but she began writing in her 40s. Her first novel came out in 1966, the children’s book Maurice’s Room, and the next year she published two more children’s books and one novel for adults. She continued apace, switching to memoir as she approached her 80s. In 2011 she was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. Paula Fox died aged 93 in 2017.

DOREEN MASSEY was a Marxist social scientist and geographer from the UK. She worked mainly at the Centre for Environmental Studies think tank, and at British early-morning TV fans’ beloved Open University – teaching students who didn’t have access to a traditional university education – and also in Nicaragua, Venezuela and South Africa. That work focused on economic geography and the geography of gender, and she spoke eloquently about place or space as “a pincushion of a million stories”. Her list of publications vies in length with her honors and awards – including a pretty impressive total of six honorary degrees. Like many other utter stars, Doreen Massey declined an OBE. She died aged 72 in 2016.

SISTER MARY IGNATIUS was born in Jamaica as Mary Davies, and became a Sister of Mercy (not the 80s Gothic rock band) at the age of 17. With a short exception, she spent the rest of her life at the Alpha Boys’ School in Kingston, teaching football, cricket, boxing, table tennis and dominoes – but most importantly, music. A lover of jazz and blues, she inspired hundreds of “wayward boys” to become professional musicians, including future Skatalites Tommy McCook and Don Drummond, trombonist Rico Rodriguez and Leslie Thompson, the first black conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Without Sister Mary Ignatius, who died at the age of 81 in 2003, we might never have had reggae.

May 1, 2023October 12, 2023

Dead Ladies NYC #23

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…by which we mean, good news! we’re staying at the Red Room after all for our upcoming Dead Ladies Show NYC!

The Deets: Wednesday, May 24, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar! (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor.)

BUY TICKETS HERE!

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

This is our twenty-third show in New York, can you even believe it?? (Neither can we!) Join your fearless hosts, Molly and Sheila, as we dive into the life stories of a Lebanese-Palestinian feminist poet whose voice, long silenced, is just now re-emerging; a Black American activist who spent her life fighting for racial justice after the brutal murder of her son; and a comedy legend who paved inroads for American women in entertainment. Presented, respectively, by a designer, a research professor, and a writer—oh my!

If you want to make sure you don’t miss the next NYC edition, sign up for the dedicated newsletter here. You can also follow the NYC edition on Instagram and Twitter!

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MAY ZIADEH (1886–1941) was a Lebanese-Palestinian poet, writer, translator, and feminist who rose to prominence in the Nahda movement. She hosted a weekly literary salon in Cairo, and her work explored themes of love, identity, and the liberation of women. Yet May’s life is mostly remembered through tragedy and isolation: her dismissal by literary male contemporaries as an “intellectual ornament,” the deaths of her parents and Gibran Kahlil Gibran, and her forced admittance to a psychiatric institution. Today, May’s voice is finally, gradually gaining the resonance it deserves.

MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY (1921–2003) was a relentless Black American social activist and educator. She is best known as the mother of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old-boy who was brutally murdered by two white men in 1955 after being accused of an inappropriate encounter with a white woman. Till-Mobley, an excellent student in her youth, became a force of diligence and eloquence after Emmett’s murder, shedding a glaring light on racial violence in America and advancing the Civil Rights movement. She became a lifelong proponent of racial equity, both as an educator and an advocate for youth living in poverty.

AMRITA SHER-GIL (c. 1913–1941) was a queer, feminist, Hungarian-Indian artist, writer, and art critic who left a profound impact on Indian art. Part of the avant-garde, she was known to be incredibly charismatic and a non-conformist whose work reframed discussions on art and feminism, orientalism, and colonialism. She was able to create a significant body of work and make strides in hybridizing European technique, classical Indian aesthetics, and her own highly affective style before an untimely death from an unsafe abortion at the age of 28.

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Your presenters:

ROSANA ELKHATIB is a designer, researcher, and curator whose work focuses on the mutual constitution of bodies and spaces across political, social, and religious environs. She is a co-founding principal of feminist architecture collaborative (f-architecture) and currently teaches at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation.

ALYSSA WILSON is a research professor studying age-related brain diseases at Mount Sinai in New York City. She also sings in a cover band and has a pet rabbit who resembles a tiny hippo.

NAFISA FERDOUS is a feminist program manager and illustrator from Queens, NYC. She has lived for nearly a decade in Asia and East Africa working for human rights organizations. Now she tries to make low-ego art and comics at @__petni.

April 13, 2023December 8, 2023

Podcast #62: Leonor Fini

Our story for this episode comes from our friends at the Dead Ladies Show NYC, which is organized and hosted by Molly O’Laughlin Kemper with Sheila Enright. Photographer, professional eccentric, and guinea-pig lover JR Pepper (previously on the pod with Mae West) tells the tale of artist Leonor Fini, a glamorous, passionate iconoclast (and cat lover) with a brilliant creative mind who was fiercely independent — at a time when women were allowed to be muses, not painters.

Like her friend Leonora Carrington, Fini is often called a Surrealist, but she didn’t consider herself one of their group due to their misogynistic views, which included viewing women as either childlike muse or femme fatale. Her paintings utilized the female gaze, and often featured catlike and other creatures inspired by Fini’s own striking appearance, accompanied by languid men. Leonor Fini’s life was as rule-breaking as her art; she had many lovers, and spent much of her life living in a happy throuple — along with about 20 cats.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce this episode’s featured Dead Lady.

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

Show notes:

March 16, 2023October 29, 2023

Podcast #61: Emmy Noether

For our 61st episode, we bring back the presenter who appeared in our very first podcast episode, writer and translator Karen Margolis. Drawing from her own history in higher mathematics, Karen ably tells the tale of Germany’s Emmy Noether, who developed key theorems in theoretical physics and made important contributions to abstract algebra. Excluded from academic positions in Germany as a woman, she worked unpaid and under other lecturers’ names. Once she was finally allowed to teach in 1919, she had only 14 years until the Nazis banned her from universities, as a Jew. In American exile, she taught at the women’s college Bryn Mawr and occasionally at Princeton, though she felt she was not welcome at “the men’s university, where nothing female is admitted.” Nowadays, everything from fellowships to a crater on the moon has honored Emmy, so it was clearly our turn to do so.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to introduce things.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and Acast. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes: