The Dead Ladies Show is a series of entertaining and inspiring presentations on women who achieved amazing things against all odds. Every two months, the show hosts three passionate cheerleaders of too-oft forgotten women, inviting its loyal audience into a sexy séance (of sorts) celebrating these impressive icons, their turbulent lives, and deathless legacies.
Our new season is built around outstanding Berlin writers who share stories of awe-inspiring women who’ve fascinated them and influenced their work. Roll up, roll up for show number 24 – in which we present three accomplished ladies who battled prejudice to lead self-determined lives: a hugely influential writer and anthropologist, an incredible dancer and comedian, and a spy who came out as a woman. Introduced to you by the amazing author and filmmaker FATIN ABBAS, prestigious journalist and writer KATJA KULLMANN, and your beloved co-host KATY DERBYSHIRE. All held together at the seams by your other beloved co-host, FLORIAN DUIJSENS. Come on up to the ACUD Studio for an evening of entertainment, inspiration, and fabulous females.
ABOUT
Zora Neale Hurston
... was a writer and anthropologist. Although her grandparents were born into slavery, she grew up in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, where her father was mayor. She moved to New York to study anthropology and became part of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance movement of African-American arts. Alongside researching cultural practices in the Caribbean and the American South, she wrote folklore collections and novels, plays and musical revues, essays, satirical articles, and non-fiction. Not all of it was published during her lifetime; her work was rediscovered in the 1970s, prompted by Alice Walker, who also found an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida, and reclaimed it as hers. Hurston’s writing about the African-American experience has been an inspiration to several generations of authors.
Norma Miller
... nicknamed the Queen of Swing, was an African-American dancer, choreographer, and comedian. Born in Harlem, she began dancing at five and went on to make a career of it before she turned eighteen. “Black girls didn't have many outlets,” she explained, and she was still teaching dance at the age of 98. In between, she danced in Hollywood movies – most notably the bizarre 1941 comedy Hellzapoppin’ with Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers – toured with her own troupe, and went into comedy when her knees started knocking. She produced and starred in shows, performing in Miami and Las Vegas with the likes of Cab Calloway and Sammy Davis Jr. In her later years, Norma Miller played a major role in the swing revival from the 1980s until her death early in 2019.
Charles Geneviève Louise Auguste André Timothée d'Éon de Beaumont
... known as the CHEVALIÈRE D’ÉON, lived for 49 years as a man and spent the last 33 years of her life as a woman. She claimed to have been assigned female at birth in 1728 Burgundy and raised as a boy, but her elderly roommate got quite a shock when she found her dead body had male genitalia. Having served as a spy to the French king, the chevalière went into the military and then diplomacy, continuing her espionage for Louis XV from London. When the king died, d’Éon negotiated a return to France and legal recognition as a woman, then reluctantly assumed women’s clothing, made for her by Marie Antoinette’s personal dressmaker. She earned a meagre living after the French Revolution by performing in English fencing tournaments, wrote an unreliable autobiography and developed her own theology of virtuous womanhood, and died at the impressive age of 82.
Presented in a messy mixture of English and German. €5 or €3 reduced entry. Once again generously supported by the Berliner Senat. Doors open 7:30 – come on time to get a good seat and a good drink!