Dead Ladies Show 06

April brings us a triple-A DEAD LADIES SHOW, a unique literary cabaret dedicated to ladies who were once wonderful. Join our sixth extravaganza to celebrate three fascinating women: Special guests Lucy Renner-Jones and Fabian Wolff spill the beans on Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Alma Cogan, while regular Katy Derbyshire parts the mists of time to tell us all about Aphra Behn—all held together by your beloved co-host Florian Duijsens.
 
Come along in your finest finery or your raggedest rags for an evening full of fabulous facts and females, with a special drink on offer to suit the occasion. Presented in English and German for your delectation and inspiration.
 
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ANNEMARIE SCHWARZENBACH was a Swiss photojournalist and writer. Addicted to morphine from her early 20s, she was the first woman to drive from Geneva to Kabul (in the 1930s!) and had stormy relationships with Carson McCullers and Erika Mann. Thanks to her pioneering reportage and famously androgynous style, Schwarzenbach has in recent years been rediscovered as a true lesbian icon.
 
ALMA COGAN, “the girl with the giggle in her voice”, was a Jewish girl from London and briefly England’s biggest pop star, fifty years before Amy Winehouse. She had hit after hit in the 1950s and knew everyone who was anyone, playing host to Audrey Hepburn, Noel Coward, Sammy Davis, Jr. and John Lennon. Alma’s career ended as the 1960s began – her friendly pop tunes went out of fashion. By the time she died, aged 34, she was little but a memory, long due a revival.
 
APHRA BEHN was one of the first women ever to make a living as a writer. She wrote plays, novels, poetry and translations, was probably also a spy and may have travelled all the way to Surinam – all this in Restoration England during the late 17th century! Famously praised by Virginia Woolf as a role model for women, Aphra came out of obscurity to lead a “life dedicated to pleasure and poetry” and has inspired writers for hundreds of years.
 
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LUCY RENNER JONES was born in England and did several jobs before becoming a translator. Up until 2004, she worked in Barcelona, Hamburg and Berlin as a photographer. Then she returned to her roots in literature and founded the translator’s collective Transfiction. She has a BA in German and Film from UEA, where she was taught by W. G. Sebald, and an MA in Applied Linguistics. She has translated Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Silke Scheuermann and Brigitte Reimann, writes book reviews for CULTurMAG and Words Without Borders, and hosts a series of events under the label The Fiction Canteen for writers and translators in Berlin.
 
FABIAN WOLFF is an author from Berlin. He writes for newspapers, is occasionally on the radio and is working on his first novel. He writes in German and in English about old books and new music and vice-versa. A man of few words and great knowledge, might we add.
 
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DEAD LADIES SHOW 06
Monday, 11.4.2016
Doors: 20H
Admission: 4€
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