Dead Ladies Show #41

Name: Dead Ladies Show #41
Start: 2025-12-12T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Lettrétage

Schedule

Fri, 12 Dec, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Lettrétage | Berlin, BE

The DEAD LADIES SHOW is a series of entertaining and inspiring presentations on women who achieved amazing things against all odds. Each show hosts passionate cheerleaders of too-oft forgotten women, inviting its loyal audience into a sexy séance (of sorts) celebrating these impressive icons, turbulent lives, and deathless legacies.
December’s show is all in English, featuring three fascinating talks. Learn about an influential criminologist, a groundbreaking screenwriter and director, and a lady stockbroker and activist, who certainly forged her own path in many a surprising way. These are women who took their fascinations and ran with them. Our expert presenters this time are our fantastic podcast producer SUSAN STONE, your beloved co-host FLORIAN DUIJSENS, and the amazing Australian writer ALINA HOYNE. All held together, of course, by your other beloved co-host KATY DERBYSHIRE.
As ever, you can expect a charming audience and a warm and entertaining atmosphere.
Standard tickets cost €10 and the reduced price is €4. Doors open 7:30 pm – come on time to get a good seat!
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F. TENNYSON JESSE (1888–1958) was an English journalist, criminologist and writer. The daughter of a vicar who dragged the family around the British empire, she trained as a painter before moving to London in 1911. Journalism beckoned, but she was not put off by losing the use of her right hand in a plane accident, learning to type left-handed. She reported from the ground during World War I and published fiction, before moving into criminology and true crime writing. Her 1924 book Murder and its Motives set out six basic motivations for killing, a very influential theory. She later co-wrote plays with her husband, including How to Be Happy though Married.
ALICE GUY (1873–1968) was a woman of filmmaking firsts. Secretary to a French camera manufacturer, she attended the first film showing in 1895. Inspired by the moving image but not by the dry subject matter, she became the first filmmaker to incorporate narrative, certainly the first woman director, and probably the only one until 1906. Having moved to the US, she was then the first woman to own a studio, in the pre-Hollywood moviemaking hub of Flushing, New York. Which was where she made one of the first films to feature an all-African American cast. Few of her films have survived, but her legacy is lasting.
VICTORIA WOODHULL (1838–1927) had a first career as a “medical clairvoyant” before starting a Wall Street financial firm with her sister in 1870. They used their fortune to start a newspaper, campaign for women’s and workers’ rights, and to publish the first English edition of The Communist Manifesto. Woodhull was a vocal supporter of the free love movement, attempting to de-stigmatise divorce. She practised what she preached, leaving her alcoholic first husband in 1865 and the second one in the mid-1870s. The Equal Rights Party nominated her as its presidential candidate in 1872, though she wasn’t taken seriously. Moving to England, she took part in the women’s suffrage movement there – but put a big blemish on her reputation by promoting eugenics.
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Florian Duijsens is an editor, teacher and literary translator, plus of course co-host and co-founder of the Dead Ladies Show.
Susan Stone is a podcast producer and journalist writing about culture, social issues and business with a focus on Germany and Europe.
Alina Hoyne was born in Melbourne but has been living and working in Berlin for most of the last two decades. She writes about performance, art, film, books, music, fashion and culture - and is a lover of libraries, public swimming pools, cinemas and coffee convos. She also loves lists.