The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitutes are assumed to perform for their clients. Employing historical biographies as well as interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book compares actresses and prostitutes from Nell Gwynne to Mae West. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, Kirsten Pullen offers many new insights to theater historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.
The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitute...
The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitutes are assumed to perform for their clients. Employing historical biographies as well as interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book compares actresses and prostitutes from Nell Gwynne to Mae West. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, Kirsten Pullen offers many new insights to theater historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.
The categories of "whore" and "actress" have overlapped over centuries. Actresses are assumed to be sexually available and promiscuous, and prostitute...
Bathing beauty Esther Williams, bombshell Jane Russell, exotic Carmen Miranda, chanteuse Lena Horne, and talk-show fixture Zsa Zsa Gabor are rarely hailed as great actors or as naturalistic performers. Those terms of praise are given to male stars like Marlon Brando and James Dean, whose gritty dramas are seen as a departure from the glossy spectacles in which these stars appeared. Like a Natural Woman challenges those assumptions, revealing the skill and training that went into the work of these five actresses, who employed naturalistic performance techniques, both onscreen and off....
Bathing beauty Esther Williams, bombshell Jane Russell, exotic Carmen Miranda, chanteuse Lena Horne, and talk-show fixture Zsa Zsa Gabor are rarely ha...
Bathing beauty Esther Williams, bombshell Jane Russell, exotic Carmen Miranda, chanteuse Lena Horne, and talk-show fixture Zsa Zsa Gabor are rarely hailed as great actors or as naturalistic performers. Those terms of praise are given to male stars like Marlon Brando and James Dean, whose gritty dramas are seen as a departure from the glossy spectacles in which these stars appeared. Like a Natural Woman challenges those assumptions, revealing the skill and training that went into the work of these five actresses, who employed naturalistic performance techniques, both onscreen and off....
Bathing beauty Esther Williams, bombshell Jane Russell, exotic Carmen Miranda, chanteuse Lena Horne, and talk-show fixture Zsa Zsa Gabor are rarely ha...
The body in performance. The performing body. The body of the audience. How do these three, overlapping bodies determine how we understand the theatrical experience? In important ways, theatrical representations of the body and embodied performance allow audiences, performers, and scholars to consider how identity, authenticity, and physical experience intersect with understandings of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Using case studies including Marlon Brando's seminal Method performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the Wooster Group's recreation of Hamlet starring...
The body in performance. The performing body. The body of the audience. How do these three, overlapping bodies determine how we understand the thea...
