Synopses & Reviews
This book offers new insight into the connection between actresses and prostitutes.
Review
"In her riveting study of the interplay between the two professions, Kirsten Pullen places actresses and whores firmly on the ever-present stage of society - and reminds us that it is not only prostitutes we remain ambivalent about, but theatre and film workers, too." Fiona Shaw, New StatesmanCoherent and provocative. Highly recommended.
Choice
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
For centuries the two definitions of actress and prostitute have overlapped. Using biographies of historical actresses and prostitutes and interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book offers new insight into the historical connection between the two and their perception in society and on the stage.
Synopsis
What is a whore? What is an actress? For centuries these two definitions have overlapped. In the modern period, the sexuality of actresses was their most salient feature, and actresses were assumed to be sexually available. Post modern prostitutes suggest that the whore is also an actress, a claim that legitimates sex work. Using biographies of historical actresses and prostitutes and interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book offers new insight into the connection between actresses and prostitutes.
Synopsis
Using biographies of historical actresses and prostitutes and interviews with contemporary sex workers, this book explores the connections between actresses and prostitutes from Nell Gwynne to Mae West. In this highly original study, Kirsten Pullen offers many new insights to theatre historians and scholars of cultural, social and gender studies.
About the Author
Kirsten Pullen is Assistant Professor of Performance and New Media Studies at the University of Calgary
Table of Contents
List of illustrations; 1. Prostitution, performance, and Mae West: speaking from the whore position; 2. Betty Boutell, 'Whom All the Town Fucks': constructing the actress/whore; 3. Memoir and masquerade: Charlotte Charke, Margaret Leeson, and eighteenth-century performances of self; 4. Burlesque, breeches, and blondes: illegitimate nineteenth-century cultural and theatrical performance; 5. 'We need status as actresses!': contemporary prostitution and performance; 6. Afterpiece: millennial prostitution; Bibliography; Index.