Obsessions of a Showwoman

The book foregrounds the important lineage of incredible women working across performance, live art and cabaret and asks how the term 'Showwoman' can transgress the figure of the showman as a provider of the spectacular. It encourages the showgirl to finally graduate into adulthood. 60 illus. Marisa Carnesky has been a pivotal figure in performance and live art over the past thirty years. As a showwoman, she champions alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and redefines women's relationships with power and politics. She carries on the legacy of dynamic female performers, showcasing remarkable theatrical flair and extraordinary talents that defy traditional management. Showwomen, as she emphasizes, work for themselves and they command the efforts of others. In this book Eirini Kartsaki delves into the concept of 'showwomanry,' charting the fascinating history of remarkable and unconventional women in entertainment. Women who were stone eaters, fire walkers, women who hypnotized alligators, or presented crucifixion shows; women who worked for themselves; women that were often referred to as showgirls, despite their extraordinary skill and artistry. Enjoy the show… Eirini Kartsaki is a performance practitioner, writer and Senior Lecturer in Drama at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex, UK. She is the author of Repetition in Performance: Returns and Invisible Forces (2017). Explores ‘showwomanry’ tracing a trajectory of incredible, weird women at work: women who were stone eaters, fire walkers, women who hypnotized alligators, or presented crucifixion shows; women in entertainment who worked for themselves; women that were often referred to as showgirls, despite their extraordinary skill and artistry. Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair and an extraordinary skill that ‘do not work for the management or the man. Showwomen work for themselves and other people work for them”. Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art during the last thirty years; her practice as a showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position to power and politics. The term showwoman introduces a new identity, a new kind of performer who does not control or exploit others, but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables ‘shared experiences of visceral euphoria, applause, loss, shape, abjection, hustle and struggle, marginalisation and the fight against patriarchal injustices’ (Carnesky, 2019, 53). The book will use Carnesky’s work to showcase women working in radical ways, treading the margins of cabaret and live art, disrupting normative ideologies through the spectacular and opening new lines of feminist enquiry through weirdness, absurdity, provocation in live art and popular culture.