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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.
'Finally! A text that celebrates and explores the spectacular work of Marisa Carnesky. Too complex and profound to categorise, Carnesky weaves history, gender, class, theatrical tradition and the Carnevale to perform a radical questioning of ourselves and our worlds. Always fearless and fierce, yet tender and generous, Carnesky’s work captivates, antagonizes, caresses and provokes, as all art should.'
'Marisa Carnesky, Our Lady of Illusions, has long stretched the limits of Live Art, always embedding a polemic in the vignettes that make up her attractions. Carnesky’s chops were cut on burlesque, vaudeville and side-show circuits, and she continues to carve her own reality and create pivotal new contexts. Brava!'
'Marisa Carnesky is a romantic, rebellious and radical figure in the early 21st century wave of British arthouse popular performance. From large scale spectacle to intimate confessional her work draws on forgotten theatrical legacies like Grand Guignol and Ghost Trains and puts them through a post-punk feminist mixer. This book is a brilliant parade of her canon, her influences and her co-conspirators.'
'Marisa is truly magic. Her performance work: political, visceral and spectacular, her understanding and passion for cabaret, circus and showgirl history, and her ability to bring together remarkable female performers are just some of the elements that have kept her at the bleeding edge of live art in the UK and beyond since the 1990s.
I am a huge fan of Marisa’s tremendous ability to bring avant-garde ideas to pop culture arenas, from ghost trains to side shows. Live performance is an ephemeral medium, and Marisa presents yet another conjuring trick in committing these stories to paper, so they can live on for future generations.'
'Artists working with the mercurial liquidity of experimental forms of live art need books, books to capture and captivate, books to distribute and disseminate, books that celebrate and marvel, books that misbehave a little and defy easy categorisation.
This book glitters and glimmers with Marisa’s multifaceted and extraordinary life work. It examines the multiple forms she has pioneered and stages the myriad voices of others, collaborators and interlocutors, as Marisa always has done within her works, creating and supporting communities of trouble, of art, or both.'
'Marisa Carnesky is mutha, mage, and mentor to an entire generation of performers. I cannot stress enough her impact as an artist and founding figure of the contemporary burlesque/performing art scene. No one marries the esoteric, the academic, and the profane like she does; she is pure magic, and I'm so glad this book exists.'
List of Figures
Foreword
Dominic Johnson
Introduction: Marisa Carnesky – Sorceress, Radical School Mistress, Showwoman
Eirini Kartsaki
Finding Marisa Carnesky
1. A Showwoman of a Certain Rage: Marisa Carnesky’s Bleeding Spectacular
Josephine Machon
2. Ballad of the Bloody Pearl
Daniel Oliver
3. Spectacle, Patriarchy, and Ghost Trains
Paloma Faith and Marisa Carnesky
4. Finding Marisa Carnesky
Liz Aggiss
The Cosmos of Showwomen
5. Marisa Carnesky, Showwoman
Roberta Mock
6. Earth as Genderqueer Showwoman
Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, and Marisa Carnesky
7. Conquering the World with Hoops
Marawa
8. The Making of a Future Showwoman
Empress Stah
Conjuring the Weird
9. Weird Women
Eirini Kartsaki
10. Their Phantasmagorical Appearances
Tai Shani, Geneva Foster Gluck, and Marisa Carnesky
11. Penny Slot Somnambulist
Rachel Zerihan
12. Shape Changing: The Metamorphosis of a Showwoman
Vanessa Toulmin
Magic Blood, Mysterious Blades, and Women Who Show
13. Incredible Bleeding Women I
Rhyannon Styles, Livia Kojo Alour, Veronica Thompson, and Marisa Carnesky
14. Showwomen Who Risk It All
Lucifire, Lalla Morte, Miss Behave, and Marisa Carnesky
15. Incredible Bleeding Women II
Nao Nagai, H Plewis, and Marisa Carnesky
16. Her Spectacular Entrances
Marisa Carnesky
Radical Bodies of Work
17. From the Finishing School of Marisa Carnesky: Lessons in Doing It Together
Phoebe Patey-Ferguson
18. Finding Power in Pathos
Alex Lyons
19. The Coven
Amy Ridler
20. The Department of Feminist Conversations in Dialogue with Marisa Carnesky's Live Archive
Mary Paterson and Maddy Costa for the Department of Feminist Conversations
Afterword: The Showwoman’s Carriage
Giulia Palladini
Notes on Contributors