Lady Romeo

Charlotte Cushman was one of the most famous American theater artists of the mid-19th century. And while she was known for her Lady Macbeth and Oliver Twist’s Nancy, she was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet.

The newest book about Cushman’s life is Tana Wojczuk’s "Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity." Cushman’s life was radical indeed. She played Shakespeare’s leading men with an emotionality and vulnerability that took audiences by surprise, started a bohemian artists’ colony in Rome, and lived publicly as a queer woman. We invited Wojczuk to join us on the podcast to chat about Cushman’s life, loves, work, tragedies, swordsmanship, and more.

Tana Wojczuk is a senior nonfiction editor at Guernica. She teaches writing at New York University. She has worked as an arts critic for Vice, Bomb Magazine, and Paste and as a columnist for Guernica. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, Gulf Coast, Apogee, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Rumpus, Narrative, Opium Magazine, and elsewhere. "Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity" was published by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster, in 2020.

Wojczuk's appreciation for The Folger Shakespeare editions, "How Shakespeare Paperbacks Made Me Want to Be A Writer," appeared recently in The New York Times Magazine's Letter of Recommendation column.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published September 29, 2020. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “Do You Not Know I Am a Woman?”, was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.