The First Female Performers: Tumblers, Flute-girls, and Mime Actresses

Abstract

Recovering the ‘lost’ female tradition has been one of the explicit goals of feminist scholarship in theatre history. Live Hov’s essay is a contribution to that line of research, focusing on the first female performers in the ‘illegitimate’ genres of Greek and Roman theatre. By surveying a number of relevant texts, she shows how these important ‘firsts’ are a neglected area in the theatre and performance studies curriculum. Specialized works by classical scholars provide more evidence on the matter, however, and in the second part of the essay Hov sketches the professional activities and social status of the first female performers. Finally she views the topic through the concept of the gaze, showing how the female performers of antiquity were the first ‘objects’ of the gaze, which in turn contributed to the persistent notion of the promiscuous actress. Live Hov is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Oslo, formerly holding a similar position at the University of Copenhagen. Prior to her academic studies she was trained as an actor at the National Theatre School, Norway. Most of her publications (mainly in Norwegian and Danish) pertain to the history and function of women in theatre, to the history of opera production, and to Henrik Ibsen as a man of the theatre.