Lady Romeo

<p style="margin: 11.25pt 0in 11.25pt 0in;"><span style= "font-size: 13.5pt; color: black;">Charlotte Cushman was one of the most famous American theater artists of the mid-19^th century. And while she was known for her Lady Macbeth and <em>Oliver Twist’s </em>Nancy, she was acclaimed for her performances as Romeo and Hamlet.</span></p> <p style= "font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; word-spacing: 0px; margin: 11.25pt 0in 11.25pt 0in;"> <span style="font-size: 13.5pt; color: black;">The newest book about Cushman’s life is Tana Wojczuk’s <em>Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity.</em> 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.</span></p> <p style= "font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; widows: 2; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; word-spacing: 0px; margin: 11.25pt 0in 11.25pt 0in;"> <span style="font-size: 13.5pt; color: black;">Tana Wojczuk is a senior nonfiction editor at <em>Guernica</em>. She teaches writing at New York University. She has worked as an arts critic for <em>Vice, Bomb Magazine</em>, and <em>Paste</em> and as a columnist for <em>Guernica</em>. Her writing has appeared in <em>The New York Times</em>, T<em>in House, The Believer, Gulf Coast, Apogee, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Rumpus, Narrative, Opium Magazine</em>, and elsewhere. <em>Lady Romeo: The Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America's First Celebrity</em> was published by Avid Reader Press,