Kate Retford, ‘“The Picture was my Stage”: The Theatre of the Conversation Piece’

Dr Kate Retford, Lecturer in Eighteenth and early Nineteenth-Century History of Art, Birkbeck College, University 

Martin Postle, Johann Zoffany, Women Players and Eighteenth Century Theatre

Dr Martin Postle, Assistant Director, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 

Joseph Roach: The Second Life of the First Actresses

Professor Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theatre, Yale University 

Roundtable discussion

Felicity Nussbaum, The Forgotten Tragic Muse, Mary Anne Yates and Oriental Drama

Professor Felicity Nussbaum, Distinguished Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr Lucy Peltz and Professor Gill Perry, Session One: Portraiture and the Construction of Celebrity

Elizabeth Kuti, Enter A Gentleman: A One Act Play About Aphra Behn

Berta Joncus, Listening to Portraits: Music and the Eighteenth-Century Opera Celebrity

Dr Berta Joncus, Goldsmiths, University of London, Listening to Portraits: Music, Representation and the Eighteenth-Century Singer, Dr Berta Joncus (Senior Lecturer in Music, Goldsmith’s College, University of London) The following images were used by Dr Joncus, they have been blurred out in the film because of copyright reasons LIST OF FIGURES Abbrieviations Windsor Anthony Blunt and Edward Croft-Murray, Venetian Drawings of the XVII & XVIII Centuries: in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon Press, [1957])

This is one of five podcasts produced by the Open University to accompany the exhibition ‘The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’ at the National Portrait Gallery, London 2011-2012. This show presents a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England. It features portraits of some of the best known female performers of the period, who ranged from royal mistresses to successful writers and businesswomen, and accomplished musicians.

This is one of five podcasts produced by the Open University to accompany the exhibition ‘The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons’, National Portrait Gallery 2011-2012. This show presents a vivid spectacle of femininity, fashion and theatricality in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England. It features portraits of some of the best known female performers of the period, who ranged from royal mistresses to successful writers and businesswomen, and accomplished musicians.