Judith Hawley

Roundtable discussion

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.

This specialist academic conference developed themes raised in the exhibition The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. Speakers, including Professors Felicity Nussbaum (UCLA) and Joseph Roach (Yale), explored and problematised ideas of ‘celebrity’ culture and the symbolic, allegorical and discursive functions of portraits of women players.