Miss La La and Kaira Fly Through the Air

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Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home!

Winner, best score!

We demand to to be seen.

Winner, best book.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

The 10th of January 1879, Montmartre, Paris.

In the light of gas lamps, lamps, the red and white circus ring assumed an orange and yellow glow.

The orchestra struck up.

The whole place breaks out in song.

It was a big sing fest.

The equestrians running in with their horses, kicking up dust in the ring, do all these amazing things, jump up off and on horses, and other performers like clowns would do all kinds of funny stuff.

Dressed in brocaded and tasseled leotards, a tiny troupe performed on the trapeze.

16-year-old Theophilia Scherke performed her new show-stopping act, the gymnastics tree.

Theophilia would do a somersault and land on a bamboo pole, which was about 23 feet high, balance from below, and start doing various things, particularly the one-arm planche.

She was a contortionist, so she was beautiful doing these things.

The crowd cheered as the performers took a break for the intermission.

Afterwards, the orchestra led everyone again in song for the second half.

More equestrians and more clowns, and there would be more acropets on the ground.

And then everyone would wait for the final act of the night.

They would hear drum rolls.

It would start slowly and then it go faster and faster and faster and faster.

It would have been a full house because everyone wanted to see the cannon woman.

20-year-old Anna Albertina Olga Brown, known to her audience as Miss Lala, hung upside down by her knees from the trapeze, with a leather bit and hook in her mouth.

Under the lights, her costume sparkled.

Her typical, I call it strawberry red, costume with spangles and all kinds of other things from it.

She wore an afro.

She wore her hair naturally.

And then suddenly, they would wheel in this cannon on a cannon carriage.

And they hooked these chains to an eye that was attached to the top of this cannon barrel.

It weighed more than 300 kilograms.

Miss Lala was hoisted up.

With the leather bit and hook between her teeth, she lifted the cannon barrel using only her mouth.

As gasps filled the tent, another performer used a plunger to stuff gunpowder down into the barrel.

They lit the breech end.

There was this huge explosion.

Olga's body convulsed with the impact and began to rock.

Back and forth and back and forth.

Her teeth were showing through the bit.

Silence fell.

Had Miss Lala survived her most dangerous move?

The Iron Jaw?

For BBC Radio 4, this is history's heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone.

I'm Alex von Tunselmann.

I'm a historian, and today's episode is about a 19th-century circus performer and her acrobatic partner, two remarkable young women who defied conventions to become icons of the ring as well as artistic muses.

I was a bodybuilder.

I liked the way it looked and I liked the way it felt.

In the late 1980s, Lori Fierstein suffered an injury.

She rehabilitated with weight training.

I'd broken my heelbone after I was carrying a stack of women's liberation leaflets down a flight of stairs.

The more she lifted, the more her muscles grew.

She began to compete as an amateur bodybuilder.

I didn't so much enjoy the competing, I liked the aesthetic of a female with a muscular body.

body.

There was something about this endeavor that made me feel that I was saying something.

And I wanted to use that language to bring it to the world out of the realm of competition.

She organized two shows, The Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World and Evolution of Surreal Spectacle Female Muscle.

During preparations for the second of these in the 1990s, an image caught her attention.

I had been looking through images of old-time strong women to use as publicity for the show, and I got a stack, and there was a black and white Xerox, and it was this amazing woman hanging upside down with this cannon in her mouth.

The 19th century circus performer Olga Brown, who performed as Miss Lala, could carry off extraordinary acts and she looked incredibly strong.

Anybody observing a muscular woman, whether it was in 1879 or 1880 or 1885, would have felt that it was strange.

I knew what she was feeling because I could do a full pull-up with almost 400 pounds hanging from my waist.

Miss Lala was also unusual for another reason.

It stuck out to me, all of the other women that I had looked at in the stack of old-time strong women were white women.

This one was not.

This was different.

She was a woman of of color.

Fierstein began to research.

Soon she found Miss Lala's performance partner, a contortionist and fellow aerialist named Theopilia Schirke.

Flying has always been something that humankind has wanted to do.

Now, flying in a vehicle is one thing, but what these women were doing was something entirely else.

1869.

The Summer Theater Theatre in Breslo, Prussia.

11-year-old aerial acrobat apprentice Olga Brown unwrapped her hands and sighed.

She was tiny and naturally lithe, suited to the work, but it had been a long morning of rehearsal.

She looked cautiously at the tall young girl who introduced herself as Teophilia Schirke.

A smile crossed Olga's face.

They both loved to fly.

They were both extremely muscular.

They had to keep in absolute shape.

They have the same birth date, both born on April 21st.

Theophilia was four years younger, just seven years old.

Olga was the protégé of circus impresario and juggler Gustav Neumann of the Neumann troupe.

She already wanted to do it.

She was already in love with it.

She just needed a partner.

They absolutely belonged together.

Child performance was all the rage in Europe at the time.

They were called infant performers.

After the German revolutions of 1848, the Prussian Minister of Culture and Education had moved in a conservative direction, viewing creative kindergartens and gymnastic clubs with suspicion.

But leaders in the German states began to see the potential of gymnastics as a tool for national unity and military preparedness.

Young children were encouraged to learn the sport.

They had these huge gymnastics festivals for schoolchildren.

Across Prussia, circus art exploded in popularity.

Olga and Theophilia were not from circus families.

At young ages, their instructors noticed they had talent and the will to withstand pain and hardship during training.

As they chatted more, Olga and Theophilia discovered they both loved railway journeys and adventure.

Both were born into working families.

Olga's father, William Brown, was a laborer.

He was born in Philadelphia, in the United States, where his family had been enslaved.

He found work as a merchant seaman and moved to Germany when he was just 19.

Her mother was a German woman from a rural family.

Theophilia's father was a shoemaker.

She came out of poverty also, and her mother was a seamstress.

Olga and Theophilia admired each other's muscles.

Olga was black.

She came from what would be called biracial or mixed heritage.

Theophilia was white.

Life on the road with a small circus troop could could be lonely, but Olga felt excited for the future.

If she had not and if Theophilia had not wanted to do this, they would have left.

They would have stopped.

There was nothing forcing them to do this.

Soon the pair were sharing wash basins, resin, and chalk as they traveled around the German and Austro-Hungarian empires with Neumann and his young acrobat wife, Elizabeth.

It was this tiny little family.

Olga and Theophilia soon became inseparable.

Theophilia absolutely adored Olga.

She would do anything for her.

They were like sisters.

Whatever affected one affected the other.

The girls often went hungry and had to sleep in squalid conditions.

Sometimes, even as children, they had to fight off the attentions of leering older men.

The two girls always helped each other to lug around the trunks full of their ornate costumes and invented creative ways to rehearse.

They could hang ropes from a tree.

The barn would be perfect because they could hang their apparatus and they could spread hay down so if they fell it would be softer.

December 1870.

The Orpheum Theatre, Vienna.

Tears streamed down Olga's and Teophilia's faces.

Their impresario, Gustave Neumann, had just died.

This person who was like a father to them.

Neumann had been suffering with the agony of a twisted intestine.

They'd been performing in the city for less than a week with a demanding repertoire.

Now Neumann's widow Elizabeth, only 24, had to take over running the troupe.

And despite their bereavement, there was no rest for the 12 and 8-year-old girl acrobats.

They couldn't cry.

They had to fly.

Olga was named head of the troupe.

The pair wore beautiful leotards.

They had tassels on them, beads and brocade,

and performed amazing stunts.

They were working on ropes, on tight ropes, on slack ropes, on flying ring.

They used all kind of different apparatuses.

The girls often met prejudice.

Everywhere they went, they would be immigrants.

But it was complicated because they were also

stars.

The fact that they were women, that

Olga was a black woman, singled them out.

It helped them in one way.

But in another way, Olga, she often became singled out and attacked in the press.

After attending a performance, a theater director claimed Teophilia's talent outshone that of another acclaimed circus performer, Emmy Bratz.

This caused outrage.

with devastating consequences as racist comments about Olga appeared in the press.

There had been another article in the Vienna Daily that was even worse, that said that Olga was as ugly as Emmy Brass was beautiful.

The press compared Olga to another circus performer,

a woman who had been used as a freak show in circuses, who was an indigenous Mexican woman who had hair all over her body.

And she also had a number of deformities.

Teophilia remained completely devoted to her partner.

These were not women necessarily of words.

The language they spoke was their bodies.

Being together was a friendship before the eyes of Europe.

Just the fact that they were together was a metaphor for a friendship between a black woman and a white woman, and that they could do it with very little clothes on without being ashamed of their bodies.

Women were supposed to be wearing bustles and long skirts and pattering their faces and showing nothing and being nothing and receding to the background not being spectacular

they were spectacular

the pair kept performing through the Orpheum Theater's Christmas and New Year programs but there were even greater challenges

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come

over three years later 1874 rents circus berlin after running the troupe herself for a time elizabeth neumann had met a new partner in life and in business He was an acrobatic clown and aerialist, Franciscus Pospischil.

Under Under his watch, Olga Brown, now 15 years old, hung from the trapeze by her toes.

Aerial work was the most dangerous work of any circus act.

The equestrians were the ones who made the most frequent visits to the hospital.

Aerialists made the most frequent visits to the morgue.

Next were the big cat chambers, as they were called.

The audience were entranced by Olga's act.

She was at a height of about 40 or 50 feet and there was no net underneath.

The specter that death could happen at any time was part of the attraction for the audiences, but it was also part of the pride of the artists.

They wanted to show that they could defy death.

Both Olga and Teophilia trained themselves not to be afraid.

They didn't earn doing this.

They barely kept alive.

Olga twirled her body in mid-air.

The audience cheered.

And she fell and she was rushed off.

She had to be carried out and she had injuries on her neck and her hand.

Theophilia stepped in and took over Olga's performing responsibilities.

But Olga refused to leave her partner in the lurch for longer than was absolutely necessary.

Theophilia would have been a rock, would have been a support.

apparatus for her.

As soon as the bandages came off Olga's injuries, she gritted her teeth against the pain and got back on the trapeze with Teophilia.

It was the aesthetic.

They had to be sparkly and it had to all be put together because they were stars.

At the beginning of 1875, Olga was 16 years old.

She was finding her trapeze work even more exhausting than usual.

They would hang on to it with their hands and then they would twirl around on it and they would fly off one trapeze and they would be caught by the other.

Or it's then fly back.

And now she was pregnant.

The father was the new impresario, Franz Posperschil.

He was nine years older than Olga.

He had the power in the troupe.

Franz was 25 and in a relationship with Elizabeth.

There are no records of what happened inside the troupe at this point.

For a few months, there are not even any records of their travels or performances.

From the outside, the circumstances seem awkward to say the least, but a few months later, the troupe was still performing together, and Franz and Elizabeth were still in a relationship.

Olga gave birth to a baby boy, who she named Gustav Pospischil.

The troupe travelled with the baby.

He was probably looked after by Elizabeth.

As ever, Theophilia supported Olga.

She took over her solo roles while Olga was pregnant.

But Olga didn't want to stay away from the ring.

Literally, two months after Olga gives birth, she's performing in London.

Soon they were in the ring together again.

The show always had to go on.

Theophilia leaned on Olga, but Olga also leaned on her because they were a duo.

One couldn't stand without the other.

One couldn't fly without the other.

One couldn't perform without the other.

One couldn't face day-to-day without the other.

January 1879.

In Montmartre, Paris's 18th rondissement, over 2,000 spectators filled the 16-sided building of the Cirque Fernando.

Miss Lala was in the middle of her infamous Iron Jaw act.

Olga was the rage of all Paris.

She was the star.

Everyone was talking about her.

Other performers had lifted weights with their mouths, but Olga's finale, lifting a cannon, was her own unique invention.

She'd performed it many times.

Her fame was such that the troop was now known as the Miss Lala and Kyra troop.

She performed as Miss Lala and Teophilia as Kyra.

The cannon fired, the noise echoed, and gradually the dust settled.

She was absolutely smiling.

Not a hair on her head would be out of place after this blast took place.

There was this amazement, the fact that she could withstand not only the weight of this cannon barrel, but the impact of the explosion, which it was scary.

She loved the fame, though still it often came with an unpleasant serving of racial prejudice.

One of the journalists said that her black skin and frizzy hair lacked charm.

Olga Brown and Theophilia Scherke were now young women of 20 and 16.

What drove Olga and Theophilia to do what they did was an absolute love of what they were doing and all these cheers every night, brava, brava, brava, over and over again.

And

admirers and people standing up on their feet, people wanting to paint them, people wanting to photograph them.

Honestly, who wouldn't want that, you know?

The artist Edgar Degar sat entranced watching Olga Brown perform her Iron Jaw act.

Later that month, Degas invited the writer Edmond de Goncourt to meet Brown in his studio with her partner.

Degas wanted to draw the women.

He wasn't alone.

The Parisian magazine L'Orquestre reported at the time that Miss Lala and Miss Kyra are two models envied by all the painters of the area.

Other artists who visited the Cirque Fernando included Edouard Manet and Pierre-Auguste Grenoir, who painted two young girl acrobats.

At this point, Miss Lala was more famous than Dega.

In fact, the same magazine said, Miss Lala is the attraction of the day.

To admit that you have not seen her is to lose your reputation as a Parisian.

Historians are not sure if Goncourt accepted, but he later wrote a novel, The Zemgano Brothers, about two circus performers with an extremely close relationship.

Laurie Fierstein certainly sees a connection.

When he was writing about these two brothers who loved each other so much and how the older was stronger and took care of the younger and the younger was more graceful and more intuitive, it was like Olga and Theophilia were really the subjects of his book.

Degar made a great number of preparatory drawings of Brown and the circus before he produced his celebrated painting, Miss Lala at the Cirque Fernando, now in the National Gallery in London.

It shows Brown performing her iron jaw act.

He also sketched Theophilia Scherke.

Though Brown had relationships with men, some have wondered if her relationship with Sterke was more important in her life at this point.

There's no way of knowing whether Olga and Theophilia were romantic partners.

Did they love each other?

I know there's a salacious element about it, and people want to know, you know.

But there's another thing, and it's called love, and another

more important thing, in a way.

And there's no way that they could have or would have

been together and performed with each other with their lives literally in each other's hands.

There was a total trust.

One heart had to be in sync with the beating of the other heart because they operated on seconds.

If they were seconds off, it meant death.

There had to be a synchronicity about them.

Their bodies had to be in in total sync.

It had to be love.

What else do you call that?

June 1888, Wolf Circus, Germany.

A wooden circus, and it was very, very tall, very high ceilings.

And Olga and Theophilia had set up for Theophilia's death dive, or the Areolith, as they had called it.

A canvas and wood ramp that was set up on the very cupola of the circus, the very top of the circus, and she would jump and dive down and then land in the net.

And she had done this hundreds of times.

It was her signature move.

It was her most daring move and the one that everybody gasped.

The morning sun shone on the city.

Theophilia Sterke began to rehearse.

She rose into position and prepared to somersault.

Whatever she was wearing for the rehearsal got caught in one of the hooks that was holding this ramp, and so she fell, and she fell uncontrollably.

She couldn't land the way she was supposed to land.

She landed on her cervical spine.

She broke her neck in the net.

Nobody thought she was injured because what they did was they brought her off the net and they set her on the couch and they said she doesn't look badly hurt.

And they brought her to their apartment on Lindenstraff, which was very close to the circus.

They didn't bring her to a hospital.

They didn't have any doctors come in.

Shtirke didn't scream and she wasn't bleeding.

But her injuries were worse than anyone could have imagined.

She was paralyzed from the neck down.

It wasn't until a few days later that they realized and they brought her to the general hospital.

It was really horrific for Olga because this is somebody who she loved dearly and who was part of her.

A week later, Theophilia Schirke died.

She was just 26 years old.

The net was her act, and it was the climax of her act.

It was the culmination.

So the fact that she ended up dying in the net was a very cruel irony.

It was a very cruel irony because she shouldn't have.

Many newspaper reporters incorrectly assumed that it was Olga Brown who'd died and not Teophilia Scherke.

The confusion was down to Sterke's performing name, Kaira.

Journalists assumed that Kaira belonged to the exotic performer and Theophilia being white and European would be Olga.

Almost four months after Theophilia Sterke's death, Olga Brown married the African-American contortionist Emmanuel Woodson.

She performed solo for a while as Miss Olga the Black Butterfly.

but aged 33, she gave the final performance of her career.

She retired and had a son and daughter with Woodson.

The son sadly died as an infant, but her daughter, Rose Eddie, grew up to become a dancer.

The Woodsons also took in Olga's two young nieces.

The family settled in Brussels, where Olga, who was fluent in at least three languages, ran a cafe and managed the careers of other performers alongside her husband.

For Laurie Fierstein, though, the most intense relationship of Olga Brown's life seems to have been with Theophilia Scherke.

Lovers may not be even as close as they were, but they were close in ways that the common understanding of close would not apply.

It was something extraordinary, something beyond the pale.

Feerstein has been writing a book about her fellow muscular women.

I had worked as a personal trainer for many years, and I'm proud that I spent the last whole part of my life and my entire life savings.

I was just curious.

I was so curious about everything.

Olga Brown didn't leave a diary, so we'll never really know her intimate thoughts or feelings.

Until her death in 1945, at the grand old age of 86, she kept a photograph of Theophilia Shterke.

And she's carrying this basket, I think, of fruit or flowers, and her head is back.

Her neck is bent back in the picture.

It's a beautiful, beautiful picture.

That was a part of her, her very being.

That was her little sister, her friend, her performance partner, someone who she faced death with.

Olga Brown and Theophilia Sterke were stars who burned brightly.

They broke barriers.

They could face down anything.

That was not what women were supposed to be doing.

Women couldn't even vote.

A lot was thrown at them.

Each step of the way, they overcame it.

All the hard knocks and the difficulty that they experienced.

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Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be home.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.