Morcashani: Playing with Race and Gender on the Music Hall Stage

A short documentary film exploring the life and performance of Josephine Morcashani, a star performer who has since fallen into obscurity.

About the project

This project explores the life and performance of Josephine Morcashani, a star performer from the turn of the twentieth century who has now fallen into obscurity. Morcashani was a black singer and dancer from London who wowed audiences across Europe and further afield with performances that crossed gender boundaries and played with racial stereotypes, shapeshifting by appropriating and adapting popular musical forms as well as those specifically associated with African Americans of the day. By recovering the lost story of this celebrity, we hope to better understand the challenges and opportunities presented to black women who sought success on the music hall stage. How Morcashani navigated those challenges and seized opportunities, the choices and sacrifices she made, offer lessons relevant to this today as we continue to grapple with structures of sexism and racism in popular entertainment.

This is the continuation of a project that first began in 2021, producing a 10-15 minute documentary on the life of Morcashani. It draws on Dr Bowersox’s own historical research as well as a range of historical artifacts provided by Morcashani’s descendants, who have graciously shared their family archive, in addition to a one-of-a-kind audio recording of her singing only recently discovered by a German collector. The project is seeking at least one, if not two, interlocutors from outside academia, ideally entertainers and musicians themselves. Working with such creatives will allow for greater reflection on the relevance of a historical figure like Morcashani for understanding the operations and politics of popular culture in the present, the experience of playful performance that she embodied, and the material and structural challenges of working within an industry that profits from black inheritance despite not always giving credit and resources where they are due. Once complete, the documentary will be hosted by UCL and be freely available to view online to facilitate the broadest possible access to the work.