This study observes the reception of two theatrical productions of Sapho, an English and a Japanese version, and their different representations of gender and sexuality in New York at the turn of the 19th century will be analyzed. The first Sapho was opened on 5 February 1900, at Wallack’s Theater on Broadway, and was produced by and starred Olga Nethersole as the courtesan Fanny Le Grande. The play scandalized New York, and after a relentless campaign orchestrated by the press and other self-appointed guardians of public morality, Nethersole herself and others were arrested for corrupting public decency. Sahoko, the second (less well-known) adaptation of Sapho, was staged by the Japanese actor Kawakami Otojiro and featured his wife Sada Yacco in the Fanny role. It opened on 9 April in the same year, at the Bijou, a theater just across the street from Wallack’s. It was a limited success for Kawakami’s troupe, mainly because its presentation of female sexuality was traditional and stereotypical, quite different from that of Nethersole’s then-radical performance. The audience response to the notorious production of Sapho indicates the fear of the patriarchal anti-Sapho activists in those days, and also the change of the female sexuality itself in the age of male chauvinism.
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