Pepi Litman Male Impersonator Birthplace Ukrainian City [top] -

Pepi’s most famous bit was a mirror scene. She would appear as a bashful young maiden, be courted by a male actor, then flee backstage. Seconds later, “he” would emerge—the same face, now in a waistcoat—and begin flirting with the same man’s wife. The audience would scream with the cognitive dissonance. One body, two genders, three corners of a love triangle.

In the collective memory of Yiddish theater, the name Pepi Litman is a ghost wrapped in a tuxedo. She is a footnote in a footnote: a woman famous for pretending to be a man, born in a city famous for pretending to be many things. pepi litman male impersonator birthplace ukrainian city

Today, Odesa’s grand opera house still stands, though its Jewish theater district is a memory of cobblestones. But every so often, in the repertory of a Tel Aviv fringe company or a queer Yiddish revival in Berlin, someone performs the mirror scene. And for two minutes, Pepi Litman is resurrected in the space between a man’s bow tie and a woman’s wink. Pepi’s most famous bit was a mirror scene

For a Jewish female audience in the 1880s—corseted, confined, often illiterate—watching Pepi Litman was a radical act. She represented escape. On stage, she could walk into a tavern unescorted. She could challenge a rival to a duel. She could kiss the leading lady without scandal (because, after all, the leading lady was kissing a woman, wasn't she? Or was she?). The audience would scream with the cognitive dissonance

Pepi (née Perel) Litman was born in the 1870s in what was then the Russian Empire’s most glamorous and lawless port. Odesa was a place where Italian opera houses sat across from Moldovan wine cellars, where Greek smugglers dined next to Hasidic merchants. It was a city of masks. So perhaps it was inevitable that it would produce a woman who made her living by removing one mask and putting on another.