ABSTRACT
Lotte Goslar is a clown who dances. In her stage world a young ballerina refuses to obey her teacher; life-size toy soldiers shoot each other to music box accompaniment; a talent show contestant plays the violin with her feet; and a grandmother dances into heaven. Most of these comic scenes make no overt political statement, and Lotte Goslar does not think of herself as “a politi of Europe’s finest political cabarets. After permanently leaving Germany in 1933, at the age of sixteen, she danced comic solos as part of the Peppermill Revue, the anti-fascist cabaret show directed by Erika Mann, in tours across Europe. (The Peppermill subsequently served as a model for the cabaret featured in both the film and the play Mephisto, based on Klaus Mann’s novel.) Goslar also performed with the Liberated Theatre, a satiric, anti-fascist group in Prague, before coming to New York with the Peppermill in 1938. There she continued to dance solo. In 1943 she joined the Turnabout Theatre in Hollywood and met Bertolt Brecht through their mutual acquaintances, Elsa Lanchester and Charles Laughton.
