Why did this particular art form—the Jewish male impersonator—emerge in a Ukrainian port city? The answer is liminality.
She died in obscurity. No known recordings exist. Only one photograph is reliably attributed to her: a young person with sharp cheekbones, a bowler hat, and a carnation, smirking like they know a secret you’ll never guess. pepi litman male impersonator birthplace ukrainian city
Epilogue: In 2023, a small memorial plaque was proposed for the site of the former Yiddish theater on Pushkinska Street in Odesa. Among the names of playwrights and composers, one citizen suggested: “And to Pepi, who taught us that a woman in a suit is not a disguise, but a declaration of war.” The vote is still pending. Why did this particular art form—the Jewish male
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. No known recordings exist
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?).
At a time when women on stage were still scandalous, Pepi didn't just act—she transformed . She cropped her hair, padded her shoulders, lowered her register, and stepped onto the boards as a dashing young man. But this was not drag in the modern, flamboyant sense. Pepi’s art was the art of verisimilitude. She studied how men held their cigarettes, how they tilted their hats over one eye, how they spat for distance. Audiences—male and female alike—reportedly forgot she was a woman. And that was the point.