WEAPONS OF MASS SEDUCTION: THE TWO OLDEST
PROFESSIONS

Myrna Goldberger
Recipient of the LLS 1999 Excellence in Teaching Award

DESCRIPTION: If prostitution is the oldest profession, it is closely followed by spying. Sometimes these two careers overlap, producing significant, historically desirous—or disastrous—results. In an effort to succeed in espionage, women have been used as the vital weapon for obtaining information, manipulating strategies, and working covertly, usually for ideological reasons. Relying on beauty, feminine wiles, intelligence, innate characteristics, and even “chutzpah,” women in hostile environments have aided or altered the course of history. This self-written one-act play, using costumes and visual images, will focus on the lives of such spies as Mata Hari, Elizabeth Van Lew, Amy Thorpe Pack, Belle Boyd, Virginia Hall, and others who proved that, indeed, women are weapons of mass seduction.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Myrna Goldberger has been an instructor for the Lifelong Learning Society (LLS) for 21-plus years. Educated at the University of Maryland, Loyola College and Johns Hopkins University, Myrna has had 50-plus years of experience in educational programming, including Elderhostel and scholar-in-residence weekends. She currently presents lectures to community and religious groups, as well as to special-interest groups in Florida and other states. Moreover, she performs in self-written one-act plays focusing on famous American women and men. Her students, who call themselves “Myrna’s Groupies,” describe her as “charismatic, knowledgeable and dynamic.” Myrna calls what she does “Edutainment” and she has been the recipient of several LLS awards.