The Oldest Profession October 17, 2008

The time is 1981. The place is a sunny park bench in Verdi Square at 72nd Street and Broadway in New York. The people are Mae, a madam, and her stable of "working girls" at the end of their very long careers (the youngest is 72 years old). While waiting for appointments with their gentlemen, the women reminisce about their early days in New Orleans' Storyville where, Mae says, "there was honor in the trade" and argue about their options today. They are businesswomen whose clients are literally a dying breed. Their financial situation is grave, and these girls aren't getting any younger. Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Paula Vogel uses the notion of elderly prostitutes to explore the economic situation of women in a male society, the need for security in old age, the fears of death and change, and the age-old notion that a woman's best, and sometimes only, bargaining chip is her body.