Split Britches to Present Series of Workshops Across the UK This Spring
By: BWW News Desk Mar. 09, 2016
Led by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, New York-based duo Split Britches has transformed the queer art scene over the last thirty years with satirical gender-bending performances. Having challenged convention at every stage of their careers, Split Britches are now set to disrupt the way we think about getting old, as they present a series of workshops and performances across the country from 11 March - 16 April, and prepare to launch a Public Service Announcement via YouTube on sexually transmitted diseases within the ageing population.
Beginning with a performance in Lancaster of Lois Weaver's What Tammy Needs To Know About Getting Old And Having Sex, which asks the difficult questions about sex in midlife and beyond, and followed by a headline appearance in The Diva-Liz-Cious Cabaret as part of Southbank Centre's WOW Festival, the season will conclude with three performances of Peggy Shaw's RUFF, presented by the Barbican at the Silk Street Theatre.
RUFF ruminates on life for Shaw before and after the stroke she had in 2011, delivering a freewheeling monologue with deadpan humour and arresting honesty. There are dark spots and blanks in Shaw's memory now, yet she reflects on what is lost and equally celebrates the space left behind for new insight. Supported by video monitors, a green screen and her virtual back-up band, Shaw talks, croons and imitates her way through a solo show confronting identity and change. Sometimes sombre, sometimes frisky, autobiographical anecdotes and filmed images are matched by tongue-in-cheek song renditions.
The performances follow a Split Britches residency at the Silk Street Theatre, where they will invite elders and experts from around the world including Tasmania, Alaska and Poland as they begin research and development on their forthcoming show Unexploded Ordnances, which will investigate the risks of unexplored creative potential. The company will also launch a dedicated YouTube channel aimed at elders seeking alternative perspectives on ageing, which will host Public Service Announcements like none you've ever seen before...
The season, developed by In Company Collective, will comprise the following events:
What Tammy Needs To Know About Getting Old And Having Sex
11th Mar, 7pm | £10
Hear Me Roar Festival, Lancaster
Public Library, Market Square, Lancaster, LA1 1YH
Tammy WhyNot, former famous country-western singer turned lesbian performance artist, is on a mission to ask all the difficult questions, talk to those who really know and find out the truth about sex, and all its associations, at midlife and beyond. Part performance, part chat show, part comeback concert tour, What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex was developed in collaboration with a growing community of international seniors; from New York, Croatia, Poland, Tasmania and across the UK. Sharing their stories and her own, Tammy invites you to quit worrying why, and start thinking... Why Not?
Split Britches @ The Diva-Liz-Cious Cabaret
12th Mar, 9.30pm | Free
WOW Festival, Southbank Centre
Join the whip-tastic Diva Hollywood and the crip-tastic Liz Carr, your hostesses with the mostesses, as they bring you a deliciously talented line up forWOW's famed late night cabaret. With a little bit of music, a dash of comedy, a slurp of burlesque and a whole spoonful of general silliness, there promises to be something to titillate everyone's entertainment tastebuds. The night will also offer a flavour of the iconic WOW Café, New York City's hothouse for lesbian feminist counter-culture and anarchic, experimental and fiercely self-sufficient performance. Join artists Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw in remembering and recreating the 1980s eruption of WOW: the international festival and enduring home of queer women's theatre.
Peggy Shaw's RUFF
19th-20th Mar, Times tbc | £12 (£10 concs)
The Observer Building, Hastings
observerbuildinghastings.co.uk
Performance artist Peggy Shaw brings her solo show RUFF to Hastings, in the build-up to her three-night run at the Barbican Centre this April. Ruminating on life before and after the stroke she had in 2011, Shaw delivers this freewheeling monologue with deadpan humour and arresting honesty. Supported by video monitors, a green screen and her virtual back-up band, Shaw talks, croons and imitates her way through a this highly personal performance confronting identity and change.
Peggy Shaw's RUFF
14th - 16th April | 7.45pm |£16
Silk Street Theatre
PRESS NIGHT Thursday 14 April
Performance artist Peggy Shaw brings her solo show RUFF to the Silk Street Theatre as part of the Barbican's theatre and dance programme. Ruminating on life before and after the stroke she had in 2011, Shaw delivers this freewheeling monologue with deadpan humour and arresting honesty. Supported by video monitors, a green screen and her virtual back-up band, Shaw talks, croons and imitates her way through a this highly personal performance confronting identity and change.
For more, follow @split_britches, or find them on YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/SplitBritches and online at www.split-britches.com.
Split Britches was founded by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver with Deb Margolin, veterans of Hot Peaches and Spiderwoman Theater, in 1981 at NYC's WOW Café. Using collaborative, devised, and text centered theatre-based work, for the last thirty some years Split Britches have transformed the landscape of queer performance with vaudevillian satirical gender-bending performance. They create new forms by exploiting old conventions. They borrow from classical texts and popular myths, but its true sources are the details of everyday life. Their work is personal, bordering on the private. It relies on moments rather than plot, relationships rather than story. It is about a community of outsiders, queers, eccentrics - feminist because it encourages the imaginative potential in everyone, and lesbian because it takes the presence of a lesbian on stage as a given. Split Britches' purpose has been to keep a sense of humor, to remain the outlaw, to question 'normal,' and to work within the margins of the margins.
Lois Weaver is Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary University of London and an independent performance artist, director and activist. She has performed, directed and written with Peggy Shaw since 1980. Her experiments in performance as a means of public engagement include development of Long Table, Porch Sitting, the Library of Performing Rights, the FeMUSEm and her facilitating persona, Tammy WhyNot. In 2014 Lois was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Performing Arts.
Peggy Shaw is a performer, writer, producer and teacher of writing and performance. With Lois Weaver, she co- founded Split Britches and the WOW Café in NYC. She has received three OBIE Awards, the 1995 Anderson Foundation Stonewall Award, and The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Theatre Performer of the Year Award in 2005. A collection of her solo performances, A Menopausal Gentleman, edited by Jill Dolan and published by Michigan Press, won a 2012 Lambda Literary prize for Drama. In 2014 she was the recipient of a Doris Duke Award for her outstanding achievements in the performing arts.
In Company Collective offers sustained producing, design and production support for independent artists facilitated by a range of creative practitioners. ICC aim for long-term engagement with audience and participants whilst facilitating artistic risk-taking ICC also collaborate with other cultural organisations, inspiring new ways of working and focus on sector development through opening up mentoring, training and think-tank opportunities. ICC currently work with Split Britches, Liz Carr, Brian Lobel, Le Gateau Chocolat, Dance Umbrella, Tim Crouch and the Royal Court Theatre. They also lead on The Sick of the Fringe, a mini festival aim at inspiring collaborations between science and the arts taking place during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, commissioned by the Wellcome Trust. www.incompanycollective.com
Videos
