Interview with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of Split Britches, conducted by Sarah Townsend as a part of the 6th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in June of 2007 in Buenos Aires, Argentina under the title CORPOLÍTICAS en las Américas: Formaciones de Raza, Clase y Género / Body Politics in the Americas: Formations of Race, Class and Gender

Biography

Split Britches was founded 32 years ago by Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, and Deb Margolin in New York City. Since 1980 we have transformed the landscape of queer performance with our vaudevillian satirical gender-bending performance. Split Britches creates new forms by exploiting old conventions. It borrows from classical texts and popular myths, but its true sources are the details of everyday life. The 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.

Lois Weaver is an independent performance artist, director, and activist. Currently, she lectures in Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London.

Peggy Shaw is an actor, writer and producer who has collaborated, written for and performed with the Spiderwoman Theater and Hot Peaches Theater.