SIZE OF COMPANY
3 on the road

SCALE OF VENUE
Medium

PERMANENT STAFF
Director/Writer/Collaborator Performer
Lois Weaver
Director/Writer/Performer
Peggy Shaw

ARTISTIC POLICY
Split Britches Company creates new forms by exploiting old conventions. It borrows from classical texts, popular culture, and 1950s television, 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 draws from the imagination of a community of outsiders, queers, eccentrics – It is feminist because it encourages the imaginative potential in everyone, and lesbian because it takes the presence of a lesbian on stage as a given.

REVIEW EXTRACTS
Split Britches meaningfully extended the post-1960s political theatre mandate of combining art and life…Their performances are sites of clarity, inspiration and community.
The Village Voice
Shaw and Weaver are as impressive as ever, expertly challenging the constraints of cultural norms and tickling the audience's funny bone while they're at it.
Offoffonline, NYC
[In Miss America] this veteran duo—Peggy Shaw, a butch cad in a baggy suit, and Lois Weaver, a blowsy femme in a slip and a wig—tap-dances with a kind of breezy rue across the fault lines between reality and representation, waste and nostalgia, the personal and the public.
TimeOut, New York

CURRENT PRODUCTIONS
What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex
Using experiences collected from workshops and interviews with local elders and presented in a talk show format, Tammy WhyNot  explores the following question: What it’s like to get old and to get old and have sex?
60 mins, 1 on stage, 1–2 on the road, flexible space requirements
Miss America
An unapologetic yet humorous critique on the dissolution of the American Dream and an exploration of what is lost in a society that is still hopelessly clinging to winning. Created by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver
70 mins, 2 on stage, 2–3 on the road, flexible space requirements
Retro Perspective
A performance lecture featuring a medley of the the last 30 years of Split Britches’ work that has made the politics of gender and sexuality and the humour of human relations assessable to all ages and persuasions for the last 30 years. Performed by Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw.
60–75 mins, 2 on stage, 2–3 on the road, flexible space requirements.

FUTURE PRODUCTIONS
The Last Lounge
An investigation of what it means to be a ‘last hold out’ in a society given over to globalisation, gentrification and de-humanisation and technological progress set in the last live television studio left on the planet and surrounded by the ghosts of the lounge act and comedy duos that once popululated the airwaves. Created by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver.
60–75 mins, 2 on stage, 2–3 on the road, flexible space requirements.

WRAP-AROUND
Inter-generational workshops, interviews and performance interventions on subjects of sex and aging with possible performance opportunities for participants in What Tammy Needs To Know About Getting Old and Having Sex
Hands-on independent performance-making workshops for both performers and non performers of all ages
Workshops and seminars on the intersection of performance and human rights
Long Table, a performance installation that encourages informal conversation on serious subjects and experiments with formats that encourage public engagement  on issues such as performance, social engagement and human rights
Post-Show discussions

RECENT INTERNATIONAL WORK
2006 Finland, Greece, Poland: What Tammy Needs to Know/Diary of a Domestic Terrorist
2007 Argentina, USA: Retro Perspective/It’s a Small House and We Lived in it Always/Long Tables), Austria (Long Tables/Library of Performing Rights/Tammy Why Not)
2008 USA: Miss America

TOURING AVAILABILITY
Throughout 2009