Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw were in an old army
barracks in New York when they first heard the phrase that would give them the
title for their new show for Split Britches, the avant-garde queer feminist
theatre company the pair co-founded in 1980.
“The base had been used in the Cold War, but was now
mainly used as an art space,” explains Weaver, “and I went for a walk around
the space, but before I went I was told to be careful where I stepped, because
there were unexploded ordnances there. I’d never heard that term before and
asked what it meant, and was told it was unexploded bombs. Because we’d been
working with elders, and because both Peggy and I are elders, the phrase was
the perfect metaphor for us. We all have our unexploded bombs and things we’ve
always wanted to do but have never done.”
The incident planted the seed for what would become
Unexploded Ordnances (UXO), which is currently on the London leg of a British
and Irish tour which stops off in Glasgow next week as one of the highlights of
city-wide festival of experimental performance, Take Me Somewhere.
“Once we had this idea of unexploded ordnances, Peggy
became obsessed with Dr Strangelove,” says Weaver, referring to Stanley Kubrick’s
1964 Cold War-set comedy film about an accidental nuclear attack by America on
Russia. “We realised that had resonance, especially with the film’s idea of
having a Domesday device. To grow old and die, there’s a real urgency to Domesday,
and in the film it’s quite serious, so we played with that for a while, but
really, Peggy just wanted to be George C Scott. That left me to be Peter
Sellers, so you had this idea of the bombastic general and the president.”
If such satirical notions of nuclear paranoia
initially sounded more in keeping with the Cold War era in which the film was
made, the impetus of the piece and its focus on the idea that an older generation
could bring their experience to the table to prevent history repeating itself
became increasingly pertinent.
“We started playing with all this before Trump was
elected,” says Weaver. “Brexit was bubbling up, but it was only after we did a
work-in-progress of the show that it became quite Trumpified. There are
references in the show to Trumpian language, and his colloquialisms if you can
bear to give them enough credit to call them that. But this nuclear fear is
something I grew up with, and we thought it had gone way, but now that fear is
back.
“In the show we get older people from the audience at
the table, and I ask people what’s on their mind, so people can express their
fears. When older people come up, they say they thought things would be
different by now, but they’re not. I’m 68 years old now, and long before there
was any response from CND or anything like that, I remember sitting in my room
after the Cuban missile crisis, and thinking I was going to die. I think that
sense of anxiety has very much come back again.”
The sole Glasgow date of Unexploded Ordnances is presented
in conjunction with the National Theatre of Scotland and the Easterhouse-based
Platform venue, which hosts the show. Further support comes from Scotland’s
creative ageing organisation, Luminate, and Outspoken Arts Scotland, the new
organisation born out of Glasgay! Split Britches have previously brought work
to Scotland as part of the National Review of Live Art and as part of Glasgay!,
with performances taking place at the Arches, the Tron and the CCA. This dates
back to the 1990s, with the show, Lesbians Who Kill, as well solo works, Ruff,
by Shaw, and Weaver’s piece, What Tammy Needs to Know.
The roots of Split Britches date back to a meeting
while Weaver was touring with women’s performance troupe, Spiderwoman Theatre,
and Shaw with drag-based theatre company, Hot Peaches. Both ended up performing
in Spiderwoman Theatre’s An Evening of Disgusting Songs and Pukey Images.
Around that time, Weaver began to create a show about her aunts and great aunt,
which she called Split Britches, The True Story. Based in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia, the show drew its title from the type of underwear worn
by women while working the fields, which enabled them to urinate without
stopping work.
As an opening gambit for a company with an aesthetic
split between poverty and comedy, it was as much of a statement as Weaver and
Shaw’s co-founding of the WOW Café. The WOW for this festival to showcase women
theatre and performance makers with the WOW stood for Women’s One World.
“We decided we wanted to make work with more of a
lesbian focus,” says Weaver, “and that grew into our first show together, which
then evolved into Split Britches becoming a company. Peggy and I would often
play out aspects of our relationship onstage, and we wanted to look at that as
well. In the early days we wanted to be outlaws, and with both Split Britches
and the WOW Café, we were finding out how to do things as we went along, and we
were having fun doing it, but we were dealing with lots of serious issues as
well.”
This included a backlash from some feminists, who didn’t
like Split Britches portrayal of women. The rise of the AIDS crisis in the
1980s also left its mark, as did everyday homophobia and increased
gentrification of rundown spaces where grassroots art had once thrived.
“We were dealing with a lot of things back then,” says
Weaver, “but in terms of queer representation, a lot of work still needs to be
done, but we’ve come a long way.”
Dividing her time between New York and London, in
1992, Weaver briefly became co-artistic director of Gay Sweatshop, the British
theatre company founded as a collective in 1975. By that time, managerialism
and ‘excellence’ was being enforced onto artistic activity at all levels, and
Weaver moved on.
In this sense, Weaver, Shaw and Split Britches have
remained outsiders, unwilling to have their work co-opted and gentrified as
many once radical theatre companies have chosen to do. At the same time, as the
presence of many younger artists taking part in Take Me Somewhere show, the
trickle-down effect of the trail blazed by Split Britches has left its mark.
“We didn’t realise we were doing anything pioneering,”
says Weaver. “We were just doing what we wanted to do, which was making work
with non-linear narratives, and doing all kinds of these fractured, surreal
performances in ways that have now slipped into the mainstream. We’re not
fighting the same battles anymore.”
As elder states-people of alternative culture, Weaver
and Shaw may be ageing gracefully, but they still like to play.
“We really like that term, elder,” says Weaver, “because
in native American culture, the elder plays an important role in the tribe, and
when you go to parties now, you get to a certain age, and people bring things
to you. And now, we’re elders at this precarious moment in history, and one of
the things we’re trying to do with Unexploded Ordnances is to find out what
that means.”
Weaver and Shaw’s own solution to living through
adversity is simple.
“You just go on,” says Weaver. “You get to the stage
in life and in culture where you’re in a moment where you’re aware of the
dangers around you, but you go on anyway. One of the things we talk about in
Unexploded Ordnances is desire, and hidden desire or unfulfilled desire, and we
look at how you might apply that, and to try and come up with some kind of
creative solution. We don’t have any answers, but we think it’s good that we’re
having the conversation.”
Split Britches present Unexploded Ordnances (UXO) at
Platform, Easterhouse, Glasgow, May 26, 5pm.
The Herald, May 17th 2018
ends
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