Peggy Shaw | |
---|---|
Born | Belmont, Massachusetts, U.S. | July 27, 1944
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Massachusetts College of Art |
Occupation(s) | Actor, writer, producer |
Known for | Founder of the Split Britches |
Awards | Doris Duke Award, Edwin Booth Award, Ethyl Eichelberger Award, Hemispheric Institute Art Matters Award, Otto Award for Excellence in Political Theatre, New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for Emerging Forms, Out on the Edge of Theatre Award for Sustained Excellence, Anderson Foundation Stonewall Award for Sustained Excellence, 3 Obie Awards |
Website | http://www.split-britches.com/peggy/ |
Peggy Shaw (born July 27, 1944) [1] is an American actor, writer, and producer living in New York City. She is a founding member of the Split Britches and WOW Cafe Theatre, and is a recipient of several Obie Awards, including two for Best Actress for her performances in Dress Suits to Hire in 1988 and Menopausal Gentleman in 1999. [2]
Born Margaret A. Shaw in Belmont, Massachusetts, she was raised in a working class Irish Congregationalist family with six siblings. When she was thirteen, she was a missionary in Costa Rica. [3]
Shaw moved to New York in 1967. She had a child and was a social worker for the New York City Agency for Child Development. [3]
In 1967, Shaw earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Printmaking at the Massachusetts College of Art.
At the age of 31 after seeing Hot Peaches (a theater group in New York that consisted mostly of drag queens) perform in Sheridan Square, Shaw became involved with the company. Shaw began by painting sets for Hot Peaches and constructing paper mâché heads for a parade performance. Her first experience on stage was in 1975 on a gay tour of Europe. During this time, she saw Spiderwoman Theater in Amsterdam and met Lois Weaver. Shaw and Hot Peaches lived in London for 3 years, where they met Bette Bourne, who would go on to found the Bloolips after his experiences with Hot Peaches. [3] [4]
Shaw founded the troupe Split Britches with Deb Margolin and Lois Weaver in 1980. [5] She also co-founded WOW Cafe Theater, an ongoing performance festival and venue.
Shaw suffered a stroke in 2011. Her show, RUFF, directed by longtime collaborator Lois Weaver, explores her experiences as a survivor. [2]
The University of Michigan published A Menopausal Gentleman, a book that includes many of the scripts from Shaw's solo performances. [6]
Shaw has received Obie Awards for her performances in Dress Suits To Hire, and Menopausal Gentleman, and an ensemble award for her work in Belle Reprieve.
The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual and performing arts. It offers Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees through its six schools: Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater.
Lisa D'Amour is a playwright, performer, and former Carnival Queen from New Orleans. D'Amour is an alumna of New Dramatists. Her play Detroit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Meryl F. Vladimer was an artist, theatrical producer and political activist.
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist.
Deb Margolin is an American performance artist and playwright. She came to prominence in the 1980s in the feminist political theatre troupe Split Britches, which she co-founded with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw. Margolin has since created a string of one-woman shows. A compilation of her texts, Of All The Nerve: Deb Margolin SOLO, was published in 1999 by Cassell/Continuum Press. Literary theorist Lynda Hart edited and wrote a commentary on each piece.
Bette Bourne was a British actor, drag queen, and activist. His theatrical career spanned six decades. He came to prominence in the mid-1970s when he adopted the name "Bette" and a radical posture on gay liberation. He joined the New York-based alternative gay cabaret troupe Hot Peaches on a tour of Europe and then founded his own alternative London-based gay theatrical company, Bloolips, which lasted until 1994.
W. David Hancock is an American playwright, best known for his plays The Race of the Ark Tattoo and The Convention of Cartography. He is a two-time Obie winner for his works with the Foundry Theatre. His experimental, nonlinear work is known for blurring boundaries between artifice and reality, often through unconventional theatrical spaces and an object-centric dramaturgy. As the critic Elinor Fuchs writes, in Hancock’s work, “…we encounter mystery and authenticity at another level entirely.”
Clod Ensemble is a multi-award winning performance company and registered charity based in London, UK. Founded in 1995 by director Suzy Willson and composer Paul Clark, the company creates performances, workshops and other events in the UK and internationally.
Split Britches is an American performance troupe, which has been producing work internationally since 1980. Academic Sue Ellen Case says "their work has defined the issues and terms of academic writing on lesbian theater, butch-femme role playing, feminist mimesis, and the spectacle of desire". In New York City Split Britches have long standing relationships with La Mama Experimental Theatre Company, where they are a resident company, Wow Café, which Weaver and Shaw co-founded, and Dixon Place.
Lois Weaver is a Guggenheim-winning American artist, activist, writer, director, and Professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Fellow in Engaging Science.
She Must Be Seeing Things is a 1987 lesbian feminist film directed by Sheila McLaughlin and starring Lois Weaver and Sheila Dabney. It was the film debut of both Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw. It was controversial when first released.
Spiderwoman Theater is an Indigenous women's performance troupe that blends traditional art forms with Western theater. Named after Spider Grandmother from Hopi mythology, it is the longest running Indigenous theatre company in the United States.
WOW Café Theater is a feminist theater space and collective in East Village in New York City. In the mid-1980s, WOW Cafe Theater was central to the avant garde theatre and performance art scene in the East Village, New York City. Among the artists who have presented at the space are Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Patricia Ione LLoyd, Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, Dancenoise, Carmelita Tropicana, Eileen Myles, Split Britches, Seren Divine, Johnny Science, and The Five Lesbian Brothers.
Sarah Michelson is a British choreographer and dancer who lives and works in New York City, New York. Her work is characterized by demanding physicality and repetition, rigorous formal structures, and inventive lighting and sound design. She was one of two choreographers whose work was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, the first time dance was presented as part of the bi-annual exhibition. Her work has also been staged at The Walker Art Center, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Kitchen, and the White Oak Dance Project. She received New York Dance and Performance awards for Group Experience (2002), Shadowmann Parts One and Two (2003), and Dogs (2008). She has served as associate director of The Center for Movement Research and associate curator of dance at The Kitchen. Currently choreographer in residence at Bard's Fisher Center, she is the recipient of their four-year fellowship to develop a commissioned work with Bard students and professional dancers.
Dress Suits to Hire is a play written by Holly Hughes and originally performed by the Lesbian and Feminist performance group, Split Britches. It premiered in 1987 at Performance Space 122 in Manhattan's East Village. The play is essentially a lesbian love story told in the overheated style of film noir, also drawing upon images from pulp fiction; The show has been revived several times since its premiere, with the original cast of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver (Michigan) reprising their roles. The show won OBIE Awards for both Shaw and Hughes.
Jill Susan Dolan is an American educator, author, blogger and feminist. She writes on theatre, sexuality studies, and feminist theory. Since July 2015, Dolan has been the Dean of the College at Princeton University, where she is also the Annan Professor in English and a professor of theatre studies in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Prior to Princeton, Dolan served as the Department Head of Theater and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, and as Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dolan's notable works include her blog The Feminist Spectator, for which she received the 2011 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and Theater and Sexuality. Dolan also edited Menopausal Gentlemen: Plays and Performances of Peggy Shaw which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Drama.
John Kelly is an American performance artist, visual artist and writer.
Hot Peaches was a gay, political, NYC theatre company in New York City that would put on one play a week, active from the 1970s-1990s. Hot Peaches was founded by Jimmy Camicia in 1972, who encountered a group of drag queens and began writing work for them to perform. Their work has been described as "political camp, dominated by drag".
Stacy Makishi is a Hawaiian-born performance artist, physical theatre and live art specialist. Her work often involves combining autobiographical experience and comedy with inspiration from fictional sources, such as Hollywood movies or novels. She has been identified by The Guardian as part of a new generation of artists making 'innovative shows [. . .] with and by young people'.
Muriel Miguel is a Native American director, choreographer, playwright, actor and educator. She is of Kuna and Rappahannock ancestry and was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1976, Miguel founded the Spiderwoman Theater with her sisters, Gloria Miguel and Lisa Mayo. The Spiderwoman Theater was the first Native American women's theater troupe to gain international recognition, and remains the longest continuous running Native American female performance group. Miguel has directed nearly all of the Spiderwoman Theater's shows since their debut in 1976, and currently serves as its artistic director.