Split Britches

 Split Britches takes its name from a garment worn by Lois Weaver's ancestors in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It's an undergarment that is split so the women could pee standing up in the fields. It's a good metaphor for our work: independent and personal bordering on the private. And it's funny - you could split your britches laughing!

Our work is rooted in popular culture, but positioned against it. It relies on moments rather than plot, relationships rather than story. It depends on the surprise of transformation rather than the logic of conventional narrative. It straddles the line between performance and theatre, exploiting theatricality while exposing the pretence It is about 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 lesbians on stage as a given.

Since 1981, Split Britches, founded by Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, and Deb Margolin, has created five pieces in trio: Split Britches, Beauty and the Beast, Upwardly Mobile Home, Little Women - The Tragedy and Lesbians Who Kill. As a duet, Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver have collaborated with Holly Hughes in Dress Suits To Hire, Bloolips in Belle Reprieve, Gay Sweatshop in Lust and Comfort, Stacy Makishi in Salad of the Bad Café and Clod Ensemble, in It's a Small House and We Lived in it Always. Solo performances include: Peggy Shaw's Menopausal Gentleman, You're Just Like My Father, and To My Chagrin; Lois Weaver's Faith and Dancing, What Tammy Needs to Know and Diary of a Domestic Terrorist; Deb Margolin's Carthieves! Joyrides! Of All The Nerve, 970-Debb, Gestation and Of Mice and Bugs And Women

Split Britches is currently touring: Dress Suits to Hire, It's a Small House and We Lived in it Always, Retro Perspective, What Tammy Needs to Know, Diary of a Domestic Terrorist, To My Chagrin, Menopausal Gentleman