Events
Peggy Shaw
Written by:Peggy Shaw i Lois Weaver
Directed by:Lois Weaver
Music and sound:Viv Stoll
Choreography:Stormy Brandenberger
Set and Media DesignMatt Delbridge
Production Manager:Jo Palmer
Company ManagerRose Sharp
Artist AssistantHannah Maxwell
Project AssistantIzzi Richardson
Produced by:Tracy Gentles
RUFF was made possible in part by commissioning support from PS122, the Ethyl Eichelberger Award, and Out North Contemporary Art House (Anchorage AK) outnorth.org, with funding generously provided by the Gesso foundation. RUFF was developed in part with support from the MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and residencies at Dixon Place and La MaMa.
RUFF is the latest in a line of Peggy Shaw’s solo performances, this time written with Lois Weaver, which reveals her humorous and musical perspective on age gender and bravadacio. This time it’s from a newer even more extreme angle. Peggy had a stroke in January 2011. The stroke was in her PONS, which rhymes with the Fonz, one of her many early role models, and since the stroke she’s realized she has never really performed solo. She has always had a host of crooners, lounge singers, movie stars, rock and roll bands and eccentric family members living inside her. “RUFF” is a tribute to those who have kept her company these 68 years, a lament for the absence of those who disappeared into the dark holes left behind by the stroke and a celebration that her brain is able to fill the blank green screens with new insights and an opportunity to share them with the her favorite confidants –the audience.
Peggy Shaw (co-writer, performer) is a performer, writer, producer and teacher of writing and performance. With Lois Weaver, she co- founded Split Britches and the WOW Café in NYC. She has received three OBIE Awards, the 1995 Anderson Foundation Stonewall Award, and The Foundation for Contemporary Performance Theatre Performer of the Year Award in 2005. A collection of her solo performances, A Menopausal Gentleman, edited by Jill Dolan and published by Michigan Press, won a 2012 Lambda Literary prize for Drama. In 2014 Peggy received a Doris Duke Performing Arts Award.
Lois Weaver (co-writer, director) is Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary University of London and an independent performance artist, director and activist. She has performed, directed and written with Peggy Shaw since 1980. Her experiments in performance as a means of public engagement include development of Long Table, Porch Sitting, the Library of Performing Rights, the FeMUSEm and her facilitating persona, Tammy WhyNot. Lois is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow.
In addition to their solo shows, Shaw and Weaver work together in Split Britches, which they cofounded with Deb Margolin in 1981 at NYCʼs WOW Café. Shaw and Weaver became known for “a long line of smart, thrillingly well-executed performance pieces” (The Village Voice). Split Britches is currently touring with their newest production: Miss America and the Lost Lounge. http://splitbritches.org/
Stormy Brandenberger (movement consultant) is a professor in the Drama Dance Department of Hofstra University and a collaborative choreographer whose modern dance, multimedia collaborations and theatre works have toured the U.S ad abroad. She has worked with Split Britches Company since 1984. Her choreography has been presented at American Place Theater, Cultural Project Theatre, Dixon Place, DTW, Joeʼs Pub, Ohio Theater, HERE, PS122, Saint Marks Church Performance Space and Urban Stages.
Vivian Stoll (music and sound design) is a musician, audio engineer and music producer. She played drums with bands including Isis, Unknown Gender, Frank Maya, and currently with the neo-folk-rock group, Such As Us. She has worked as an engineer/ producer with artists including Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion, Laurie Anderson, Annabelle Chvostek, Rebecca Coupe Franks, Jon Kinzel, and Rosalie Sorrels whose 2009 album was nominated for a Grammy award. Vivian has worked with Split Britches since 1996 and collaborated on the writing and performance of To My Chagrin with Peggy Shaw in 2001.
Matt Delbridge (set and media design) creates interactive digital scenography for theatre and installation environments working with Motion Capture, live interactive video processing and virtual 3D environments. He was the digital scenographer of Jonzi Dʼs Markus the Sadist for the UK and Split Britchesʼ Lost Lounge at Dixon Place. He is an associate artist with the Queensland Theatre Company, and lectures in New Media and Scenography in the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane Australia.
Lori E. Seid (lighting designer and photographer) has worked as a stage manager, technical director and lighting designer since 1984. Seid also produces unique theatre events in NYC and worldwide, as well as independent films and television. For her work, Seid is the recipient of an OBIE, a Bessie and Theatre Craft International Award all for sustained excellence in theatre and several Emmyʼs for her TV work. View Seidʼs photo blog, And How Was Your Day at lorieseid.wordpress.com
And a shout out to the band: Vivian Stoll, Missy Connell, Antonia Abramova, Terry Dame, Ellie Covan, Sharon Jane Smith, Maggie Connell with thanks to the Deadly Nightshade for laying down some tracks.