Events Calendar

Lost Lounge: A Performance by Split Britches

Ah, nostalgia—not what it used to be. Even the most wistful memories of a bygone time seem threatened by the wrecking ball of a greed-driven culture and sped-up lives. What does it mean to miss something? Who are we when the very geography we remember is no longer around to orient us? Split Britches, one of the first professional feminist theatre companies, will consider such questions with deconstructive charm and comely defiance in Lost Lounge, a behind-the-scenes peek into the labor and romance of two lounge-act performers, accompanied on keyboards by Vivian Stoll. Retrieving and repurposing long-forgotten source material, including songs from the 1950s lounge duo Louis Prima and Keely Smith and text from the 1971 film Le Chat, they locate the place of memory, and the memory of place, in our need to look toward the future.

Split Britches, founded in 1980 by Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver with Deb Margolin, formulated a groundbreaking postmodern practice that inspired a generation of artists and scholars. Since 1994 Shaw and Weaver have been the primary members of the company and have become known for “a long line of smart, thrillingly well-executed performance pieces” (Katherine Dieckmann, The Village Voice). They tour throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe and have conducted residencies at universities throughout the United States, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Taiwan Women’s Theatre Festival. An anthology of their scripts, Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance, edited by Sue-Ellen Case, was published by Routledge in 1996 and won a Lambda Literary Award.

Related Event:
Performing Gender: A Workshop with Split Britches
Wednesday, September 7, 3 p.m.
Doheny Memorial Library, Intellectual Commons, Room 233
Admission is free. Reservations required.
To RSVP, click here http://www.usc.edu/dept/pubrel/visionsandvoices/RSVP/reserve.php?RSVPEvtCode=175 beginning Tuesday, August 23, at 9 a.m.
Focusing on the performance of gender, Split Britches will lead a hands-on workshop designed to give participants the tools to create their own performance based on the ordinary details of our lives and the extraordinary fantasies of our imaginations.

Organized by Jack Halberstam (English) and Macarena Gómez-Barris (Sociology and American Studies and Ethnicity).

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu

Location: Ground Zero Performance Cafe

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Daria Yudacufski