Miss America - Crowning Glory

Split Britches Lesbian Feminist Theatre Company was founded in 1980 by Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver and Deb Margolin. Since then they have transformed the landscape of queer performance with their vaudevillian satirical gender-bending performance.

Split Britches is performing Miss America at the Great Hall of the People’s Palace 21st - 23rd March, Mile End Road, London. E1 4NS

£10 (£6 concessions) Free to Staff and Students of Queen Mary, University of London.

Please reserve tickets by calling 020 7882 5196 or email R.Sharp@qmul.ac.uk giving your details.
You will be asked to pay on arrival for the performance.

Split Britches has sustained it’s reputation for 30 years, how have you managed to do that?
We were part of Spiderwoman Theatre which began in 1975. Split Britches formed in 1980 and we have never been funded as a company and we don’t depend on funding to survive. We make the work and then get paid for the performances like the old vaudeville artistes. Vaudeville was the working class performance scene that came to prominence in the USA from the early 1880s until the early 1930s and it inspires much of what we do both practically and aesthetically. We have always had other jobs. Lois is now Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary University and Peggy teaches independently. We also run workshops and residencies.

Even though we are a lesbian feminist performance company we never made work about coming out stories. From the beginning, lesbianism was a given in our work and from that given we explored what was happening in our communities and the wider world. We believe artists should be alert to what is happening in the wider world and not just in our personal lives. Split Britches was very fortunate that our work was embraced by the academy and part of that interest and critique has also contributed to our survival.

Split Britches is a lesbian feminist performance company. How does it feel to make work in an allegedly “post-feminist” world?
We called ourselves a lesbian feminist company because identity was important and we didn’t want people to assume a heterosexual focus from the kind of work we did. And in the post-feminism era we held on to the name because because we were just plain ornery! We are aware however, that the label has kept people away from our performances, because they think they know what we do. However when they turn up they are pleasantly surprised. We never want to deny the community we came from even though we are not dealing with community specific issues. In terms of access to funding, our lesbian feminism has never hindered us because we have a strong track record and have forged our own style.

We created what we called a “broken aesthetic”. Quoting a songwriter friend of ours we are “caught between polish and no polish at all.” For instance, we are not great singers and dancers but make a point of singing and dancing in our shows. We are inspired by our time with Spiderwoman Theatre that was named after Spider Woman, the Hopi Native American goddess of weaving and pottery. She always left a flaw in the design so that the spirit could be free to come and go. We are interested in the flaws.

How did the idea for the show Miss America come about and how does it deal with the American Dream?
The idea for Miss America came about because Peggy had a dream about being an 80 year old butch woman wearing a bikini who was crowned Miss America and she was very happy. When she told anyone about the dream, they laughed. We thought this contradiction was worth exploring. So part of the show deals with gender equality, beauty and freakishness and a critique of the nostalgic view of womanhood that was an essential part of the 1950’s American Dream.

Lois wanted to explore what it meant to miss America. She was aghast when Katrina hit New Orleans and we were watching people dying and the government did nothing. The flood polticised many mainstream privileged reporters like Anderson Cooper who were shocked at the slowness of the response. Katrina was a wake up call. So Lois plays a reporter and Peggy is crowned Miss America in a beauty pageant that takes place in a storm.

Now that Obama is president, the American Dream has to be reconfigured. It was based on a “me and mine” culture now perhaps we need to be less individualistc and local and more communal and global.

Miss America integrates video into the performance. What inspired you to do this?
We project YouTube videos that we found online. We chose YouTube videos because they have a homemade quality. You will see the YouTube frame around the images on the screen. We wanted to show both the trauma of severe weather and the pervasiveness of ‘weather as news’ as well as use the storm as a backdrop to Lois as the news reporter.

What advice would you give a performance artist starting out now?

• Make your own work
• Get a gig and do it as often as you can
• Don’t wait for the grant
• If you don’t have a venue take one or make one in a city square or empty store front
• Find people to collaborate with

Split Britches Links
Website
Blog
Facebook
MySpace
Flickr

Bird La Bird is the brains behind Bird Club. Bird Club is a performance space which puts queer femininity in centre stage irrespective of gender, sexual orientation or body appendages. You can live the Bird Club experience monthly every second Thursday at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club. Friction interviews Bird La Bird the curator and performance artist behind Bird Club

What is the Bird Club story?
Bird Club has morphed several times since we hatched in 2006. Bird Club started as a comedy act with Maria Rosa Young (Dyke Marilyn) and myself. We created Birdie characters to both subvert the stereotypes of Femmes but also to send ourselves up. We didn’t want to take ourselves or debates over identity politics too seriously.

I want to use Bird Club as a vehicle to bring together and promote artists, performers and designers. The fifth rule of Bird Club is “Anyone can be a Bird”. Wearing frilly knickers should not be dependent on what’s in them.  When I hear the word “real” before any category of person whether it’s woman, lesbian or femme I head for the hills. If you’ve ever been told you’re not “real” you’ll probably like Bird Club.

What makes Bird Club different to all the other burlesque acts out there?
What I do as Bird la Bird draws on music hall, punk, film and comedy rather than Burlesque.

Burlesque is an art form that’s been useful for many Femme performers as a way to break the drag king/masculine dominance of the queer stage. However the Burlesque scene tends to be very white. Why not have a retro scene that celebrates Rocksteady as well as Rockabilly? How about 50s Bollywood as well as Hollywood? Oh and the class snobbery really gets on my titties as well.

Bird Club is post-femme and post burlesque. However I do  hope that many of the more challenging neo-burlesque performers will come and join us on the perch.

Isn’t femininity over-represented in queer and straight worlds?
What’s interesting to examine which femininity is acceptable and which isn’t. This isn’t just about gender and sexuality it’s also about class, race and disability. I’m interested in how femininity is both demonized and highly prized.

There’s a lot of anxiety within feminism, queer and gender queer culture about expressing binary genders. While we’re right to challenge repression and enforcement of gender norms we also seem to have created a fear of being “normal”.  This can leave many femmes, transwomen, straight feminine feminists and lady transvestites feeling like we’re puppets of the Patriarchy by doing what feels good for us. Yet again it is putting politics before pleasure and that’s not very helpful to anyone.

How do you create something truly British in terms of language around gender and performance?
I want Bird Club to have a British flavour like Fish ‘n’ Chips.

I love slang, old fashioned gender nouns that are outside man / woman / male /female. Some people are perplexed by Bird Club and some of the language I use. I love it. So what if things aren’t instantly knowable and recognizable.  It’s good to have a bit of mystery. The debate round identity is way too earnest. Slang can mess it all up and bring a bit of irreverence, camp and cheekiness.

I also think colloquial words around gender that are white and working class are often assumed to be sexist and racist. The word Bird is definitely used in a derogatory way, but it’s not the whole story. I’m fascinated that birds and women are linked in language. I can’t think of another creature I’d rather be compared to than one with the power of flight.

What is your take on merchandising/branding the feminine?
This is something that’s very dear to me cos I do graphics as well as performance art. I love playing with imagery inspired by celebrity magazines, perfume, aftershave ads and fashion magazines.

Bird Club features lots of Birds of different species. I love the Bird Club banner which was a collaboration with textile artist Lucas McKenna. I want to get away from the pink for Femme/Black for Butch division. We need to move beyond this and find more interesting ways of expressing gender play visually. I love the work that the Butch is Beautiful crew are doing in Paris. They have the most interesting butch graphics I’ve seen in a long time.

To me style is at the heart of butch femme expression, so butch femme design work should reflect that deeply aesthetic and stylized sensibility, anything less is a disservice.

What has Bird Club got to say about Butch/Femme that hasn’t been said before?
I’m interested in post Butch/Femme and what happens when players themselves question and rewrite the roles.

I find the hostile reaction many non-players have towards butch/femme enthusiasts fascinating. I can’t think of another consensual sexual activity that has so much scorn and derision poured on it. I’m fascinated why many people find it so threatening and I’d like to see if that anxiety can be played with.

Is Bird Club art or activism?
It’s art, but art as in artiste rather than artist. Activism sometimes, but with a very heavy dose of humour, camp and surrealism. The most activist event Bird Club has organized was Bird Pride. That brought lots of the ladies together on the streets which hadn’t happened in London before.

A lot of activism revolves around consensus and community building. While this is essential to furthering many political causes they don’t necessarily make a good environment for making art or expressing very individualistic opinions.

I want the club to be a space where radical ladies can express themselves. There’s no reason why it can’t move between the street and the stage or dancefloor.