Shows: Past Productions

PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED

Referred to by Jesse Helms as “a garbage artist” and perhaps most famous as one of the NEA Four, Holly Hughes throttles the stage in PREACHING TO THE PERVERTED, a wry, comic look at decency, family values, artistic freedom, and the tyranny of an ill-informed majority. In Ms. Hughes’ very personal tour of the culture wars, you’ll go behind the scenes at the U.S. Supreme Court, the 92nd Street Y and catch a glimpse of the infamous “gay agenda.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Holly Hughes, author of Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler, is one of the most popular and controversial out-there-and-in your face writer/performers around. An "escape artist" who escaped her conservative upbringing in a part of the county "where silence was the first language," she has become an Obie award-winning performance artist and playwright, as well as a central figure in America’s culture wars. In the late '80s and early '90s, Holly Hughes was the undisputed lesbian "bad girl" of publicly funded art. Her open, often raw depiction of sexuality, especially in her work at New York's feminist WOW Cafe, rattled both ends of the political spectrum. By the end of the '80s, Hughes had moved toward a showdown with the Christian right's perennial senatorial patriarch, Jesse Helms. Her body of work includes DRESS SUITS FOR HIRE (a collaboration with Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver), NO TRACE OF THE BLONDE, THE WELL OF HORNINESS, CLIT NOTES, and CAT O’NINE TALES.

"She’s hell on heels." –The Village Voice
"Hughes scrapes away decades of encrusted decorum from a subject (female sexuality) that is too often treated with a hushed sentimentality." –The New York Times
"Holly Hughes is everything you always wanted in a Lesbian performance artist – and less." –Los Angeles Times
"One of the most insightful, funny and entertaining storytellers around." –Chicago Tribune
“Holly Hughes is a lesbian and her work is very heavily of that genre.” - NEA

written & performed by Holly Hughes

September 21 - 23, 2000

MENOPAUSAL GENTLEMAN

Part autobiographical monologue, part stand-up comedy, part blues lounge act, MENOPAUSAL GENTLEMAN chronicles the tortures of a “53 year old grandmother who passes for a 35 year old guy who likes the ladies” as she endures the onset of menopause. In a solo tour deforce performance, the Obie Award-winning Shaw enacts her butch persona’s collision with life’s most relentless irony, reflecting along the way on the erotic, the existential and the absurd.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Actor, Playwright, and Producer Peggy Shaw has received three OBIE Awards for her work with the Lesbian Theater Company, Split Britches, which she founded with Lois Weaver and Deb Margolin in 1980. She won the Obie Awards for her performances in "Dress Suits To Hire," a collaboration with Holly Hughes, "Belle Reprieve," a collaboration with the London-based theater troupe BlooLips, and "Menopausal Gentleman," directed by Rebecca Taichman. Split Britches Co. opened their new show, "Salad of The Bad Cafe" in collaboration with Stace Makishi at LaMaMa Etc. in New York last spring. She also opened her new show with Lois Weaver (a collaboration with The Clod Ensemble) in London last winter. Among her celebrated works are "You're Just Like My Father," "Lust and Comfort," "Upwardly Mobile Home, "Lesbians Who Kill," and the Jane Chambers Award-winning play "Split Britches." Peggy is a 1988 and 1995, and 1999 New York Foundation For The Arts award winner for Emerging Forms. She received the 1995 Anderson Foundation Stonewall Award for excellence in "making the world a better place for gays and lesbians," and Split Britches is a two-time nominee for the Cal Arts Herb Alpert Award. Peggy just received the 2000-2001 Rockefeller MAP Grant to create her new show "To My Chagrin." In addition to her work with Split Britches, she played Billy Tipton in American Place's production of Carson Kreitzer's "The Slow Drag", she was a collaborator, writer, and performer with Spiderwoman Theater and Hot Peaches Theater and co-founder in 1980 of the Obie-Award Winning WOW Cafe in New York City. Split Britches teaches Performance in residence at various colleges including Hampshire College, University of Hawaii, University of Northern Iowa, U.C. Davis, Cal Arts, U.C. Riverside, Harvard, M.I.T., and William and Mary. Peggy has taught Solo Performance at Vassar, Smith,Wells, U.Mass, Amherst, Mt.Holyoke, and Hampshire College. Routledge Press has released a book simultaneously in London and New York on the Company entitled "Split Britches: Lesbian Practice, Feminist Performance," edited by Sue Ellen Case, which includes seven Split Britches’ plays.

written & performed by Peggy Shaw

October 12 - 14, 2000

"An amazing sexy presence." –The Village Voice
"An East Village icon of lesbian butchness." –The New York Times
"...flamboyant, ironic and shamelessly over the top." – The Stage (London)
"A riveting performer with extraordinary comic timing." – San Francisco Bay Guardian
“A moving, intimate piece which...strikes a universal resonance of the themes of ageing, loneliness and emotional exposure.” - The Guardian (London)

O WHOLLY NIGHT

Margolin embraces what she calls “the exquisite burdens” of Jewishness in her lyrical one-woman show seeped in a flood of wry memories, observations and anecdotes about a core Jewish concept: waiting for the Messiah. Margolin’s introspective performance lures the audience into her deft balancing act between funny and earnest, scornful and sentimental, lighthearted and brokenhearted. Childhood Holocaust films, senile parents in Florida, mindless marketing jobs and the pleasures of Snickers Bars all come together in this touching tale of faith, bigotry and, ultimately, hope.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Deb Margolin is an internationally recognized playwright and performance artist whose work has shaped and generated feminist theatre in the U.S. since the early 1980’s. She has toured the US and Europe as a founding member of the Split Britches Theatre Company, and her solo works have been presented across the United States. She has appeared on both Comedy Central and HBO Downtown. Ms. Margolin’s most recent play BRINGING THE FISHERMAN HOME was read at the New Works Now Festival at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre and premiered at The Cleveland Public Theater. Ms. Margolin is the recipient of a 1999-2000 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance, and is a staff writer at Nerve Magazine. She is currently serving as Artist-in-Residence in NYU's Department of Undergraduate Drama, and is a faculty lecturer in Playwriting and Performance at Yale University. Deb is currently at work on a new play about filial love and basketball, entitled THREE SECONDS IN THE KEY, to be presented in February of 2001. Although she lives in New Jersey, New York State is three houses down from her residence..

written & performed by Deb Margolin

November 02 - 24, 2000

"A deft and delightful balancing act" –The Dallas Morning News
"Fresh and amusing" –The New York Times
"This woman can spin ideas with a speed that makes the Grand Prix seem sluggish" – The Dallas Morning News
"A poetry of strong, fresh images and unexpected insights" – Backstage