Split Britches present an up-to-the minute topical interactive show which takes unexploded ordnances as a metaphor for the unexplored potential in us all – particularly elders – and tries to uncover it. Legendary performance duo Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver evoke the Cold War paranoia of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove to seek solutions to the problems keeping us awake at night, as the audience counts down the final hour to doomsday on their phones.
On a stage that echoes the film’s iconic War Room, with a round table and doomsday images projected onto screens, Peggy and Lois adopt the characters of a bombastic general and ineffectual president, lacing the performance with both playful urgency and lethargy and encouraging discussion about the political landscape. The twelve eldest audience members are invited to enter the Situation Room and become a Council of Elders to discuss the global issues of the day from Trump, Brexit and Climate Change to the challenges of the ageing baby boom generation – as the company weave in satirical insights and spirit-lifting humour, resulting in a production where each show is unique.
Developed over two years through residencies with older people in London, Los Angeles and on New York’s historical Governor’s Island (where real undetonated civil war bombs lie buried beneath the surface), UXO is the latest show from the groundbreaking duo whose work is characterised by experimentation in form and political content, as well as plenty of pop culture references. It marks Split Britches return to the UK following Peggy Shaw’s RUFF, which toured in 2016, including shows at the Barbican.
Speaking about the show Lois Weaver said “We’ve always used performance to help us through our personal challenges — about being butch and going through menopause, being femme and feeling invisible, or being an artist during the Reagan-Thatcher era. Now that we’re older we use performance to help us think about age. We started this project before Trump was elected and before Dr. Strangelove became as relevant as it is now. We drew from the doomsday urgency of the film, that something horrible is going to happen unless we do something. But it’s really about the urgency of time as an elder as well.”
