Split Britches in Last Gasp, a Recalibration

August 3 - 6, 2023
Running Time: 80 minutes

Not just one of the 40-year-old company’s best pieces, but among the most evocative art to emerge from the Covid era. - The New York Times

“How to survive a loss. First you recalibrate...”

Equipped with a bulletproof vest, some know- how and a touch of irony, two icons of lesbian- feminist theatre use spoken word and movement as a call and response to urgent global predicaments.

Speaking from a microphone about her own narcissistic tendencies, fragile identities and privilege, Peggy Shaw’s poetic musings are interspersed with Lois Weaver’s micro dance essays in which she wryly upends ‘how to’ mania. Solo yet somehow interdependent, more than a hint of Narcissus and Echo emerges onstage.

Last Gasp brings prickly conversations literally to the table in episodes entitled ‘The Trump in Me’ and ‘How to Have the Last Word’, with the duo hitting upon survival strategies for a world collapsing around them.

…The fleet, surprisingly entertaining movie is alternately playful, surreal, pointed and poignant, and its nonlinear scenes incorporate many of Split Britches’ calling cards: autobiography, sly humor, pop-culture references (Bill Withers to Beyoncé) and questioning of gender.  Elizabeth Vincentelli, NYT, Last Gasp WFH

Created in collaboration with Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, Nao Nagai, Vivian Stoll
and Morgan Thorson
Writers and Performers Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw 
Director Lois Weaver 
Visual/Lighting Design Nao Nagai 
Sound/Music Design Vivian Stoll 
Choreography Morgan Thorson
Costumes Susan Young
Design Consultation Matt Delbridge

Presented by rude mechs with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, with additional support from the Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Professor in Drama.