Lois Weaver

Lois Weaver co-founded Spiderwoman Theatre, a company comprised of Native American, African American and white working class women who came together to weave stories of domestic violence, personal humour and romantic fantasy into 1970’s feminist theatre. In 1980, with her partner Peggy Shaw, she organized the Women’s One World Festival (later WOW), a women’s performance space in NYC. At the same time she co-founded theatre company Split Britche which created almost a dozen pieces including Little Women, The Tragedy, Lesbians Who Kill and Upwardly Mobile Home, a piece that looked at artists’ survival during the Reagan-Thatcher era and in which Weaver began developing her persona Tammy Whynot, a failed country western singer turned lesbian performance artist. Weaver is now Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary University of London.