Peggy Shaw has performed consistently with Lois Weaver as the group Split Britches since 1980, consistently making waves with their bold and experimental theatrical productions in New York City.

When we think of who is doing the work to expand, unravel, and explore notions of aging – Peggy Shaw has to come to mind, with her butch aesthetic and ethos, and boundary-crossing sensibility.

Since her 1999 production A Menopausal Gentleman, Shaw has brought aging into her work. In 2011, she suffered a stroke, addressing the after-effects in a solo performance – “Ruff unpacks Shaw’s ageing, lesbian body, exploring issues of memory, personal response to extreme circumstance and the place of the imagination in the neuroscience of memory loss and structural damage.”

Kathleen Woodward asks “How have older women artists performed age?” (p. 163), and there’s an interesting pivot in Shaw’s work, against the grain of traditional femininity, as well as the politicized expectations of life as an older butch. In terms of someone who has stepped outside of the gender binary a long time ago, Shaw’s work brings a refreshing set of answers (and of course, further questions) to challenge the audience, and explore the unique masculinity of aging.

References

Woodward, K. (2006). Performing Age, Performing Gender. NWSA Journal, 18(1), 162-189. Retrieved January 31, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4317191