Lois Weaver is Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice at Queen Mary University of London and an independent artist, director and activist. She was co-founder of Spiderwoman Theatre, WOW Theatre and Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop Theatre in London. She has been a writer, director and performer with Peggy Shaw and Split Britches since 1980. In 2002-03 she was involved in Staging Human Rights, an initiative that used performance to explore human rights in women’s prisons in Brazil and the UK and in 2005 became Artistic Director for Performing Rights, an international festival on the themes of performance and human rights held in London, Vienna and Glasgow. Her experiments in performance as a means of public engagement include the development of the Long Table, the Library of Performing Rights, the FeMUSEm and her facilitating persona, Tammy WhyNot. Lois tours with What Tammy Needs To Know.. and What Tammy Found Out and the latest Split Britches collaboration, Lost Lounge.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8 AT 6-9PM
'Long Table' Discussion on Social Justice & Performance
Snacks & Drinks Reception for Stanford faculty/students: 6-7pm
Discussion: 7-9pm
Nitery Theater in the Old Union | This Event is Free & Open to the Public
The 'Long Table' format, invented by performer/professor Lois Weaver, is a means of generating open discussion about a specified topic, using a stylised environment and participation protocol to turn ordinary conversation into a performance.
The approach is inspired by the film Antonia’s Line by Maureen Gorris. In this film a woman returns to the Dutch countryside to raise her young daughter and founds a communal house where the residents defy convention and live life as they please. The central image of the film is a dinner table that grows longer and longer as this family of friends, outsiders and eccentrics gets bigger and bigger. Eventually, the table becomes so long it has to be brought outside into the yard.
'The Long Table' experiments with participation and public engagement by re-appropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum and encouraging informal conversation on serious topics. This Long Table will be on Performance and Social Justice.
FRIDAY, november 9 - friday, november 15, 2012
'"Locating the Desire to Act" Workshop with Lois Weaver
11/9 at 1-7pm; 11/10 at 10am-4pm; 11/13 at 7-9pm
Workshop Showing on 11/15 at 6:30-9pm
Nitery Theater in the Old Union
Workshop Open to Students | RSVP to [email protected] Required
Inspired by the belief that if you can imagine something, you can make it and if you can make it, you can make it change, Locating the Desire to Act is a stand-up and hands-on workshop that explores the creative opportunities generated at the intersection of performance and activism. It is an intensive workshop on making independent socially engaged performance and performance interventions through a collaborative community process. It consists of 2 full-day workshops followed by individual process meetings and a public showing/presentation.
This workshop is open to anyone- whether a performer, an activist or neither. It will provide an open environment for exploration in which participants will be encouraged to locate their desire for change, to push past the issues they feel they should engage in and to find the ones with which they want to work. They will be led though a series of performance techniques that will provide tools for imaging and making an active response to their issue. Participants will then explore the vocabulary of horizontal organizing strategies associated with the Occupy movement in order to build community frameworks and support structures for making the work happen. The workshop will finally locate their desire to act in a public gathering. No longer a workshop but a working group, the participants will organize a showing of the performances designed for that event, documentation of performance interventions that took place prior to the event and/or provocations for future acts.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15 AT 7:30-9PM
Showing of Work Created in the "Locating the Desire to Act" Workshop
Snacks & Drinks Reception for Stanford faculty/students: 6:30-7:30pm
Performance & Discussion: 7:30-9pm
Nitery Theater in the Old Union | Free & Open to the Public
A public showing of work created during the "Locating the Desire to Act" workshop, directed by Lois Weaver. This event is free and open to the public. The 7:30pm showing is preceeded by a reception at 6:30pm, and followed by a discussion.
