Detonating Desire

Abstract

Benjamin Gillespie’s ‘Detonating Desire: Mining the unexplored potential of ageing in Split Britches’ Unexploded Ordnances (UXO)’ investigates the ways in which Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver redefine the disaster narrative central to Stanley Kubrick’s cult classic, Dr. Stangelove, by foregrounding older generations onstage in their most recently devised performance piece, Unexploded Ordnances (UXO). First staged at the Under the Radar festival in New York in January 2018 following a series of intergenerational workshops and residencies, UXO was developed around a radical public engagement protocol titled the ‘Situation Room’—part of a longer series of ‘Public Address Systems’ devised by Weaver that create alternative spaces for hospitable public discussion among audiences in ways that are accessible, egalitarian and democratic. Drawing directly upon the film’s doomsday scenario, the performance is centered around the evocative metaphor of UXO—buried munitions that can sporadically detonate—in a provocative conceptual framework that ties together the anxieties of the contemporary political moment with worries surrounding advancing age. This article details Split Britches’ participatory model within the context of their four-decade performance history, ultimately showing how the piece challenges popular tropes of ageing that are destructive and declinist with more creative and desirable solutions. Ensuring (quite literally) that elders have a seat at the table to strategize for an improved present and future, the performance subverts the cultural view that older people are disconnected and disengaged from current social and political debates by having elders act against these stereotypes themselves through the imperative of performance, thus reversing the tendency to privilege more youthful voices in contemporary theatre.

Notes

1 I use ‘hot-lines’ here to call attention to the marketing materials for the original film that dubbed it ‘a hot-line suspense comedy’.

2 UXO functions as both an abbreviated title for the production and an abbreviation for the term ‘unexploded ordnance’. Throughout the rest of the essay, I use UXO in reference to the title of the piece.

3 An explanation of these Public Engagement Systems is available on Split Britches’ website at http://bit.ly/2OVvqH4

4 All references to the performance text come from the unpublished manuscript of Unexploded Ordnances (UXO).

5 Thanks to Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw for generously sharing their thoughts on the performance in an interview I conducted at La MaMa on 15 December 2017 (Gillespie 2017).

6 The Under the Radar Festival is recognized as one of the landmark festivals of new and cutting-edge performance in New York City, providing enhanced visibility to contemporary theatre artists from across the globe. It is significant that Split Britches had a major production in the festival as it is often focused on the younger generation of experimental artists.

7 For more on the Bealtaine Festival, see http://bealtaine.ie

8 The #metoo movement provided a public platform for speaking out against acts of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Although it was founded in 2006, the movement grew in numbers and attention through the sexual misconduct allegations brought against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in the entertainment industry. Additionally, Donald Trump’s lewd comments about women that surfaced just prior to his election outraged many and resulted in massive rallies and demonstrations across the country, bringing assault and harassment to the foreground of the election.

9 Age Studies (in the United Kingdom, Ageing Studies), Critical Age Studies and Critical Gerontology bring together various disciplines in academic discourse focused on the impact of ageing and old age socially, culturally and psychologically.

10 Split Britches created video diaries during their residency on Governors Island and these can be found on Vimeo: https:// vimeo.com/182212467