Lesbian theater troupe Split Britches.
There’s so much cultural anxiety around aging that it takes a certain audacity and pluck to face the issue head-on and write a play about it.
Tammy Weaver is just such a fearless thespian. Last November Split Britches, her thirty-year old theater company, presented What Tammy Needs to Know.
The show stars Tammy WhyNot, an aging trailer-trash character who, along with a chorus of elderly New Yorkers, dashed onto the La Mama stage for a frank investigation.
They discuss with hilarious aplomb what exactly happens in your sex life as you age. With an original musical score including “The Time I Have Wasted in K-Mart” it was a humorous but truthful ride.
Recently I sat down with Tammy Weaver for a brief discussion about the unique process that she used to develop What Tammy Needs to Know.
Do you often collaborate with La MaMa?
We are part of La MaMa family so we work there often. We have been part of the La MaMa family since 1990, doing a lot of our work there. We also work Dixon Place and P.S. 122. La MaMa is our home.
How did you come up with your idea for your for What Tammy Needs to Know?
Well, Tammy is a persona that I developed throughout my performance career. I first developed her in 1978. We [Split Britches] always invent things that come from our own experiences, rather than appropriating other people. So I developed Tammy from that show and then I moved her into a performance that we did in 1984, which was a look at the economy of the artist. Over the last 10 years I guess I have been really working with her as a public facilitator. Because she is sort of a clown, it makes it really easy for people to talk to her. I was getting older — 65 — and started to notice the changes in my body, so started to do a research project about getting old and having sex, which was the basis of What Tammy Needs to Know. I started working with older people to get them talk about their experiences and then perform them through the persona of Tammy. I moved into a retirement home in Zagreb, Croatia for 10 days as Tammy. People came to talk to me about how they were feeling about aging and sexuality.
Did they know you were a character?
Yes they knew I was.
What was the response then like from the show been like?
I worked similarly with several senior center in NYC and end ended up with a company of performers from four different centers. And so they brought their friends.
The most wonderful thing about performing in New York City was the long run, because we had an opportunity to have a much more diverse audience, and also I was able to bring the seniors into the performance.
You do have a core group of six to ten elders that are your backup singers, so you got them from the senior centers then?
Yes. Initially, I set up three weeks in which I would go into [the senior centers] once a week after lunch. Anybody who wanted to come and talk to me about getting older and having sex would come speak with me. I saw that people came back – it wasn’t so they could participate in my show, they just liked the conversation. Some of them did end up performing with me. I had 15 older people on stage every night with me.
What’s your plans for the piece in the future?
I am doing versions of it in London because I teach in London for six months from January to July. I will also work with local singers. Of course I want everybody [New York back up singers] to come, but that is financially and physically impossible. My fantasy would be on tour with some of them. We have potential to go to a festival up in Massachusetts in the summer and the NYC group of people will definitely want to do that.
One of my ultimate plans after this run is to develop a What Tammy Needs To Know is a YouTube channel so that people can go on and see the aspects of the work, as well as conversations with health professionals, etc.. It would be a kind of site for people to go to and find out information about issues around aging and sexuality, and also just issues around aging.