Lois Weaver

Weaver was born in Roanoke, Virginia. As a child she began performing with the Mount Pleasant Southern Baptist Church. She graduated with degrees in theatre and education from the all women's college Radford College (later Radford University) in 1972. After graduating Weaver began involved in activism against the Vietnam War, moving to Baltimore to work for a peace and justice center. While in Baltimore, Weaver began working with the Baltimore Free Theatre and was exposed to a range of experimental theatre practices. In the mid 1970s, Weaver moved to New York where she worked in a fish market and in Special Education in public schools while pursuing a performance career.[5]

Weaver's theatre and performance practice spans collaborative and solo work. In 1974 Weaver met Muriel Miguel, who had worked with the Open Theatre, at the Theater for the New City. In 1975 Weaver, with Miguel and Miguel's sisters Lisa Mayo and Gloria Miguel, was a co-founder of feminist theatre company Spiderwoman Theatre, whose members focused on using their own stories to address gender roles, economic realities and violence in women's lives. Weaver helped develop the signature Spiderwoman approach to performance creation which they called 'storyweaving', combining improvisational techniques from the Open Theatre, the Hopi goddess of creation's lessons on weaving, movement, and personal stories.[6][7] While on tour with Spiderwoman in Europe, Weaver and Peggy Shaw met in Amsterdam. Shaw was touring with Hot Peaches throughout Europe.

In 1980 Weaver, along with Peggy Shaw and Deb Margolin, founded Split Britches, an award-winning company who use theatricality to create work that centers on lesbian and queer identities.[8][9] Weaver has had productive collaborative relationships with theatre and performance artists Holly Hughes, Bloolips founded by Bette Bourne,[10] Curious,[11] and Stacy Makishi.[12]

Weaver's work, both in her solo performances and her work with Split Britches, is known for its imaginative use of text and image, which are juxtaposed for both serious and comic ends. She mixes fact and fiction to create ambiguous forms of autobiography.[4]

Weaver's practice has a focus on public engagement, and performance as a means for public dialogue. Weaver was awarded a Wellcome Trust Engaging Science Fellowship to continue this work in 2016.[13] This practice is part of a larger trend in live art toward social engagement, and created a website www.split-britches.com/lois

• She Must Be Seeing Things (1987), as Jo