Tammy WhyNot is a 63 year-old trailer trash blonde who became a famous country and western singer then gave it all up to pursue a career as a contemporary performance artist. In 1997 Tammy became a researcher and applied her courage and curiosity to hot topics such as education and class; high art and popular culture; performance and human rights; and feminism and femininity. In her newest project, What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex, Tammy brings her methods of inquiry to those taboo subjects of age and sex. Prior to the festival, she will be conducting Tammy in the House residences in local senior homes and care centres in Zagreb. During these two weeks, Tammy will do some porch sitting - just sitting and talking about how we feel about sex as we get older. She will conduct some Find Your Inner Diva workshops that will culminate in a collection of Do I look Sexy in This? portraits. She will do some talent scouting for local performers between the ages of 65 and 95 who might be willing to come onstage with Tammy and bring their sexy back and consult with local sexual health professional who might be willing to provide some helpful insight on her core questions: What is it like to get old? What is it like to have sex? What is it like to get old and have sex? Then Tammy will bring all the information that she has gathered and friends that she has made to the Extravagant Age Festival where she will fulfil her dream of launching her own Tammy Talk Show and You Tube channel- What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex. The show will include: a few songs by Tammy, interviews with the sexually active of a certain age, displays of local elder talent, slide shows of sexy senior divas, an on-call professional to answer all our questions and some fun and revealing audience interaction. What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sexwas originally commissioned by the Chelsea Theatre, London, 2008.
What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having SexLois Weaver (UK)
performance, 2008
Lois Weaver (UK)
Lois Weaver is an independent performance artist and activist and Professor of Contemporary Performance Practice, Department of Drama, Queen Mary, University of London. She was co-founder of WOW Theatre in New York and has been a collaborator with the Split Britches Company since 1980. She was Director of PSi12: Performing Rights, an international conference and festival on performance and human rights in 2006 and is currently Artistic Director for Air Project, an initiative that nurtures and sustains live art practitioners in the UK. Her practice-based research uses performance to initiate conversations on human rights in women’s prisons with the project Staging Human Rights; technology design with Democratising Technology; and the role of democracy in public engagement with The Long Table. Tammy WhyNot has accompanied Lois since 1978 as her alter-ego, performance partner and research associate.
Tammy Whynot was conceived in The LysistrataNumbah created and performed by Spiderwoman Theatre in 1978 and born again in a caravan under the Brooklyn Bridge in a show called Upwardly Mobile Home written and performed by the Split Britches Theatre Company in 1984. She got her start in show business in the late eighties as a solo artist on the New York downtown performance scene appearing at WOW, PS122, The Club at La MAMA and the Limbo Lounge. She made her first international appearance as mistress of ceremonies for Club Girrls at the ICA in 1994. After that she toured the UK with cLUBbENT, presented in association with It’s Queer Up North and Gay Sweatshop. Her celebrated London appearances include, Saturday nights at Duckies, Club Deviance at the Almeida Theatre and Tammy Whynot’s X-rated Xmas Xtravaganza at the Oval House and Tammy’s Art and Beauty Salon and East End Collaborations at Queen Mary, University of London. She has performed in Helsinki, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Rio de Janeiro, NYC, Los Angeles and London.
