THE SITUATION ROOM

Lois Weaver

Presented at:

Wellcome Collection as part of Care and Destruction 2019.

The Situation Room is a format for public discussion created by Lois Weaver that combines theatricality and informal conversation and encourages us to think about the interdependencies of anxiety and desire.

Inspired by the War Room in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, members of the audience will be invited to form a Council determined by loosely held affinities: a Council of Elders, an Intergenerational Council, a Council of Queers or Intersectional Feminists; a Council of Agnostics or A-politicals. They are invited to the table, moderated by a ‘President’ and monitored by the ‘General’ (who reminds us we are ‘running out of time’) to share what is worrying them, from the personal to the geopolitical. To discuss, listen, and then reach a consensus on a single topic of conversation - the ‘Situation’, and finally to consider their desires, ambitions and fantasies as playful and creative solutions to the issue at hand.

Bio: 
Lois Weaver is an artist, activist and professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary, University of London and a Wellcome Trust Engaging Science Fellow. She co-founded Spiderwoman Theater, WOW, was Artistic Director of Gay Sweatshop in London, and co-founded Split Britches and has collaborated with Peggy Shaw since 1980.  Recent works include Unexploded Ordnances (2016-18); What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex (2013) and RUFF (2012);  Her experiments in public engagement include the Long Table, Porch Sitting, Care Café, and her persona, Tammy WhyNot who facilitates a YouTube channel for the over 55’s.  Lois’s performance practice is documented in The Only Way Home Is Through The Show: Performance Works of Lois Weaver, edited by Lois Weaver and Jen Harvie, published in 2015. Lois was named a Senior Fellow by the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in 2014 and is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow.

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