New York based Lois Weaver from lesbian legendary duo Split Britches has teamed up with GCN to present Eldering: The Long Table at the Outburst Queer Arts Festival in Belfast. In this free-entry event taking place on Friday, November 18, we will explore and celebrate “queer ageing” and solidarity among different generations of LGBTQ+ people.
The event will look at how, for the first time in our communal experiences as LGBTQ+ people, we have living ‘generations’ who are decades apart in age and have lived and are still living openly queer lives.
To do so, it will take the form of one of Lois’s famous ‘Long Tables’, inspired by Marleen Gorris’s film Antonia’s Line. Just like the protagonist does in the film, this Long Table will invite people to a “dinner party”, where conversation is the only course.
Audience members that wish to be part of this will be able to take a seat at the table and everyone will have equal power to shift the direction of the conversation, mediate moments of tension and make space for voices that are less frequently heard.
The aim is to involve as many older and younger queer people and artists as possible in the conversation, using a combination of theatricality and models of public engagement. The event will be a hybrid in-person and online event held at the Black Box in Belfast. It will also be live-streamed via Outburst’s Facebook and GCN’s Facebook from 8pm for people who won’t be able to attend in person.
In addition to hosting Eldering, Lois will join the other half of Split Britches, Peggy Shaw to share their latest show Last Gasp at the closing night of the Outburst Queer Arts Festival.
The duo has been making radical theatre and performance with a feminist ethic for over 40 years now and this latest show sets out to analyse “demise” in different forms: the demise of aging bodies, civil conversation and a sustainable planet.
Book your ticket for Elderly: The Long Table at Outburst Queer Arts Festival through this link.
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