Split Britches is an American performance troupe, which has been producing work internationally since 1980. Academic Sue Ellen Case says "their work has defined the issues and terms of academic writing on lesbian theater, butch-femme role playing, feminist mimesis, and the spectacle of desire". In New York City Split Britches have long standing relationships with La Mama Experimental Theatre Company, where they are a resident company, Wow Café, which Weaver and Shaw co-founded, and Dixon Place. Founding Split Britches was founded by Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, and Deb Margolin in New York City in 1980. Shaw and Weaver met in Europe when Weaver was touring with Spiderwoman Theater and Shaw with Hot Peaches. The company started while Weaver and Shaw were performing in Spiderwoman Theater's performance of "An Evening of Disgusting Songs and Pukey Images”. This was the first time Spiderwoman had presented lesbian content and introduced Peggy as a Spiderwoman performer. During this time in the summer of 1980, Weaver began to write a performance about her 2 aunts and great aunt in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia called Split Britches, The True Story. Split britches is a reference to the type of pants women wore while working in the fields, which allowed them to urinate without stopping work. The name of the company has been said to mimic the “split pants” of poverty and comedy. The performance was originally developed with Spiderwoman performers and was performed at the first WOW (Women's One World) Festival, founded by Shaw and Weaver, in 1980. Following a subsequent run of the performance in 1981, Weaver and Shaw decided to leave Spiderwoman, and one of the Spiderwoman performers they had been working with declined to continue with them. This led them to ask Margolin, who was a writer, to assist with writing the script, and Margolin became a part of the company for many years. The final version of Split Britches was performed at the Boston Women’s Festival in Spring of 1981 and at the Second WOW festival in Fall of 1981. The script was first published in Women & Performance, and premiered on public television in 1988, directed and produced by Mathew Geller in association with WGBH/WNET Television and the NYFA ‘Artists New Works Program'. Early on in the company determined they would not spend time trying to apply for grants to support their performances, and would instead work outside of