To have your soul shaken up, your panties rocked and to experience art in action, please let me introduce PeggyShaw and Lois Weaver. I'm excited to share one of my first Trailer Talks, "Junkyard Cabaret" at the Roxbury Arts Center in Delaware County, NY. It was a gorgeous July day in 2003, and I shared the evening with my friends and mentors as the little Bee Line got her talking feet.

You can listen to the audio program here.

Artel: Hi, Peggy. Could you share with us: what is junk? And how does it intersect with class, female identify and queerness? And why this Junkyard Cabaret?

Shaw: First of all, I'm going to try not to use the word "old" or "vintage," especially when it comes to describing myself, since I'm older than this 1965 trailer, in fact. I graduated from high school in 1961, so there you go. I think junk is an aesthetic that, when that's all one has, that's what you use. And you create from it, and you fill the space with new things that you make, and that's what I've done my whole life.

Artel: So, what about this idea of women and things that have been discarded?

Shaw: I am often described as masculine. However, I believe that I'm feminine in that I think femininity has to do with details sometimes, and an awareness of a lot of things going on at the same time, and using what you have at your hands, and making beauty from it. And that's an aesthetic that Lois and I have used even before each of us met. Lois was with Spiderwoman Theater and I was with Hot Peaches.

Artel: This brings us to this idea of class...

Shaw: I think a lot of people describe art and aesthetics and life as a progression. And I think of life as, hopefully, something that just goes on everyday. I never think that I want to get better. I don't. I have always liked trailers. I have never wanted to remove them from my neighborhood. I have always found that they describe my life a lot, which is mobile, which has to do with not having to settle in one place... maybe you could move to another place... accepting people for who they are, making the neighborhood be diversified, so that there are all kinds of people living there, and I know a lot of gentrification and a lot of class issues arise even with laundry, trailers, garbage, junk.

Artel: Your show To My Chagrin addresses memory and cars and this history that you've had traveling in these automobiles.

Shaw: Because cars, all of a sudden, cars are evil, and there are a lot of politically correct things you're supposed to say about cars or SUVs or gasoline. But I have a very deep love of cars from being working class, from shining them, actually saving up for them for years and years, from getting them from my uncle, helping me to save cars. I love old cars, I like the smell of them... and I think of them as art, old cars. New cars, I have a problem with because I find that they just get thrown away. They're not recycled. You can't open the engine and look in, find the carburetor and fix it anymore.

Artel: And you're also talking about your relationship with your grandson.

Shaw: Yes. I'm white and butch, and he's Jamaican and dark and my grandson. And I am responsible a lot for his well-being, and he spends a lot of time with me, and I constantly have to deal with my own racism and my ownpassing on of the information that I've learned about being masculine or about being in the world to a dual-heritage,mixed-raced grandson. So, the show is basically me dealing with my own racism, classism, homophobia and misogyny. Those things that we all are, including myself.
Lois and Peggy are currently rehearsing their new show, Miss America, which opens in June 2008 at La Mama in NYC.