the brothers & WOW
The Five Lesbian Brothers is a lesbian theatre troupe that performed together through the 1990s and early 2000s.
Left to right: Lisa Kron, Peg Healey, Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, and Domonique Dibbell
The Brothers originally met and performed together at the WOW Cafe Theater.
The WOW Cafe Theater is a women's theatre collective in New York City that still produces work today. WOW (Women's One World) originated as an international theatre festival, which occurred in the fall of 1980 and 1981. The theatre festival was started by Pamela Camhe, Jordy Mark, Peggy Shaw, and Lois Weaver. The festival then transitioned into a year-round performance venue.
Shaw and Weaver were also two of the founding members (alongside Deb Margolin) of Split Britches (1980), another iconic, lesbian performance troupe that came out of WOW.
Click here to go to the Split Britches website.
Left to right: Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, Deb Margolin
You can find videos of Split Britches performances through the Hemispheric Institute here.
WOW is run as a collective, meaning that there is no central governing body or artistic director(s). All active members have a voice. The collective thrives on the concept of "sweat equity," meaning: "If you work on my show, I'll work on yours."
Attending the open, weekly meetings is the only requirement to become a member and have a vote in the choices the collective makes and how it operates.
WOW was created for women, especially lesbian women, and has increasingly included women of color and trans people.
"We're a club for the politically incorrect, for people who don't fit in anywhere else, people wandering around here because they have nowhere else to go." -Peggy Shaw on WOW
The Five Lesbian Brothers formed in 1989. They wrote and performed five plays together: Voyage to Lesbos (1990), Brave Smiles (1992), The Secretaries (1994), Brides of the Moon (1996), and Oedipus at Palm Springs (2006).
The Brothers in The Secretaries. From left to right: Peaches (Lisa Kron), Dawn (Maureen Angelos), Susan (Peg Healey), Patty (Dominique Dibbell), and Ashley (Babs Davy).
"I was working at a law firm on the graveyard shift. I would write scenes at work or try to finish the program. I was drawing little pictures of each performer, and I just labeled the drawings the Five Brothers. When we do our writing sessions or our rehearsal sessions, we do all these physical exercises and act like a circus company. We were starting to fee that we had this bond, which was like a brotherhood. Since gender was up for grabs, 'brotherhood' made sense somehow."
-Dominique Dibbell on the origin of the Brothers' name
According to the Brothers, one of the primary sources of inspiration for The Secretaries was the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. After watching the film version of the show, the Brothers were appalled by the misogyny and "glorification of rape" in the story. From there, they experimented with the idea of a group of male lumberjacks, which eventually transitioned to a group of secretaries who work at a lumber mill.
The subject material--from the violence to the addressing of body image issues to the acknowledgement of how cruel women can be the other women--made this a controversial work for the Brothers. Dibbell recalls that "The Secretaries gave [the Brothers] their first walkouts." Men especially considered the play to be "anti-male," too distracted by the violence to consider the meaning behind it.
The Secretaries was performed Off-Broadway (New York Theatre Workshops) and was one of the Brothers' most successful plays.
Sources
Angelos, Maureen, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and Lisa Kron. The Secretaries. Samuel French, 2010.
Davy, Kate. Lady Dicks and Lesbian Brothers: Staging the Unimaginable at the WOW Cafe Theatre. University of Michigan Press, 2011
Hughes, Holly, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jill Dolan, editors. Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Cafe Theatre. University of Michigan, 2015.
“WOW Cafe Theater.” WOW Cafe. Last accessed February 7, 2025. https://www.wowcafe.org/.