Maureen "Moe" Angelos is an American theater artist, playwright, and performer known for her work in theater and her contributions to collaborative performance art. She is a member of the

Obie Award The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theater artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after th ...

-winning theatre company

The Builders Association Marianne Weems is the artistic director of the New York-based Obie Award-winning performance and media company, The Builders Association, founded in 1994. She is a director of theater and opera and a professor at UC Santa Cruz. Early life and e ...

and a co-founder of the Obie Award-winning company, The Five Lesbian Brothers.

Early career and WOW Café Theater

Angelos began her theater career in the early 1980s, joining the WOW Café Theatre in 1981. WOW Café is a feminist theater collective in New York City known for fostering avant-garde and experimental performances. Angelos continues to be an active member of the WOW community.

The Five Lesbian Brothers

In 1988, Angelos co-founded The Five Lesbian Brothers, the

winning theater company that created works exploring feminist and queer themes. The group has written and performed six plays, including ''The Secretaries'', ''Oedipus at Palm Springs'', and ''Brave Smiles... Another Lesbian Tragedy'', two of which were staged at the

New York Theatre Workshop __NOTOC__ New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW) is an Off-Broadway theater noted for its productions of new works. Located at 79 East 4th Street between Second Avenue and Bowery in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it h ...

. Their innovative approach to storytelling earned them an Obie Award for their significant contributions to theater. The Brothers members include Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey, and

Lisa Kron Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron (born May 20, 1961) is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book for the musical '' Fun Home'', for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Awar ...

. In 1997 their book, ''The Five Lesbian Brothers' Guide to Life: A Collection of Helpful Hints and Fabricated Facts for Today's Gay Girl'', was published by

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

The Builders Association

Angelos has been a core member of

, a New York City-based theater company, since 2000. Known for integrating media and technology into live performance, Angelos has contributed as both a writer and performer to many of the Builders' critically acclaimed productions, including ''Sontag: Reborn'' for which she wrote and performed "a spellbinding X-ray of a writer’s psyche," a theatrical adaptation of

Susan Sontag Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...

's early journals to trace Sontag's private life from the age of 14 to her emergence as an author and activist. ''Elements of Oz'' is a mash-up of performance, tech, and pop culture that moves through the landscapes of Oz from the surreal novel, to dark conspiracy theories, to the making of the iconic film, in which she plays the equally iconic

Glinda Glinda is a fictional character created by L. Frank Baum for his ''Oz'' novels. She first appears in Baum's 1900 children's classic ''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'', and is the most powerful sorceress in the Land of Oz, ruler of the Quadling Coun ...

. Angelos' work with The Builders Association company has toured in the US and abroad .

Ongoing career

Angelos has worked with Toronto-based FADO Performance Art Centre, creating Book Club performances in 2019, blending literature and live art. In 2019 she presented "This Used to Be Gay!: The Moe Angelos East Village Walking Tour" at Queer, Art that offers live memoir of the "gay-borhood's" many changes over the years. Collaborating with Canadian visual artist Hazel Meyer, Angelos performed in projects such as ''Weeping Concrete'' (2022) and ''The Marble in the Basement''. In a collaboration with Rachel Hauck, she co-created "Guzzle 'n' Puzzle" at the 2023 Rhubarb Festival at

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Buddies in Bad Times Theatre is a Canadian professional theatre company. Based in Toronto, Ontario, and founded in 1978 by Matt Walsh, Jerry Ciccoritti, and Sky Gilbert, ''Buddies in Bad Times'' is dedicated to "the promotion of queer theatrical ex ...

, an interactive lounge inviting audiences into an experience with multi-disciplinary artist Melissa Levin's infamous puzzle collection. In film, Angelos stars in ''Landfill'' (2024) portraying Alice, an elder butch dyke navigating terminal illness and legacy. Written and directed by Jess Lee, ''Landfill'' is based on Anna Leventhal's short story, "Sweet Affliction".

References

External links

The Five Lesbian Brothers

The Builders Association

Wow Café Theater
Living people American dramatists and playwrights {{Improve categories, date=January 2025