Faith Stories Project

This season, LFL has the opportunity to bring more members of our ensemble than ever to collaborate with Guatemala’s Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe! Our visit this winter was such an inspiring success, and we are making plans for another visit this season!

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on our journey to Guatemala?

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What is the Faith Stories Project?

The objective of the Faith Stories Project and Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe (Faith Stories Theatre Collective) is to empower women in Guatemala and the U.S. by artistically exploring the complexities of how faith affects their lives. It provides a space where women can share their stories and participate in the creation of a collaboratively devised work based on those stories. It allows for mutual support and encouragement, building self-esteem, and creating a sense of community for women of faith in both countries as we struggle to tear down barriers and explore how we are more alike than different.

Recognizing our common human experiences in this way leads us to more fully respecting and appreciating our diverse individual experiences as well. As theatre is so effective at doing, we have the opportunity in this community of artistic collaborators to lift up the universal in the specific and the specific in the universal.

Upcoming Plans

After 18 years of this cross-cultural partnership with a handful of LFL members participating, the goal for 2023-2024 is to make our first visit as a full ensemble, to be in creative community with our compañeras in Guatemala. Click here here for opportunities to help fundraise for this project.

Faith Stories Project History

Faith Stories Project

In 2003, Looking for Lilith’s Co-Artistic Director, Jennifer Thalman Kepler, spent a year living in a rural town on the west coast of Guatemala, through the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA). Using her background in Educational Theatre, Jennifer taught literacy and leadership skills to women in her community—a task that was daunting due to the patriarchal and oppressive nature of the church structure within which she was working. When one of Jennifer’s workshop participants asked her what her job was back in the States, and she explained that she worked for a women’s theatre company that created original plays based on women’s experiences, the woman said, “Well, why don’t you bring them here, and do that with us?”

Jennifer began to think about how she might share her skills and experience in Theatre of the Oppressed work to open a conversation among the Guatemalan women based on two questions: “How does your faith liberate you?” and “How do the structures of your faith oppress you?”

In 2005, 3 artists from Looking for Lilith traveled to Guatemala and worked with over 100 Guatemalan women, both indigenous and Ladina (of European descent), collecting oral histories and creating theatre pieces based on responses to those two questions, which were then shared back with the Guatemalan participants. The women’s response was that seeing their stories performed was incredibly validating, and the project has grown exponentially over the last 18 years, as our Guatemalan sisters have moved from being our students and our audience to being our partners and collaborators. Each step of the process has been prescribed by our Guatemalan sisters.

In 2006, the participants asked to train as actors and perform their own stories, and LFL artists spent two months working with them to build their theatre skills and create scenes based around the two central questions of the project mentioned above. In creating scenes based on these experiences the women were able to reflect on their experiences in a dynamic and collaborative way.

In 2007, the participants asked to learn to more about facilitating and leading their own theatre-based workshops in their communities. LFL artists created and implemented a training program and Spanish language leader’s manual to this end.

In 2008, the women created a 45 min play and performed it publicly for the first time and the audience was riveted!  After the performance, the women reflected on how much they had grown and what an empowering experience it was to perform publicly.

In 2009 and 2010, the participants began a yearly cultural exchange with delegations of women from First Presbyterian Church, Winchester, VA and Fairfax Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA that accompany LFL to Guatemala.

In 2011, they decided that they wanted to use their theatre skills to explore other topics of women’s oppression in their society.  As a first step toward this, together we created and shared a theatre-based workshop on doctor-patient communication with health-care workers in the Mayan community Pacjac.

In 2012, they studied the ways in which systemic economic oppression affects nutrition, and created an interactive piece and workshop on this topic, which was shared with women on public assistance in Pacjac.

Faith Stories Project_PresentationTalkback

In 2013, Looking for Lilith artists, the women from the churches in Virginia and our Guatemala partners spent a week studying the issue of violence against women as it manifests itself in Guatemala. Together we reflected theatrically on our week of study, creating movement pieces that represented our reflections. We also created two scenes - one depicting a situation of domestic violence and the other a home without violence - and worked on creating a workshop around those scenes.

In 2014, our Guatemalan partners made their first visit to the U.S.! Read more about this exceptional collaboration and their visit here. Hot on the heels of the Guatemalans’ first visit here, LFL artists performed UnCaged/Desenjauladas at Walden Theatre, as part of the 3rd Annual Slant Culture Theatre Festival. This short play was a reflection on the previous decade of this groundbreaking collaboration, and how our compañeras discovered their artistic voices by sharing their stories and creating theatre based on their experiences.

 

Beginning in 2014, we also started a partnership with Eastern Area Community Ministries in which LFL artists worked with a group of Latina immigrant women through a Faith Stories project-like process. The women shared stories about their experiences as immigrant women and reflected on them using Applied Theatre techniques from approaches such as Theatre of the Oppressed. They met together monthly over the next few years and in 2017, shared a staged reading of a short play they created based on those experiences at LFL's 15th Anniversary Festival, UnHeard OutLoud, at The Clifton Center.

In 2015 - 2018, our annual trips continued, including more training in acting, devising (collaborative play creation) and facilitation.  The trips also were filled with more sharing of our stories and more building of community, and we continued to create scenes together and plan workshops. Our compañeras created a vision for the next 5 years of the project, which included more LFL artists coming to visit and work with them - hopefully the whole company!

In 2019, LFL artists provided training in publicity, marketing, design and touring logistics, along with continuing with training in acting, playwriting and facilitation. Creative brainstorming around a name for this artistic collective in Guatemala led to Histórias de Fe Colectivo Teatral (Faith Stories Theatre Collective). Plans were made to keep expanding and connecting this work throughout Guatemala.

In early 2023, Jennifer Thalman Kepler returned to Guatemala, with members of First Presbyterian Church of Winchester, after a too-long global pandemic caused separation, to reconnect and be in community once again with our Guatemalan compañeras. Previous plans were re-visited and from them grew new plans for the future. From this trip came the commitment to return to the dream of years past - of having as many of the LFL company members as possible come to Guatemala to experience working with the Histórias de Fe Colectivo Teatral in late 2023 and early 2024.

For more information about how you can participate in the Faith Stories Project, contact Community Outreach Director Jennifer Thalman Kepler at 540-664-8779.


Press 

Arts Louisville, 10/23/14
Courier-Journal
The Winchester Star
American Theatre