2014-2015 Season Brings Works by Kentucky Natives!
For our 14th season, Looking for Lilith Theatre Company is excited to announce that we will produce work by two award-winning KY women playwrights, as well as creating and presenting original LFL pieces. As always, our productions will explore historical and current issues of relevance to women and our community at large, living into LFL’s mission to “examine history and interrogate today from women’s experiences, frequently lifting up unheard or under-heard voices”, while doing so in some new and unexpected ways this season. In addition to our performances, we will continue and expand our outreach programming, including our many after school Drama Clubs at area schools and a residency this fall with the young women at Boys’ and Girls’ Haven through a KFW Arts Meets Activism Grant.
We kick off our fall with limited engagement runs of two of our long-term projects. Our touring show CHOICES: An Interactive Play on Cyberbullying and Suicide will have a weekend of rare public performances in September. In late Fall, at the Slant Culture Theatre Festival, we will share Uncaged Desenjauladas, based on our current work with a group of women in Guatemala, with whom we have been working since 2004. This October, with funding from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, some of our Guatemalan partners will be coming for a visit to the U.S. Using their visit as a catalyst, we will create a short play, incorporating what we have created together over the last 10 years and new scenes from this visit; exploring topics such as the struggle for female leadership in faith communities, health justice, and domestic violence.
Next, Looking for Lilith brings As It Is In Heaven, Arlene Hutton’s elegant exploration of Kentucky’s Shaker sect, to the stage with its signature integration of music and movement into this closely-researched script. Set in Harrodsburg Kentucky’s Pleasant Hill during the 1830’s revival period, Hutton’s script focuses on nine women, including a handful of newcomers to the community who have ecstatic experiences, claiming to see angels. “Hutton asks some universal questions about the nature of community and belief that are timeless. . .” states American Theatre. The Herald says the play is ” …powerful and insightful…a thought-provoking piece, the message being that often we need not look as far as heaven to see angels here on earth…” LFL produces this play as a tribute to a fascinating time in Kentucky’s history seen through the eyes of a particular group of women. As the playwright herself says, “This production means a lot to me — celebrating Women’s History Month, being produced at Looking for Lilith and bringing my Shaker characters back to Kentucky.” As It Is In Heaven will run February 26-March 7 at the Black Box Theater in the Wyatt Center for the Arts at Bellarmine University.
LFL’s Spring show is Sidewinders, by Louisville native Basil Kreimendahl. Sidewinders pays homage to the Theatre of the Absurd, with clear derivations from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, and can claim a place in the nascent Transgender Rights Movement. It premiered at San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater in October, 2013 where they described it thusly – “In this absurdist-Western romp through gender queerness, Dakota and Bailey are new friends who find themselves lost, possibly upside down, on a vast frontier. Their journey to getting right side up provokes questions of sex anatomy, transgenderism, and who we really are from the inside out.” LFL Artistic Director Shannon Leigh Woolley says, “I think transgender issues are one of the most important and relevant under-heard voices in our society right now, and I think the framework of a “Western” is a really innovative way of exploring the issues with a sprinkle of the ridiculous. Westerns have so much emphasis on archetypes, and this script uses two characters who are simultaneously archetypal “cowpokes,” while defying gender archetypes.” Sidewinders was the winner of the 2013 Rella Lossy Award for playwriting. This show will run May 14-23 at OPEN, a new gallery located at 2801 S Floyd St, Suite 100.
Our original work this season will center on the creation of a new play dealing with local environmental issues, to be produced in Fall of 2015. With partial funding from Alternate ROOTS and Metro Council Louisville, we will be researching and devising our newest play throughout the season, in preparation for the GLI’s Arts and Cultural Attractions Network’s year long initiative, YESFest in 2015. This Festival will be a celebration of the region’s dynamic arts and cultural organizations united, exploring these important issues. LFL’s play development will focus on environmental issues in our community and paying tribute to Rachel Carson and other women environmental activists. During the spring of 2015 community members will have the opportunity to participate in workshops that will explore area environmental issues through theatre devising techniques. This production will open LFL’s 2015-2016 season in the fall of ’15.
Tickets are $18 for adults, $15 for students and seniors, with group rates available. Call 502-638-2559 for Reservation information, or purchase through our website. For more information about Looking for Lilith’s original productions, previous seasons, and extensive outreach programming – including in Guatemala – go to www.lookingforlilith.org
VIEW PHOTOS AND READ REVIEWS OF LFL’s 2013-14 SEASON PRODUCTIONS