Louisville-centric productions highlight 2015-2016 Season
LFL Company grows to 14 members in time
for our 14th birthday!
Looking for Lilith Theatre Company is excited to announce another ambitious genre-spanning season. Including our brand new community-based original work, a venerable Louisville native's writing, and a genre- and gender-bending script from one of this country's most exciting women playwrights, LFL's mainstage season offers something for everyone. Each of our productions will explore unheard voices, spanning geography and time, asking audiences to reflect on their own life journeys through the experiences of an eclectic group of characters.
We kick off our fall with our newest original Looking for Lilith created play, Prevailing Winds, which we have been researching and devising throughout the past year and a half. It will be produced November 5-15, 2015 at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. It is LFL's contribution to the ACA YES! Fest — A Year of Environment and Sustainability, a year-long celebration of the region's dynamic arts and cultural organizations united, exploring these important issues. Our new play is focused on environmental issues in relation to Rubbertown and its surrounding communities, as well as how race and class have played into the Louisville community's dialogue and action around these issues. Says Company Member Jill Marie Schierbaum, who was part of the devising team, “This play is important to me. I grew up in this part of the county. It tells part of my story.” As part of our commitment to community involvement and partnerships, this production is co-sponsored by Louisville Repertory Company. LFL has received partial funding from Alternate ROOTS, Louisville Metro Council, Arts and Cultural Attractions Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women in support of the research, devising, and production of our ninth original work.
Looking for Lilith’s 2016 March Women’s History Month production will be Sara Ruhl's Orlando. Pulitzer-nominated playwright Sarah Ruhl brings her imagistic writing to an inspired adaptation of Virginia Woolf's time-shifting, gender-bending novel Orlando. A literary love-letter to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf follows the character of Orlando across four centuries and several continents: “A woman plays a man. That man wakes up after a long slumber to discover he is a woman...a magnificent celebration of transcending as well as trans-gending." (The Daily Telegraph) Fully embracing the theatrical potential of Woolf's sprawling novel, Ruhl captures the wonder, inconceivability and sheer audacity of Orlando's epic journey, beautifully illustrating Woolf's notions of the fluidity of gender and identity, and the great mysteries of time. "Ruhl's poetically spare style dovetails with Woolf's prose and enhances the velocity of the novel while highlighting the still moments of contemplation within its momentum." (SFGate) "...Admirers of Woolf and Ruhl will be very happy with this [play], as will anybody looking for a good time, lots of laughter, and something to think about." (Examiner.com) LFL Co-Artistic Director Kathi E.B. Ellis is delighted to be directing another Ruhl play, “especially one that lifts up an early feminist writer, one who asks us to re-examine our relationship to history and gender. It's a perfect Women's History Month journey for Lilith.”
Getting Out, the first play written by the nationally-acclaimed award-winning Kentucky native Marsha Norman, which premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 1977, closes out LFL's season in May. Recently-released from prison, "Arlene" moves into a one-room apartment in Louisville, KY, prepared to start her life over. “Marsha Norman's first attention-grabbing work...has one leading character played by two actresses...Arlene [has] been released as a 'good prospect for integration into the social community' after serving eight years for second-degree murder, [and] works through the intrusive memory of her criminal past (personified by Arlie) [in] the first 24 hours after Arlene's release from a prison in Alabama.”(New York Times). Looking for Lilith is excited that by producing this show in 2016, we can help celebrate Marsha Norman's upcoming 70th birthday and recognize her decades of accomplishments. Her multiple awards include a Tony award, a Pulitzer prize, and most recently, the William Inge Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award. LFL Co-Artistic Director Shannon Woolley Allison is happy to be directing this important work by one of Louisville's favorite playwrights and says "Recent conversations in our nation about the prison industrial complex, generational poverty, rates of recidivism, and the possibility of restorative justice, make it a rich time to revisit this piece, particularly through the lens of a formerly incarcerated woman."
Once again, Looking for Lilith will offer pre-season flex passes, $50 for three shows if purchased by September 1. Individual ticket pricing can be found on our website. We will also continue our commitment to affordably-priced theatre through our Monday Community Night performances at which all tickets are $10.
In addition to our performances, we will continue to expand our outreach programming, under the leadership of Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Thalman Kepler, including our many after school Drama programs, work with the Latina Women's Group of the EACM, our work with our colleagues in Guatemala, expanding our new partnership with Athena's Sisters (a unique organization run by and for military women for physical and mental health care access and education), and touring of CHOICES: An Interactive Play on Cyberbullying and Suicide, with school performances subsidized in part by Louisville Metro Council. Many of our original productions are available for touring to performing arts centers, colleges and universities, community groups, schools and libraries.
LFL also announces the addition of two new company members, Lindsay Chamberlin and Jill Marie Schierbaum, bringing the ensemble to fourteen artists just in time for our upcoming 14th birthday as a company! Both Chamberlin and Schierbaum are designers whose work has been seen on the Lilith stage in recent seasons. Additionally, LFL announces that its four staff members will be assuming the titles of Co-Artistic Directors, reflecting the shared vision and work that is actually happening on a day-to-day basis. Founding member and Co-Artistic Director Trina Fischer says, "I am proud to have been a part of such an extraordinary ensemble since its birth. And this hard-working creative staff has stewarded the company and its artistic vision through the years so it feels right to be making this natural shift in titles to reflect the way we really work."
For more information about Looking for Lilith’s original productions, touring productions, previous seasons, and extensive outreach programming – including in Guatemala – go to www.lookingforlilith.org.
LOOKING FOR LILITH THEATRE COMPANY is a Louisville, KY based not-for-profit, ensemble theatre company, founded in New York City in 2001 by Shannon Woolley Allison and Trina Fischer, both Louisville, Kentucky natives, along with Jennifer Thalman Kepler of Winchester, VA. The mission of this company is to present plays that re-examine history and question today through women’s perspectives, mainly via the collaborative creation of original theatre based on research. The company has grown to include Kathi E. B. Ellis, Sara G. B. Canary, Typh Hainer Merwarth, Kelly McNerney, Holly Stone, and Dawn Schulz with associate company members Karole Spangler, Laura Ellis, Ebony Jordan, Jill Marie Schierbaum and Lindsay Chamberlin. LFL is on the touring rosters of the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Center for the Arts and Alternate ROOTS. They are members of Theatre Alliance of Louisville, Kentucky Theatre Association, The American Alliance for Theatre and Education, Alternate ROOTS and the Network of Ensemble Theatres. LFL received the 2010 Karen Willis Award from the Kentucky Theatre Association for artistic excellence and commitment to changing Kentucky through theatre. LFL has also been recognized for the past two consecutive years by the International Center for Women's Playwrights with their 50/50 Award for commitment to producing women playwrights.
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VIEW PHOTOS AND READ REVIEWS OF LFL's 2014-15 SEASON PRODUCTIONS