Season 2019-2020 | Looking for Lilith Theatre Company

LFL’s 2019-2020 Season honors the late Kathi E.B. Ellis
Celebrating Suffrage, Exploring Grief, Spotlighting Youth

For Immediate Release – Louisville, KY

As Looking for Lilith embarks on our 2019-2020 season, we celebrate a milestone in LFL and women’s history, while honoring an important voice from our own Lilith family. LFL director, friend, colleague, writer, sister, and Co-Artistic Director, Kathi E.B. Ellis, passed away on July 15, 2019. In honor of the drive and creative mind she brought to anything and everything she did, we are dedicating this season to her memory.

We begin the season celebrating the 10th Anniversary of CHOICES, an interactive forum theatre play centered on the prevention of cyberbullying and suicide. Then in March, we’ll be exploring grief in a brand new light - with music! - as we premiere another local playwright on the MeX stage. During the year 2020, LFL will be commemorating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, as we infuse the topic of suffrage into a mainstage production, a tour, and other community outreach programming. A project very near and dear to the late Ellis, LFL artists are honored to continue their work on this project in her memory. She is and will be present in our minds and hearts throughout this project and the entire season.

Our first public event this season is our 10th Anniversary Celebration of CHOICES: An Interactive Play on Cyberbullying and Suicide. This November, Louisville’s own Dawne Gee of WAVE3, will be MC-ing the night’s events, which will include hearing from artists and stakeholders who have been involved in this project over the past decade, a silent auction, and a sneak preview of the latest version of CHOICES. Wine and light refreshments will be served. Join us in festivities and fundraising for this important program that continues to tour to middle schools, high schools, colleges and more. Our gratitude to the Louisville Metro External Agency Fund which in-part supports CHOICES touring in Louisville. This one-night-only event will be held Saturday, November 16, 2019, from 4-6 pm in The Mary Anderson Room at The Kentucky Center, 501 W Main, Louisville, KY. To reserve your seat or table for this event, contact shannon@lookingforlilith.org or 502.638.2559.

Our Spring show will be the world premiere of local playwright and musician Erin Fitzgerald’s Good Grief (a stage play, with music). LFL’s first "musical", Good Grief is about an irreverent and unconventional grief support group. After countless disappointments in traditional group settings, a small non-traditional grief support group has emerged - offering a space for people to explore and express grief in their own ways. But when a new member shows up, the group is tested in unforeseen directions, causing everyone to re-examine their own parameters of grief, and of support.

While the play is about grief, it explores the topic in a way that is comedic, clever, quirky, delightful, and deep; and reflects economic diversity, racial diversity, sexual diversity and neurodiversity. Fitzgerald has been a frequent collaborator with LFL, most recently as Composer and Live Musician for Defining Infinity. Part of the Derby City Playwright’s New Play Festival, Good Grief was produced as a staged reading in July 2019. With one LFL company member in the reading, one in the audience, and an entire company in a state of grieving, it became apparent upon reading Fitzgerald’s script that it was a perfect match for our season. Good Grief runs March 19-29, 2020.

The Kentucky Suffrage Project is a new LFL original production in the works. This devised piece will explore the women’s suffrage movement, particularly in Kentucky, with a focus on suffragists of color. Ellis and a small research team have been delving into this project for the past several years. Quoting a grant narrative written by Ellis, “With so much attention anticipated for the centennial, we knew that the stories of Anthony and Stanton would have a lot of traction. We are delighted that our research led us to Kentucky women whose efforts and passion are just as significant, but are lesser known - additionally, several of them are women of color - both discoveries truly fulfill our commitment to unheard stories.”

A touring version will debut in Spring 2020, with a mainstage production in August 2020 and plans for a tour to New York the following Fall. Devising Director Jennifer Thalman Kepler states, "The stories of Kentucky suffragists are not typically told within the national suffrage narrative, yet Kentucky women fought passionately for their rights as well. We are creating an intentionally intersectional theatre piece, exploring these under-told stories within the context of the national movement. Our devising team is looking at the economic, educational, and racial tensions in the movement as well as looking at challenges to full enfranchisement that still exist today." The Kentucky Suffrage Project runs August 20-30, 2020.

Both these mainstage shows will be at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center, 501 W Main, Louisville, KY. General admission is $21. Students, seniors, and military are $16. Call for group rates. (Educator discounts available upon request.) ALL tickets are $11 for our community night performances on the Monday after opening weekend. Tickets will be available through The Kentucky Center box office at 502.584.7777 or kentuckycenter.org.

Our Community Outreach programming this season will continue to reach children and adults in Louisville and beyond. GirlSpeak, a program empowering girls to tell their stories their way, has grown from one summer camp to a camp and 3-week intensive with Adelante Hispanic Achievers. LFL successfully piloted an after-school GirlSpeak program at Western Middle School for the Arts last Spring - and this Fall LFL brings this inspiring program to middle and high school girls at Backside Learning Center. We are so thankful to the Norton Foundation’s continued generous support of this program.

We also continue with After-School Drama at multiple area elementary schools, with a focus on suffrage in the upcoming centennial year. Co-Artistic Director Shannon Woolley Allison says, “It feels really important, especially with the current state of our country, that we reflect on these themes with children, youth, and adults, that we ask these questions. What have social justice and human rights activists done in the past? What has worked and what has not? What were their blind spots that led to things like leaving others out or alienating potential allies? What new things can we try in this ever-changing world?”

LFL hopes that in looking at our past and present together, in lifting up unheard voices, in grieving losses and in celebrating victories, we can help our communities find hope, strength and innovations for the important work of today and the years ahead.

The mission of Looking for Lilith Theatre Company is to create productions and programming by examining history and today's world through women’s perspectives and lifting up unheard voices. LFL productions and programming serve adults, youth and children locally, nationally and internationally.

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 natives, along with Jennifer Thalman Kepler of Fairfax, VA. All three of the original founders are the current Co-Artistic Directors of LFL. The company also includes Holly Stone, Jill Marie Schierbaum, Sara G. B. Canary, Ebony Jordan, Karole Spangler, Lindsay Chamberlin, Laura Ellis, and Dawn Schulz Campbell. LFL is on the touring rosters of the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Center for the Arts and Alternate ROOTS. They are members of GLI’s Arts and Cultural Alliance, 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 by the International Centre for Women Playwrights with their 50/50 Award for commitment to producing women playwrights. LFL's original devised script, Prevailing Winds, was the recipient of the 2016 Arts-Louisville/Broadway World Awards for Best Full Length Play.

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2019-2020 SEASON