Season 2022-2023

LFL’s 2022-2023 Season will be full of
Reflecting, Remembering, Resisting, Revitalizing, Reenvisioning

Hot on the heels of the announcement that we will be receiving the 2022 Sallie Bingham Award from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, we at Looking for Lilith are excited to announce our 2022-2023 season plans! This season our public work will be focused on engaging audiences in our dynamic educational and outreach programming, including The Ancestors Project, Hip Hop Herc, Summer Drama programs, and our expanded Interactive Theatre to Resist Bullying. Our internal artistic work will be focused on devising a new piece and re-working a groundbreaking LFL original, with both pieces premiering publicly next season, as well as providing support to some LFL company members’ artistic projects.

“After having to work virtually for so much of the last two seasons,
we are so excited to get back into the rehearsal room together
and focus on devising new plays.” 
-Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Thalman Kepler

THE ANCESTORS PROJECT is an evolving community art making and performance project, using free public workshops led by Looking for Lilith with community partners throughout the Commonwealth. In the workshops, LFL artists will lead participants in activities exploring stories of their personal ancestors who have inspired and guided them, and transforming these stories into pieces of visual and performance art that are shared with fellow participants.

DEFINING INFINITY explores the infinite spectrums of gender and sexuality. This play was created by a team of queer defining artists led by company co-founder Trina Fischer. It had a workshop performance as part of our 15th anniversary season celebration in 2017 and a Berea Convocations performance in 2019. In the 3.5 years since, society’s understanding of gender and sexuality has changed and grown. In preparation for a remount and tour in the 23-24 season, queer LFL artists will partner with the LGBTQIA+ community on revitalizing the script.

BLACKBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES (working title) will be a new devised piece, using as inspiration the books Blackberries, Blackberries, Birds of Opulence, and Perfect Black, written by Kentucky’s Poet Laureate Crystal E. Wilkinson, founding member of the Affrilachian Poet movement. This project was proposed by LFL company member Morgan M. Younge, who will be a key devising team member. It will be produced and toured in schools and communities in the 23-24 season. Our ensemble and our audience will benefit from engaging in storytelling about Black Appalachian women’s experiences. We know that by lifting up these voices, this play can fight stereotypes and reflect some of the most under-heard true stories of the Appalachian region.

“This project has been one I’ve wanted to make since I was in college, and
now the work begins. Crystal E. Wilkinson is such a descriptive author
that these scenes just jump off the pages.”
-Company Member Morgan M. Younge

THE MOTH AND THE MASKED MAN, company member Clare Hagan’s new play, will be supported by LFL by providing artists, technical support and publicity assistance. Clare describes this original piece as “a tale of love, grief and magical realism set in the Louisville Highlands.” Developed with Derby City Playwrights in 2021, and with funding from Alternate ROOTS, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women, it will run November 17-20 at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. Tickets on sale now.

Interactive Theatre to Resist Bullying touring programming at LFL uses Theatre of the Oppressed’s Forum Theatre techniques with audiences in grades K-12, and beyond. In our three age-specific offerings listed below, audience members participate to help the main character find solutions to their problems. Audiences are empowered to stop the action, talk about the problems, and explore strategies and solutions. In this way, they can safely think through and practice how to respond if they or someone they love is being bullied.

• EVEN PUPPET HAVE PROBLEMS: interactive drama for managing conflict (K-2nd)
• MAC'S WORLD: an interactive play on resisting bullying and cyberbullying (3rd-5th)
• CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide (6th-12th)

In-School Drama includes K-12 programming which explores Native Americans' first encounters with Europeans, coping with big emotions, environmental and social justice issues, and historical events set in Louisville, KY such as the Women’s Suffrage Movement and the 1937 flood.

After-School Drama will continue giving students the opportunity to dramatize children’s stories from around the world (K-2nd) and create characters and dive into improvisational and scene work (3rd-5th).

Summer Drama will include dramatic play, devising, and theatrically sharing discoveries, in both one week and multi-week formats. We will participate in Louisville Cultural Pass activities again.

Hip Hop Herc is a Hip Hop rap and dance battling version of the tale of Hercules, created by company member Morgan M. Younge. Before and during spring break of 2023, LFL will produce this intensive camp in which students (ages 8-14) will create dance battle scenes, design and build masks and costumes for their characters, and perform the play publicly.

GirlSpeak/YouthSpeak encourages youth to "speak it their way". LFL artists guide them in devising a play using ideas, issues and themes the participants themselves choose to explore. At a time in their lives when few take them seriously, young people get the chance to articulate who they are and what is important to them, in a safe and trusting environment. This program is available as an in-school residency, after-school drama club and in summer intensives.

"LFL has a long tradition of quality education and community based programming.
Those programs often fly under the radar as they are conducted in schools or with
community partners and not open to the public. This season we will work to tell the stories
of how these programs make an impact, bringing them more into public view.”
-Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Thalman Kepler