A very full season indeed, it included a remount of an LFL original - LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY, the culminating event for THE ANCESTORS PROJECT, the production of company member Clarity Hagan's new play - JUST CAUSE: THE STORY OF THE LEXINGTON SIX, and touring performances of Rachel Bublitz's THE BOOK WOMEN, in partnership with the Louisville Free Public Library system. LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY, starring Morgan M. Younge and based on the writings of Crystal E. Wilkinson, had a remount at The Russell Theatre in the Fall of 2024. Then, the culminating event of THE ANCESTORS PROJECT, Because you…
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DEFINING INFINITY, which explores the infinite spectrums of gender identity and sexual orientation, finally grew up into a full 2 act play that was premiered to round out the 2023-2024 season. This show has a long history of development! It was originally conceived by pansexual non-binary LFL co-founder, Trina Fischer, in 1993 at Northwestern University, as part of the Spare Rib Festival of feminist theatre. Ever since then, she had wanted to develop it further. In 2016 and 2017, LFL adapted and expanded the existing 20 min script into a 75 minute one act for presentation at our 15th anniversary…
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LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY is an original LFL show starring Morgan M. Younge which honors the stories of Black Appalachian women and girls, using as inspiration the books Blackberries, Blackberries, Birds of Opulence, and Perfect Black, written by Kentucky Poet Laureate Crystal E. Wilkinson. By lifting up these voices and sharing these unique stories through theatre, we fight stereotypes, reflect some of the most under-heard stories of the Appalachian region, and create a powerful ripple effect of empathy and understanding. Through this shared experience, we can build a stronger community rooted in trust, equity, and justice. Audiences from the March 2024 premiere…
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This season included a STAGED READING SERIES, two LFL originals - LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY and DEFINING INFINITY, all at the MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center; as well as the community outreach offerings of HIP HOP HERC and IN-SCHOOL, AFTER-SCHOOL and SUMMER DRAMA programs. In November of 2023, LFL's Staged Reading Series presented THE GREEN BOOK WINE CLUB TRAIN TRIP by Michelle Tyrene Johnson, in which, on a weekend trip with a group of women friends, Marie experiences a time travel adventure, learning from her ancestors' travels while on a journey of her own; and THE HELPERS by Maggie Lou Rader,…
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At the end of 2024, The LFL ensemble shared their two-year exploration of the stories collected - BECAUSE YOU WERE, I AM! This culminating event, at the Main Library of the Louisville Public Libraries, took guests on an interactive journey that allowed them to immerse themselves in the life stories and lessons of the many ancestors whose journeys have informed the participants' lives and communities. Live music, drawings, performance art, theatre and ritual came together in a celebration of heritage. THE ANCESTORS PROJECT was a series of workshops that LFL started during early 2023, where we used the past to…
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HIP HOP HERC is a Hip Hop rap and dance battling version of the tale of Hercules, created by company member Morgan M. Younge. This one-week camp was designed for ages 9-14, to center and lift up the talents of young people of color in Louisville's West End and other historically underserved neighborhoods. During camp, students had the opportunity to write, read, and rap, create dance battle scenes, and make masks and costumes for their characters. In October of 2023, this camp led up to a culminating performance at the Fund for the Arts Stage at the St. James Art…
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Our public work this season was focused on engaging audiences in our dynamic educational and outreach programming, including THE ANCESTORS PROJECT: an evolving community arts initiative; IN-SCHOOL, AFTER-SCHOOL and SUMMER DRAMA programs; and FLIPPING THE SCRIPT - our expanded Interactive Theatre to Resist Bullying programming. Our internal artistic work was focused on devising the new piece, LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY, based on the works of Affrilachian poet and novelist Crystal E. Wilkinson; re-working the groundbreaking LFL original, DEFINING INFINITY, exploring the infinite spectrums of sexual orientation and gender identity; and providing support to some LFL company members’ artistic projects, such…
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EVEN PUPPETS HAVE PROBLEMS is an interactive program designed for early elementary students (K-2) to teach conflict resolution, anger management, and empathy through puppets and audience participation, helping kids explore healthy ways to handle pre-bullying situations and big feelings safely and creatively. A puppeteer presents a story about puppet friends dealing with conflict that gets to an aggressive breaking point. Then the puppeteer starts the show over and the students get to pause the action and become active participants, offering ideas to the puppet characters to solve problems and express and manage their emotions safely. Children in the audience not…
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In MAC'S WORLD: an interactive play on resisting bullying and cyberbullying, students see a 30-minute play about a student who is grappling with an online and in-person bully. Afterwards, they get to intervene, giving Mac advice on how to cope and watching them try out that advice in improvised scenes. Some students are then guided to come onstage and replace the main character to try out their ideas in real time themselves! This LFL original's focus audience is 3rd - 5th graders, and it was in fact created in collaboration with 5th graders from our longest running after-school Drama Club,…
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Our November 2021 mainstage, COMMON THREADS: INTERWOVEN PORTRAITS OF A PANDEMIC, was an interactive hybrid theatre-film-audio production that explored our community’s experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It intentionally explored the path between the virtual and live performance worlds. Throughout the 20-21 season, pairs of our ensemble members convened story circles and created digital responses to the experience that was the pandemic up to that point. These pairs then handed their digital work off to a second pair of LFL artists, who devised a live, interactive response to the short films and audio pieces. These 6 hybrid performances premiered in a…
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We kicked of our 2021-2022 season with this performance-based party in the open-air to celebrate our 20th Anniversary at the C. Douglas Ramey Amphitheatre. This celebration had been slated to take place on September 18th at The Kentucky Center. As necessity had been the mother of invention again and again throughout the pandemic, we re-invented our plan for recognizing this monumental milestone, and we came together to celebrate on the same date, but now in the open-air space of Old Louisville’s historic Central Park. Our diverse 19-member ensemble performed readings of excerpts from our “greatest hits” of the last two…
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This season included THE CANDLE BURNS ON, COMMON THREADS: INTERWOVEN PORTRAITS OF A PANDEMIC, and FLIPPING THE SCRIPT: INTERACTIVE THEATRE TO RESIST BULLYING. We continued to apply and grow our skills of resilience and flexibility, as we pivoted again and again as the pandemic continued. We had the distinct pleasure of kicking off this season in September by celebrating 20 years of Looking for Lilith with the retrospective event THE CANDLE BURNS ON, presented at the open-air Douglas C. Ramey amphitheatre in Central Park. In November, we presented an LFL original interactive hybrid theatre-film production in the form of COMMON…
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The Kentucky Suffrage Project was created by LFL to lift up under-told stories of Kentucky Women & Suffragists of Color. Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, it explores women's suffrage in Kentucky within the context of the national movement. It looks at economic, educational, and racial tensions in that movement, as well as challenges and disenfranchisement that still exist today. From Bardstown to Broadway: The Road to Votes for Women is an 8 episode virtual series highlighting events, stories, and underheard voices from Louisville, KY. All episodes were devised, produced, and filmed on-location by LFL. In The Suffrage Driving &…
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LFL really learned to pivot with more creativity than ever before as the pandemic continued. Along with developing online live offerings for our educational and outreach programming, we tried out hand at a limited Youtube series, a virtual theatre experience, and a outdoor diving and walking tour of scenes. The first of these was based on our previously named Kentucky Suffrage Project, which shifted into From Bardstown to Broadway: The Road to Votes for Women, an original Youtube series of scenes exploring local suffragists and their contributions to the fight for women's suffrage. Next was a reworked version of Erin…
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As we all know, this was a rough year all around - and the arts and education sectors were particularly hard-hit. LFL was no exception, but they persevered. In addition to having to pivot on all their programming once the Covid pandemic hit, they had to adjust to the loss of 2 Co-Artistic Directors, with Kathi E.B. Ellis having passed away the previous summer and Trina Fischer preparing to move to Chile in January 2020 with her family. Though Trina would continue to work with LFL, as a company member and part-time staff, the Staff decided that it made the…
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This season was a season full of strategic planning and ground-breaking shows. They were thrilled to work with another Karen Zacarías script, the bilingual play Just Like Us, based on the non-fiction book Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America by author and free-lance journalist Helen Thorpe. They ended the season with Alli Fireel's fictional exploration of the experiences of a woman with bi-polar disorder, who ultimately takes her own life, leaving behind a play she wrote about her experiences for her sister to direct - Note: A Play About Rehearsing a…
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This LFL original explores their company’s and community’s responses to the political, social, and economic turmoil that succeeded the 2016 election, incorporating oral histories, as well as contemporary media articles about “hot button” issues, including immigration, education, white privilege, institutional racism, gun control, and more. We. Are. Here. centers those issues in the lives of four families from very different background,s whose personal circumstances and daily choices are affected by these issues. A core approach for LFL, to all issues, is unpacking the role of women, queer and straight, white and of color, in our contemporary discourse, and this play…
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Our first mainstage production that year was Cheryl L. Davis' Carefully Taught, performed at The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. This fascinating focuses on 2 close friends who teach at the same school, one Black and one White, whose friendship and lives are affected when racial issues are brought to light at their school, attracting both the media and politics to the crisis. It is a searing and clever analysis of racial biases, personal and systemic, and lays bare the insidious cost that these can have on friends and in professional relationships. In March, we premiered local playwright Diana…
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The season began with a stunning production of Karen Zacarias' Legacy of Light at the Henry Clay Theatre. In this play, two women scientists, living hundreds of years apart, explore the meaning of love, motherhood, family, art and science in this contemporary comedy. It juxtaposes the story of Émilie du Châtelet, a mathematician, scientist, and lover of the great 18th-century philosopher Voltaire, who became unexpectedly pregnant at 42, and that of a 21st-century physicist desperately trying to conceive a child. For Women's History Month, LFL remounted Alice in Black and White by Robin Rice at the MeX Theater at the…
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LFL's tenth original play, Prevailing Winds, 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. They interviewed community members of this area of Jefferson County, together with industry representatives, environmentalists and activists, scientists and people in the media, to create a multi-faceted exploration of the complex interrelationships in this part of our community. Marty Rosen, in his review of the play in the LEO weekly, wrote "Two years in the making, and two hours in the running,…
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This season included another LFL original, Prevailing Winds. This original play, based on research and local oral histories, is about the struggle between Rubbertown industries and their surrounding communities in Louisville, KY - a struggle over the need for clean air and water conflicting with people's need for the products Rubbertown creates - and how they worked together, along with scientists and activists and politicians, to try to address these crucial environmental issues. Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf's novel, as adapted by Sarah Ruhl, was performed at Bellarmine University that March. Fully embracing the theatrical potential of Woolf’s sprawling novel,…
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After years of working with their Guatemalan sisters through the Faith Stories Project, LFL created a short play to share that experience with Louisville audiences in the form of UnCaged/Desenjauladas, which they performed at the Slant Culture Theatre Festival at the Commonwealth Theatre Center. Shortly thereafter, they had their very first visit to Louisville from their colleagues of Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe to Louisville, all the way from Guatemala! This landmark event in their Faith Stories Project was years in the making and was incredibly moving for all involved. Along with visiting and working with LFL in Louisville, they…
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LFL was moved by the research that showed that middle school is a time when the self-esteem of middle school girls tends to plummet. In response, they created GirlSpeak, a program dedicated to lifting up the voices of young girls and women, at a time when they might feel like few around them value their voices. The initial program was created in partnership with Adelante Hispanic Achievers and involved latina girls and young women of middle school and high school ages. Over the many years of working with Adelante Hispanic Achievers through annual Norton Foundation grants, the program has grown…
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The 2013-2014 season began with a revival of the LFL original Class of '70, which initiated an partnership with Lincoln Performing Arts School, performing the show in LPAS' brand new theatre and conducting theatre residencies with their students. LFL and JCPS began a partnership through an ongoing professional development program, working with high school teachers to integrate drama tools into their teaching. In addition, LFL continued to develop new programming for their after school Drama Clubs, in-school residencies and summer programming. That season's March Women's History Month production was a regional premiere of Catherine Filloux' Luz at the Henry Clay…
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Opening on Mother’s Day weekend in 2013, Becoming Mothers opened on Mother's Day weekend 2013. The creation of this LFL original, which started with interviews and research over 2 years previous to its premiere, was inspired by so many LFL company members having started their motherhood journey over the previous 5 or so years. To say the least, their lives were transformed by this transition and they wanted to share about their experiences while they were still fresh. They also wanted to share the experiences of their own mothers, aunts, and friends. This resulting delightfully moving play is a mosaic of…
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Alice Austen fell in love with photography and another woman at a time when women were expected to do neither. For Marking Women’s History Month, they produced the world premiere of Alice in Black and White, by award-winning New York-based playwright Robin Rice. In this humorous and heartbreaking exploration of Alice, Rice created a period-hopping story that traces the artistic journey of Alice Austen, while also showcasing her life-long romantic partnership with Gertrude Tate. This stunning play won the StageWrite Women's Theatre Initiative Award. It was one of the most attended shows in LFL's history, with sell-out shows and glowing…
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The season began with an all-female production of Much Ado About Nothing at The Alley Theatre. In March, at the Mex Theater at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, LFL produced a highly successful and acclaimed run of the world premiere of Robin Rice Lichtig’s Alice in Black and White, about the life and love of Victorian photographer Alice Austen and her life partner Gertrude Tate. The season closed with the fully-staged production of the LFL original Becoming Mothers, which explored a variety of women's journeys into, and early days of, motherhood. In addition, LFL continued to tour many…
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The final production of the season was a unique repertory program to celebrate LFL’s tenth anniversary: Looking Forward, Looking Back. The centerpiece of this event was Ten Years/Seven Stories, which featured short vignettes of each of the first seven original productions created by LFL. Also at this event, LFL’s newest original script, Becoming Mothers, was presented as a staged reading. Return to History Timeline
The first production of the 2011-2012 season was Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, a drama of women in the villages of Spain, as a household full of women suffer the extended mourning period over the loss of the patriarch, overseen and enforced by their iron-fisted unyielding matriarch, Bernarda. In the spring, LFL adapted Jane Wilson Joyce’s book of poetry Beyond the Blue Mountains for the stage, which follows the stories of a family traveling west from Kentucky on the Oregon Trail, as they brave dangers and suffer great losses along the way. The season culminated with a…
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March of 2011 saw LFL return to NYC to participate in the Centennial Remembrances of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, performing Fabric, Flames, & Fervor : Girls of the Triangle at Manhattan Theatre Source, three blocks from the original factory. In preparation, LFL performed the show at Shelby County Community Theatre in Kentucky. CHOICES continued to expand as LFL developed and began touring a middle school version in collaboration with students from Fern Creek High School. That summer, LFL again produced an already-scripted show, J. Shafer’s Hunting the Basilisk and in the late summer, LFL was invited to Fort Knox…
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CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide began touring in schools in 2010. Based on real-life stories, this play follows the story of Hannah, a victim of cyberbullying. CHOICES uses the model of Forum Theatre from Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, to empower the audience to stop the action, talk about the problems, and explore solutions, strategies and choices. The experience includes a 20-minute performance with 30-60 minutes of interactive participation from the audience. This original play, which had pilot performances and a premiere at the end of 2009 at Fern Creek High School, was commissioned by the…
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LFL started the season with the premiere of their ambitious timely new touring show CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide. This season, they also remounted Crossing Mountains for Louisville audiences and toured it again to the Hindman Settlement School and to Alice Lloyd College. LFL hosted another cross-cultural experience with women from Guatemala and the U.S.A. in Guatemala, sharing with Guatemalan project participants how to use their theatre skills to educate others about social issues of importance to them, such as hunger and nutrition, women's health, and domestic violence. Return to History Timeline
Strangers/Extranjeras is a bilingual play about an inspiring friendship between a young optimistic U.S. volunteer and her generous Mayan Guatemalan host-mother. It premiered at The Rudyard Kipling in spring of 2009. It was based on the experiences of Co-Artistic Director Jennifer Thalman-Kepler and company member Charity Thompson Egland, who met while volunteering through the YAV (Young Adult Volunteer) program of the Presbyterian Church USA in Guatemala. That life-changing year made such an impression on both of them, and they still feels its impacts today. Out of a need to share their stories and lift up the stories of the women…
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March 25th saw the premiere of Fabric, Flames and Fervor: Girls of the Triangle on the 98th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. This production was in preparation for a potential NYC run for the commemoration of the centennial of this tragedy. Return to History Timeline
In 2008, LFL ventured into new territory, embracing an already-created text as a mainstage production. Women of Will is a compilation of Shakespearean scenes featuring his female characters. LFL also presented a readings of their newest original works Fabric, Flames, and Fervor: Girls of The Triangle and Strangers/Extranjeras. The Faith Stories Project presented its first public production during the now-regular summer trip by LFL artists. In addition to mainstage and touring productions, LFL artists also engaged in after school drama programs, drama residencies in schools throughout the commonwealth and summer drama camps, which continue to be core company activities. LFL…
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To honor LFL's 5th Anniversary Season, we remounted and toured WHAT MY HANDS HAVE TOUCHED, including a run of the show at The Rudyard Kipling with a GALA celebration on opening night hosted by our Board of Directors. During the same period, LFL began the creation of Strangers/Extranjeras, the first bi-lingual production for the company, based on the mission volunteer experiences in Guatemala of Jennifer Thalman Kepler and Charity Thompson Egland. In the summer of 2007, Faith Stories Project continued to expand as the Guatemalan women learned to facilitate their own workshops, mentored by LFL artists. Return to History Timeline
Created in 2006 by Kelly McNerney and Shannon Woolley Allison, this dynamic one woman show shines a light on various women's firsthand experiences of the 2nd Gulf War--from service women, to peace activists, to Iraqi women. In Women Speak: IRAQ, Shannon toggled quickly between the 12 characters, looking at a complex moment in our shared history from a myriad of angles. In addition to its premiere at The Rudyard Kipling, this impactful production toured extensively to colleges and conferences for several years, moving hearts and minds wherever it went. Return to History Timeline
During the summer of 2006, LFL once again returned to Guatemala to work with more women, an opportunity sponsored by Presbyterian Church funds. During this year a Board of Directors was recruited, creating an infrastructure for the company that remains strong to this day. More company members joined LFL, and LFL became a founding member of the Theatre Alliance of Louisville. Return to History Timeline
Company member Jennifer Thalman Kepler returned from a year in Guatemala in 2004 and LFL started work piloting and creating the Faith Stories Project as an international outreach program to continue to explore the common themes of women’s experiences from two very different cultures: rural Guatemala and urban America. 4 LFL artists traveled to Guatemala for the first time in the summer of 2005 to kick off this project. This project which has since involved annual visits to Guatemala (except during the Covid-19 Pandemic). The initial objective of the project was to empower women in Guatemala and the U.S. by…
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Continuing to reflect on the experiences of women who are important to the LFL company, Class of ’70 was created in 2004, through interviews with their mother, aunts aunts and friends that went to college in the late 1960's, as well as published material about the era. It explored what it was like to be a young woman at a time of such rapid change in our country, where college campuses were a hotbed for much of that change. The play was performed in both NYC and Louisville that year. Subsequently, starting in 2005, the company relocated from NYC to…
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2003 saw the creation of LFL’s second original production, What My Hands Have Touched, which was first performed in NYC. Then Kelly McNerney, who had become a company member in 2002, joined the cast for performances in Louisville and Wisconsin. This production was based on wartime memories of friends and families of the LFL founders. A staged reading series in NYC that year included Voices by Susan Griffin and Keely and Duby Jane Martin. Return to History Timeline
Return to History Timeline LFL’s first production was CROSSING MOUNTAINS: To Teach All We Can and To Learn All We Can, exploring 100 years of education and change in the Kentucky mountains at The Hindman Settlement School, which premiered in NYC in the fall of 2001. Allison and Fischer had journeyed to the Hindman Settlement School in Knott County, KY in the summer of 2001, to conduct oral histories and research primary sources, and upon this research, LFL's first original play was created. This production continued to tour regularly throughout Kentucky for the rest of that year and the following year,…
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Looking for Lilith was founded by Shannon Woolley Allison, Trina Fischer, and Jennifer Thalman Kepler in New York City, 2001. Looking for Lilith is an ensemble theatre company that creates productions and programming through re-examining history and questioning today from women’s perspectives, a practice that frequently uncovers unheard voices. LFL productions and programming serve adults, youth and children locally, nationally and internationally. LFL is committed to collaboratively creating original theatre based on women’s history, both oral and written, both past history and history in the making.