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…
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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…
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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'…
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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…
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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…
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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 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;…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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We kicked off 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…
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FROM BARDSTOWN TO BROADWAY: THE ROAD TO VOTES FOR WOMEN YouTube series, Erin Fitzgerald's play with music - GOOD GRIEF virtual theatre version, FROM BARDSTOWN TO BROADWAY: SUFFRAGE DRIVING AND WALKING TOUR, and online educational and outreach programming made what could have been a season lost to Covid-19 into a season with multiple online and outdoor offerings for our audiences. LFL really learned to pivot with more creativity than ever before as the pandemic continued. Along with developing various online live offerings for our educational…
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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.…
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This incredibly challenging season included a 10th Anniversary celebration of CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide, rehearsal and almost-premiere of Erin Fitzgerald's GOOD GRIEF, devising for THE KENTUCKY SUFFRAGE PROJECT, and shifting half a season of our regular in-school, after-school and summer programming to online once Covid-19 hit. 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 we persevered. In addition to having to pivot on…
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This was a season full of strategic planning, ground-breaking shows, continuing educational and community outreach, working on creating a new show and the loss of dear ones. These happenings included Karen Zacarias' JUST LIKE US, Alli Fireel's NOTE, a FAITH STORIES PROJECT trip to Guatemala, and research and devising for THE KENTUCKY SUFFRAGE PROJECT. For March Women's History Month, we were thrilled to work on another Karen Zacarías script, the bilingual play JUST LIKE US, based on the non-fiction book "Just Like Us: The True…
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This LFL original explores our 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 backgrounds, whose personal circumstances and daily choices are affected by these issues. A core approach for LFL, to all issues, is unpacking the role of…
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Our 3 productions this season were Cheryl L. Davis' CAREFULLY TAUGHT, Diana Grisanti's PATRON SAINT OF LOSING SLEEP, and a new LFL original - WE. ARE. HERE. First up was Cheryl L. Davis' CAREFULLY TAUGHT, performed at The Kentucky Center for African American Heritage. This fascinating play 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…
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Karen Zacarias' LEGACY OF LIGHT, Robin Rice's ALICE IN BLACK AND WHITE, our 15th Anniversary festival UNHEARD [OUTLOUD], and our continuing community and educational outreach made for our fullest season to date! We 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,…
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Uplifting unheard and underheard voices for 15 years, LFL presented a festival of original works, collaborations and workshops to mark our anniversary. Area artists and organizations were invited to share the stage with us in celebration of our fifteen-year mission. It was held July 13-23, 2017 at the Clifton Center. Festival productions included a remount of the LFL original CROSSING MOUNTAINS; I'M WEARING MY OWN CLOTHES! by Nancy Gall-Clayton*; and the LFL premiere of DEFINING INFINITY, our new devised work-in-progress exploring the infinite spectrums of…
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We premiered another LFL original - PREVAILING WINDS, produced ORLANDO, GETTING OUT, and produced the NYC premiere of ALICE IN BLACK AND WHITE. PREVAILING WINDS is based on research and local oral histories 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…
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Our tenth original play, PREVAILING WINDS, is focused on environmental issues in relation to Rubbertown and its surrounding communities in Louisville, KY, as well as how race and class have played into the Louisville community's dialogue and action around these issues. We 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…
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This seasons kicked off with a new short LFL one act - UNCAGED/DESENJAULADAS, and also included Arlene Hutton's AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, Basil Kreimendahl's SIDEWINDERS, and the birth of a new Educational and Community Outreach program - GIRLSPEAK. After years of working with our Guatemalan sisters through the Faith Stories Project, we created a short play to share that experience with Louisville audiences in the form of UNCAGED/DESENJAULADAS, which we performed at the Slant Culture Theatre Festival at the Commonwealth Theatre Center. Shortly thereafter,…
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We at LFL were moved by the research that showed that middle school is a time when the self-esteem of girls tends to plummet. In response, we 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. After a couple of summers developing the program, LFL partnered with Adelante Hispanic Achievers and involved Latina girls and young women of middle school and high school ages. Over…
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The productions of the 2013-2014 season included a revival of the LFL original CLASS OF '70 and regional premieres of both Catherine Filloux' LUZ and Annie Baker's BODY AWARENESS. In outreach, we started a partnership with EACM (Eastern Area Community Ministries) Latina Women's group, and we began a new partnership with JCPS, through an ongoing professional development program, working with high school teachers to integrate drama tools into their teaching. In addition, we continued to develop new programming for our after school Drama Clubs, in-school residencies…
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In 2012-2013, we tried our hand at Shakespeare again, with an all-female production of MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, premiered Robin Rice's ALICE IN BLACK AND WHITE and premiered our newest original devised play BECOMING MOTHERS. In addition, LFL continued to tour many of its productions, conduct residencies, and facilitate after school and summer programming. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING was produced at The Alley Theatre. It was set in the 1920's and included mask and movement work for scene transitions, for that special LFL touch! In…
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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 of us in LFL having started our motherhood journeys over the previous 5 or so years. To say the least, our lives were transformed by this transition and we wanted to share about our experiences while they were still fresh. We also wanted to share the experiences of our own mothers, aunts, and…
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Alice Austen fell in love with photography and another woman at a time when women were expected to do neither. To mark Women’s History Month, we 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…
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This season included productions of THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA and BEYOND THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, a weekend long celebration of our 10th anniversary, another trip to Guatemala, and more year-round educational and outreach programming.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…
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Our 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. We also held a GALA fundraising dinner, MC-ed by local celebrity newscaster Dawne Gee, at Harvest Restaurant to celebrate this special landmark year. Return to…
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This season included productions of FABRIC, FLAMES, AND FERVOR: GIRLS OF THE TRIANGLE, HUNTING THE BASILISK, and FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE. In addition, our community and educational outreach programs continued to expand, including a new middle school version of our touring show CHOICES: AN INTERACTIVE PLAY ON CYBERBULLYING AND SUICIDE. We were also honored to host FAITH STORIES PROJECT participant Juana Herlinda Yak, when she visited this country as a guest of the Presbyterian Church. Starting that Fall, we collaborated with students from Fern Creek High…
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March of 2011 saw our return to NYC to participate in the Centennial Remembrances of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. As part of these remembrances, we performed our original devised play FABRIC, FLAMES, AND FERVOR: GIRLS OF THE TRIANGLE in New York City. We produced the show at Manhattan Theatre Source (where we had premiered our 2nd play back in 2003), just a couple of blocks from the original location of this tragic factory fire. Originally premiered in Louisville, KY on March 25th, 2009, we…
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For our 9th season, we brought our new play CHOICES and a remount of CROSSING MOUNTAINS to regional audiences, and went back to Guatemala with our FAITH STORIES PROJECT. We started the season with the premiere of our ambitious timely new touring show CHOICES: AN INTERACTIVE PLAY ON CYBERBULLLYING AND SUICIDE. This season, we also remounted CROSSING MOUNTAINS for Louisville audiences and toured it again to the Hindman Settlement School and to Alice Lloyd College (much to the chagrin of Alice Lloyd’s ghost, who played…
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CHOICES: AN INTERACTIVE PLAY ON CYBERBULLYING AND SUICIDE began touring in schools in 2010 after premiering in November of 2009 at Fern Creek High School. 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…
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For our 8th season, we produced 3 mainstage productions for the first time - WOMEN OF WILL, FABRIC FLAMES AND FERVOR: GIRLS OF THE TRIANGLE and STRANGERS/EXTRANJERAS - and started creating the new play CHOICES: AN INTERACTIVE PLAY ON CYBERBULLYING AND SUICIDE. We also continued to expand all our Community and Educational Outreach, including the FAITH STORIES PROJECT, summer drama camps, in-school programs, touring shows, and more. As part of the FAITH STORIES PROJECT, LFL artists again traveled to Guatemala during the summer, adding women…
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STRANGERS/EXTRANJERAS is a bilingual play about an inspiring friendship between a young optimistic U.S. volunteer and her generous Mayan Guatemalan host-mother. We premiered this new play 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 feel its…
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With WOMEN OF WILL, we ventured into new territory as a company, producing an already-created text for the first time. So we started with one of the most renowned playwrights of all time. WOMEN OF WILL was a compilation of Shakespearean scenes and monologues featuring his female characters, compiled by Kathi E.B. Ellis. Return to History Timeline 2008-2009 Season Women of Will
This season was full of new works! We presented readings of 2 new LFL originals: FABRIC, FLAMES, AND FERVOR: Girls of the Triangle, which was based on the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 and the labor rights movement it galvanized, and STRANGERS/EXTRANJERAS, which was based on the experiences of YAVs (Young Adult Volunteers) and their host families in Guatemala. We worked with the participants of the FAITH STORIES PROJECT to create and present their first public production. In addition, we toured some of…
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In this season, we premiered our newest original play WOMEN SPEAK:IRAQ, honored our 5th Anniversary Season, began the creation of our next original play, STRANGERS/EXTRANJERAS, and expanded the FAITH STORIES PROJECT. To celebrate the 5th Anniversary Season of founding Looking for Lilith Theatre Company, 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. The new play, STRANGERS/EXTRANJERAS, was our first bi-lingual production,…
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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…
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This was a season of transition, during which we began the move back to Louisville, KY from Brooklyn, New York. Shannon Woolley Allison and fellow company and staff member Kelly McNerney spent much of the season researching and creating the one-woman show, WOMEN SPEAK:IRAQ. During this season, an excerpt of this work-in-progress was performed at the U of L Thrust Theatre as part of a local performance festival, as well as at the Alternate ROOTS Annual Meeting. We returned to Guatemala to keep developing the…
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During the summer of 2006, we once again returned to Guatemala to work with more women, an opportunity sponsored by Presbyterian Church funds. During this year, we recruited a Board of Directors, 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
Our 4th season included the NYC premiere of our 3rd original play - CLASS OF '70, the birth of THE FAITH STORIES PROJECT, and continuing in-school residencies of individual LFL members through the Kentucky Arts Council's TIP (Teacher Initiated Program) grants. This season was to be our last full season in NYC. Subsequently, starting in 2005, the company relocated from NYC to Louisville permanently over the next few years, starting with Shannon the summer of 2005 and Trina in 2006. Shannon and Trina were glad…
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Company member Jennifer Thalman Kepler returned from a year in Guatemala in 2004 and we 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 has since involved annual visits to Guatemala (except during the Covid-19 Pandemic). The initial…
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After a spring and summer full of performances of WHAT MY HANDS HAVE TOUCHED, we got to work on our next play - CLASS OF '70. We spent most of the season researching and devising our 3rd play, and in spring of 2004, we had a Staged Reading in NYC with our amazing devising ensemble. Then we premiered the first full production of CLASS OF '70 in Louisville, KY first, at The Rudyard Kipling, in preparation for a NYC premiere in the Fall of 2004.…
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Continuing to reflect on the experiences of women who are important to us, CLASS OF '70 was created in 2004. Similar to our previous shows, it was based on interviews with our mothers, aunts and friends that went to college in the late 1960s, 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. It…
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This season saw a STAGED READING SERIES, the creation and production of our 2nd original play WHAT MY HANDS HAVE TOUCHED, and slowly expanding educational and community outreach work. In the early years of LFL, the vast majority of our energy as a company was focused on devising original plays, while also working and/or studying full-time in New York City. Therefore, we tended to premiere one new LFL play per year. While working on creating our next play, we did a STAGED READING SERIES during…
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2003 saw the creation and premiere of our second original production, WHAT MY HANDS HAVE TOUCHED, which premiered in NYC shortly after the U.S. invaded Iraq for the second time in a generation. As we performed a play about women's contributions to the war effort during World War II, we were watching a very different kind of war unfold in real time. To create this play, we had spent many months researching about the experiences of U.S. women during World War II. We interviewed family…
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Our 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. From its birth as a settlement school founded by Katherine Pettit and May Stone (upon invitation by the Troublesome Creek resident Uncle Sol) to its evolution into an arts and culture center, community center, regional boarding school for students with dyslexia and other learning differences, and more - this play shares the…
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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…
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