Mission Statement:
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.
Commitment to Justice:
Looking for Lilith Theatre Company
condemns racism and oppression in all its forms.
We stand in solidarity with all those working for justice.
We commit to use our skills as artists
to hear, see and amplify the unheard voices among us.
Significant accomplishments of our 23rd Season (September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024)
- We engaged 1,018 adults and 2,246 youth in in-person, interactive theatre experiences
- More than 50% of our programmatic activity was educational, and served individuals identified as
- Individuals with Disabilities
- Individuals below the Poverty Line
- Individuals with Limited English Proficiency
- Youth at Risk
- We contracted over 60 artists as performers, directors, designers, and teaching artists
The work of these artists enabled us to execute a robust and dynamic season of programming, as evidenced below.
Community Outreach work:
*We conducted over 30 weeks of after school programming in 10 elementary and middle schools in Metro Louisville, with unlimited scholarship funding available, and over 50% of students attending at no cost. In this after school drama instruction all students learned the essential theatre skills of cooperation, concentration, and collaboration, and were led by our highly trained teaching artists in discerning a topic of import to them and devising an original play based on that topic.
*In our summer programming, we led 5 weeks of full day summer camps that were completely free to participants! These camps also were centered on leading the students to collaboratively create a play, and these plays enjoyed public performances at the Highview Arts Center in Louisville's South End.
We conducted in-school residencies and performances in schools both inside and outside of Jefferson County, with interactive programming including "Monsters Under the Bed" for K-2 students, which uses drama to help students cope with daily anxieties, and "Mac's World" for 3rd-5th students, an interactive play about a 5th grader who is experiencing bullying both online and in person. In this play, the audience has the opportunity to stop the action and advise the main character on how to cope with their situation, and then see the actors play out their ideas in real time. Students also have the opportunity to come onto the stage and replace the actor playing the main character if they wish!
We engaged adults in our community with our Ancestors Project, an ongoing series in which diverse communities are invited to bring a photograph and story of an ancestor to an interactive workshop where they are guided in creating a visual art, performance art, and literary piece based on their ancestors' stories.
We also served adults internationally with our Historias de Fe partnership with our sister ensemble in Guatemala, with whom we have been working for 20 years. These mostly indigenous women have trained with the Looking for Lilith professional ensemble to create short performances about problems affecting Guatemalan women, which they share with their rural communities.
In our public-facing work, we produced staged readings of two KY playwrights' pieces: "The Green Book Wine Club Train Trip" by Michelle Tyrene Johnson, and "The Helpers" by Maggie Lou Rader. "The Helpers" coincided with the Kentuckiana Girl Scouts Festival of the Arts, and we were proud to perform for 50 high school scouts.
In March, we premiered our newest original devised work, "Lifecycle of a Blackberry." This one-woman piece with artist Morgan M. Younge is based on the writings of former KY Poet Laureate Crystal E. Wilkinson. We were proud that this work was a finalist for the National Theatre Project Creation and Touring Grant, and will enjoy a tour of Eastern KY in our 2024-2025 season!
In early June, we celebrated pride with the revival and re-imagining of our 2017 piece "Defining Infinity," based on the lived experience of Kentuckians who identify on all parts of the gender identity and sexuality spectrums. We partnered with The Fairness Campaign and The Louisville Youth Group on talkbacks with the audience after the show, and were honored to witness deep new levels of understanding, including between parents and adult children who identify as queer.