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.
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, including at the school's centennial celebrations in 2002! The School continued to be supportive of this production as LFL revived several versions of Crossing Mountains over the years. LFL became a member of the regional social justice and arts organization Alternate ROOTS during this year as well.
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.
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 Louisville permanently.
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 artistically exploring the complexities of how faith affects their lives - asking the question "How does my faith free me, and in what ways do the structures of my faith community oppress me?" Since then, that objective has remained, but the project has grown to also explore and address a myriad of other issues affecting women in Guatemala, with the Guatemalan sisters organizing themselves as Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe (CTHF) and taking real ownership of the project and its direction. The CTHF, with support and training from LFL, takes their original issue-based plays and workshops to their communities, so that they may explore those issues together, using theatre as a tool for education, community-building and social change.
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.
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.
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.
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 joined both the Southern Arts Federation (now Southarts) and the Network of Ensemble Theaters.
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.
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 with whom they worked and with whom they developed such strong bonds, was born this unique 2-woman play. This same year, LFL artists again traveled to Guatemala during the summer as part of their Faith Stories Project, adding women from Presbyterian Churches in this USA as participants, and bridging the language and cultural barriers between the North American and Guatemalan women.
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.
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. It was commissioned by the Make A Difference for Kids Foundation, formed by two families who lost teenagers to suicide as a result of cyberbullying. The first iteration of this production was created for high school student audiences, and the Jefferson County Public Schools’ Computer Education Support sponsored productions for every ninth grade in the district. Near the end of 2010, the Kentucky Theatre Association recognized LFL with its Karen Willis Award for Outstanding Achievement in Theatre for Social Justice/Community Change for CHOICES. Over time, a middle school version was created with student actors from Fern Creek High School, and then a new version appropriate for middle and high school age students, which was even brought to university students and parent groups as well. This work also eventually inspired LFL's creation of interactive theatre to prevent bullying aimed at K through 5th grade as well.
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 to perform a suffragist-themed production, Failure is Impossible by Rosemary H. Knower. LFL hosted a Faith Stories Project participant, Juana Herlinda Yak when she visited this country as a guest of the Presbyterian Church.
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 weekend-long celebration of their 10-year anniversary at The Bard's Town. They then closed out the season with another summer trip to Guatemala, with ongoing support from U.S. Presbyterian congregations.
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.
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 of its productions, conduct residencies, and facilitate after school and summer programming.
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 reviews that season, as well as when they reprised it for its Off-Broadway premiere, at NYC's 59E59 Theaters, including a review in the New York Times. As Brian Walker wrote in his review of the 2013 production of the play, "Kathi E. B. Ellis does a wonderful job at telling the story through the lens of movement and storytelling that’s become synonymous with a Lilith devised piece, still remaining true to the tone and purpose of Robin Rice Lichtig’s play. It’s a match made in heaven and a thought-provoking and moving night of theatre."
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 stories of women’s journeys to motherhood. This exploration spans the process from trying to conceive/planning through the early days of motherhood. LFL worked to include multiple perspectives around this topic, interviewing women who have become mothers through pregnancy, adoption, fertility treatments, egg donation, and more, as well as experiences of women who don’t have children, either by choice or by circumstance.
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 Theatre. This play exposes the global scale of gender-based violence and the collusion between human rights and corporate law practices. From Guatemala City to Haiti to the U.S., it follows Luz, Helene and Zia in their search for hope in the unlikeliest in-between places. The season wrapped up with Annie Baker's Body Awareness, a second regional premiere that season, performed in UofL's Thrust Theater. This play examines intimacy and self-expression within the context of a modern family - college professor Phyllis, her partner Joyce, Joyce's possibly autistic adult son Jared - and how they are affected by their houseguest Frank, known for his nude portraits of women.
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 more robust and expanded to include public GirlSpeak Elementary Drama Camps, GirlSpeak Middle Drama Camps and GirlSpeak after-school programming at area middle schools and high schools. The program is open to all youth of marginalized genders, including young women, girls and trans youth.
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 also visited FSP participants in Virginia. This season, LFL also produced two scripted works, both with Kentucky roots. At Bellarmine University in March, they presented Arlene Hutton's As It Is In Heaven, in which the religious community of 1830's Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, is changed when a non-believer has an ecstatic experience. They brought an excerpt to Shaker Village and performed it in the Shaker Meeting Hall there. They finished off the production season with a Theatre of the Absurd inspired exploration of gender, Sidewinders, by queer Kentucky playwright Basil Kreimendahl. They rounded out the season nicely with a busy summer of Drama Camps. In particular, this summer saw the birth of GirlSpeak, an extended Drama Camp experience focused on Middle School and High School girls and young women.
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, Ruhl captures the wonder, inconceivability and sheer audacity of Orlando’s epic journey, beautifully illustrating Woolf’s notions of the fluidity of gender and identity, and the great mysteries of time. In Spring, LFL presented Getting Out by multi-award-winning Louisville playwright Marsha Norman at UofL's Thrust Theater. Getting Out, Marsha Norman’s first professional play, was inspired by the playwright’s time working with juvenile offenders, and creates a stark and heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of a woman trying to start over after 8 years in prison on a murder conviction. That summer, they had the great honor of giving Robin Rice's Alice in Black and White its Off-Broadway premiere at 59E59 Theaters in New York City.
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, “Prevailing Winds” is a splendid piece of documentary theater that gathers up the complex threads of Louisville’s vexed environmental history and weaves an epic, comprehensive narrative that is as deeply moving as it is richly informative," and suggested it should be mandatory viewing for all who live and breathe in Louisville, KY. It won Best Full Length Play in the Arts-Louisville/ Broadway World Awards.
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 Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, hot on the heels of their successful sold-out run Off-Broadway at NYC's 59E59 Theaters. Shannon, Trina and Jen traveled to Guatemala that Spring to celebrate the life of Alicia Moscoso Mendez, long-time original founding member of the Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe, who had recently passed away. Much of the energy of the season was focused on preparing for their ambitious 15th anniversary festival - UnHeard : Outloud, during they performed many plays, including a revival of Crossing Mountains, a new play by Nancy Gall-Clayton, I'm Wearing My Own Clothes, a Ben Gierhart play about consent called Look Me In the Eye, a reading of a play about immigration experiences, created by their EACM Latina women's group, various interactive workshops, and a premiere of LFL's newest original play - Defining Infinity.
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 Grisanti's Patron Saint of Losing Sleep, which explores issues of sexual harassment and domestic violence, at the Mex Theater at The Kentucky Center for the Arts. This dynamic feminist piece, written in an unconventional narrative style that mirrors the disruption of insomnia, follows the surreal chaos that ensues when interventions of a sleep-deprived call center rep snowball out of control. The season closed with an LFL original - We. Are. Here. at Bellarmine University's Black Box Theater at the Wyatt Center for the Arts, exploring the attitudes in our country that brought about such a divisive administration in 2017, and how families and individuals were affected by those attitudes.
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 was no exception.
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 Play Notes from a Bipolar Life. The end of that season was a turning point for their company, as the two plays produced that season would end up being the last 2 plays their then Co-Artistic Director, Kathi E.B. Ellis, would direct for LFL, before tragically passing away from cancer later that summer. Shannon, Trina and Jen also traveled to Guatemala that Spring to celebrate the life of Alicia Moscoso Mendez, long-time original founding member of the Colectivo Teatral Historias de Fe, who passed away in 2019 as well. This season, work began on the creation of The Kentucky Suffrage Project, which was a topic about which Kathi was very passionate.
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 most sense for her to step down from her Co-Artistic Director role while living in Chile. The resilience, flexibility and steadfastness of existing and new company members made all the difference that season and the next, as they adapted to the realities of maintaining performing arts and arts education programming during a global pandemic.
They started the season celebrating the 10th Anniversary of CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide, with a gala dinner and performance at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. They prepared to present a new play with music by long-time LFL collaborator Erin Fitzgerald, Good Grief, which was to open on March 19, 2020 at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, but had to be postponed. It was eventually transformed into a virtual performance in the following season. They also had to postpone their planned premiere of The Kentucky Suffrage Project, which they had planned to tour during 2020 to celbrate the centennial of women's suffrage in the USA. All of their educational and outreach programming, from local schools to trips to Guatemala for the Faith Stories Project, had to be put on hold. They were able to shift some of their after-school, in-school and summer programming into virtual models with the use of Zoom.
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 Fitzgerald's play with music, Good Grief, made into a pre-recorded virtual theatre piece. Just as so many people were meeting online through Zoom during that time, they put their characters, who were part of an irreverent and unconventional grief support group, into Zoom rooms for their meetings as well. As the global community lived into and through that bizarre season of pandemic and lockdown, grief became more present, and this hilarious and touching story became more relevant than ever. Finally, as things started to open up a bit more in the near the middle of 2021 and outdoor performances started to spring up as an alternative to indoor performances, LFL developed the very well-received From Bardstown to Broadway: Suffrage Driving and Walking Tour. In this tour, they shared scenes about local suffragists that were staged near, or sometimes directly in front of, the places that were the homes and/or workplaces of these same women.
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 & Walking Tour, tour narrators and actors led participants on an intersectional journey through the streets of Louisville, Kentucky so that they could trace the footsteps of the local suffrage movement and the courageous women who fought for the right to vote. They travelled to locations such as Simmons College, The Limerick Neighborhood, and the Seelbach Hotel, exploring where these courageous women lived, worked, and met. At each story stop location, audiences experienced live performances retelling stories of the women’s suffrage activism that occurred there. It was the in-person component to LFL’s 2020 virtual series From Bardstown to Broadway: The Road to Votes for Women, and featured several of the same characters and actors. All scenes were devised by LFL based on real life stories, events, and people, including Mary Virginia Cook Parrish, the Nugent family, and Drs. Julia Ingram and Anna Lawrence.
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 THREADS: INTERWOVEN PORTRAITS OF A PANDEMIC, exploring our community’s experiences since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, taking all the necessary precautions for this live in-person indoor performance at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. In 2023, also at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, we presented FLIPPING THE SCRIPT: INTERACTIVE THEATRE TO RESIST BULLYING, including the world premiere of MAC’S WORLD (serving 3rd-5th graders), as well as our fairly new offering EVEN PUPPETS HAVE PROBLEMS (serving Kindergarteners – 2nd graders) and our decades+ long show CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicide, and toured them to Louisville area schools. FROM BARDSTOWN TO BROADWAY: THE ROAD TO VOTES FOR WOMEN was offered to schools as virtual and in-person workshops and performances. We continued to offer GirlSpeak, YouthSpeak and KidSpeak, and premiered another Adelante GirlSpeak/Ellas Hablan performance named SHATTERED: BREAKING THROUGH, which showed the journeys of finding ourselves within the shards after many recent events had caused a sense of community to shatter.
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 decades at this festive event. The supportive fans, family members, friends and fellow artists in the audience heard from our founders, our newest ensemble members, and everyone in between!
Credit where credit is due: The title for this event was in part inspired by our practice of candling in and candling out of many of our rehearsals, devising sessions, performances and meetings. This practice, where at the beginning of our time together we pass the candle and each put in it something we don’t want distracting us, and then at the end we take out something from our time together that we will treasure, was introduced to co-founder Trina Fischer while at Northwestern University working on Iphigenia in Aulis with acting professors Dawn Mora and Ann Woodworth. Also there is the meaning of keeping the flames of hope, dedication to positive changes, and artistic passion burning through many difficult and challenging times.
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 two-week run at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center in early November. Audiences were invited to also creatively respond to the production in a welcoming and safe space.
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 as Clarity Hagan’s THE MOTH AND THE MASKED MAN. Hot on the heels of the announcement that we would be receiving the 2022 Sallie Bingham Award from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, this season was about reflecting, remembering, resisting, revitalizing, and re-envisioning.
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 Fair.
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 create in the present. In this evolving community arts initiative, we collaborated with multiple different Community Partners throughout the Commonwealth to host workshops in which LFL artists led 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 were then shared with fellow participants.
THE ANCESTORS PROJECT workshops continue to be available for seasons to come, in a variety of forms and with a variety of communities. This workshop model will notably be applied to the creation of their original piece inspired by the mythical figure of Lilith herself, which is being created to celebrate their 25th anniversary in 2026.
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, which is a tale of joy, hope, friendship, and resistance during one of history’s darkest moments, seen through the lens of those who helped hide Anne Frank's family. In March, 2024, we premiered a new LFL devised work starring Morgan M. Younge, based on the writings of Affrilachian poet and novelist Crystal E. Wilkinson - LIFECYCLE OF A BLACKBERRY. We wrapped up our production season with a completely revised and re-envisioned 2-act version of DEFINING INFINITY, passion project of co-founder Trina Fischer, exploring the infinite spectrums of sexual orientation and gender identity. That summer, we once again served the Louisville community with offerings such as GirlSpeak, YouthSpeak and KidSpeak, including the creation of yet another impressive Adelante GirlSpeak/EllasHablan show, named DEAR ME: A LETTER TO MY LITTLE GIRL.
Saturday, November 11
The Helpers
by Maggie Lou Rader
Directed by
Karole Spangler
A tale of joy, hope, friendship, and resistance during
one of history’s darkest moments, seen through the lens
of those who helped hide Anne Frank's family.
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 described this show as multi-faceted, enlightening, heart-warming, empowering, moving, emotional, ingenious, eye-opening, extraordinary, inspiring and poignant. Theatre reviewer Keith Waits, of Arts Louisville, wrote: "Lifecycle of A Blackberry is one of the fullest and most complex explorations of the identity of Black women I’ve encountered.. . . Watching Morgan M. Younge occupy the stage in this profoundly moving one-woman show, one is keenly aware of stereotypes being turned inside out, upside down, and entirely exploded." Since its premiere, it has had various performances in the region.
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 were, I am! - an interactive journey, was performed at the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library in December 2024. JUST CAUSE: THE STORY OF THE LEXINGTON SIX, based on the true story of bank robbers, FBI agents, and six young people who made Queer Kentucky history, was performed in March at the MeX Theatre at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Throughout the year, we continued with our IN-SCHOOL programs, our AFTER-SCHOOL programs, and our FAITH STORIES PROJECT in Guatemala, remaining as committed as ever to our Community and Educational Outreach. The season was rounded out by a summer full of touring performances at area public libraries of 3 different "Routes" taken from Rachel Bublitz's THE BOOK WOMEN, a play about the Packhorse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930's. This marked our first time performing a play in which over half the actors in the ensemble were students who have participated for years in our after-school and/or summer programs. While touring the "Routes" of this play throughout the summer, we still managed to run our many SUMMER DRAMA programs. The season wrapped with another culminating event, as we performed the full script of THE BOOK WOMEN to a full house at the Main Branch of the Louisville Free Public Library in August, taking LFL full circle for the season!