Looking for Lilith Theatre Company Pilots
New Virtual Theatre Experiences
Zooming In on The Present, The Past, and The Grief of It All
As theatres and performing arts centers close across the nation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Looking for Lilith Theatre Company (LFL) has been exploring alternative theatrical experiences for our mainstage productions and educational outreach programming. We are so grateful to the arts leaders in our community who have been proactive, responsive, and responsible in protecting both artists and audience in this time. In concert with those decisions, LFL has decided we will not be offering live performances in theatre settings for the remainder of 2020.
Throughout our 2019-2020 season, LFL has been developing the The Kentucky Suffrage Project, commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, with the intention to create a full-length newly devised play. The production was set to premiere in August 2020 at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. Instead, LFL will host a series of performances and educational events celebrating the August 26th ratification of the Amendment. The Kentucky Suffrage Project explores women’s suffrage in Kentucky within the context of the national movement. This intersectional project lifts up under-told stories and suffragists of color. It looks at economic, educational, and racial tensions in that movement, as well as challenges and disenfranchisement that still exist today.
LFL is kicking off The Kentucky Suffrage Project with From Bardstown to Broadway: The Road to Votes for Women - a virtual suffrage tour - and a variety of events beginning the week of August 23-28, 2020. We will continue our celebration through Election Day, November 3rd. The first stop on our tour will air on social media and YouTube, where we'll be highlighting events, stories, and underheard voices from Louisville, KY that were part of the women’s suffrage movement. These episodes will contain livestream events, along with monologues and scenes filmed virtually and on-location around the city. In addition, LFL will be hosting virtual Story Circles and Panel Discussions on current and past voting rights and issues. Interactive Suffrage Activity Kits for families will be available for purchase online and at specific pick-up locations. More information will follow and be posted on our website at www.lookingforlilith.org.
Good Grief, a stage play with music, by local playwright and musician Erin Fitzgerald, was originally slated to begin in March at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. On March 12th, actors, designers, and musicians were ready to roll out this hilarious, moving story of an irreverent grief support group. As we planned our load-in at The Kentucky Center on the following day -- the pandemic began!
In a time when our entire human community is rocked with grief and confusion, this story is more relevant than ever before! We want to share with audience members both the pain and the laughter of the universal journey through grief -- different for each individual, and yet common to all. And so, in the spirit of experimentation that is the hallmark of live theatre, we are creating an entirely virtual rendition of Good Griefwhich will premiere in late 2020. Director Shannon Woolley Allison, along with playwright Erin Fitzgerald, music director Clare Hagan, and our stellar design and production team, are working with the cast and musicians as we bring the story to reality in a digital format.
LFL has worked hard this season to pivot our educational and community outreachprograming to an online format. Since March, we have been holding virtual After-School Drama and Summer Drama Camps. This includes our 3-week GirlSpeakprogram in partnership with Adelante Hispanic Achievers and funded by The Norton Foundation. Participants are creating an original virtual performance reflecting on their experiences in 2020, which will be shared in early August. LFL is also participating in the 2020 Virtual Cultural Pass with activities related to The Kentucky Suffrage Project. We will continue all After-School Drama, workshops and camps virtually until it is safe to gather for in-person classes.
As we look ahead to the 2020-21 school year, LFL is excited to announce that we are now an Arts in Education Partner with the Fund for the Arts and are developing virtual theatre experiences for schools that will be available for booking this Fall. These interactive experiences include The Kentucky Suffrage Project and our awarding-winning program CHOICES: an interactive play on cyberbullying and suicideas well as other offerings. LFL will be developing an elementary version of CHOICESto premiere in the 2021-22 school year.
In 2015, LFL launched a Racial Justice Initiative examining racial (in)justice and the intersection of race and gender within our own company, the commonwealth, and the nation. We believe this is timely, radical, and urgent, as we strive to bring our best selves as feminist artists to the struggle for equity and solidarity. We know that healing the racial divides in our society is complicated. Through bravely addressing this topic, we see the importance of the arts & and our roles as artists in dismantling racism and oppression, raising awareness and supporting community conversations to work toward justice and reconciliation.
Since 2001, LFL has used stories as the foundation of our mission, as we create original plays that lift up underheard voices. A Story Circle is formed with a group of people, a facilitator, and a story prompt. Each individual responds, uninterrupted and with a personal story, as the facilitator gently guides the process around the circle. In response to current events, LFL is hosting multiple Virtual Story Circle experiences throughout the year, both public and private. In these Story Circles, we are reflecting on the unique moment that is the shared experience of this global pandemic--and the social revolution that is happening concurrently. LFL is planning on the creation of a devised theatre piece based on these story circles, to premiere in March 2021.
Through partial funding and our longtime membership in Alternate Roots, LFL received training for this initiative through Race Peace (a project of Mondo Bizarroand M.U.G.A.B.E.E. - Men Under Guidance Acting Before Early Extinction), and are proud to share story circle methodology learned from our theatre elders at JuneBug Productions and Roadside Theatre.
The mission of Looking for Lilith Theatre Company is to create productions and programming by examining history and today's world through women’s perspectives and lifting up unheard voices. LFL productions and programming serve adults, youth and children locally, nationally and internationally.
LOOKING FOR LILITH THEATRE COMPANY is a Louisville, KY based not-for-profit, ensemble theatre company, founded in New York City in 2001 by Shannon Woolley Allison and Trina Fischer, both Louisville natives, along with Jennifer Thalman Kepler of Fairfax, VA. All three of the original founders are the current Co-Artistic Directors of LFL. The company also includes Holly Stone, Jill Marie Schierbaum, Sara G. B. Canary, Ebony Jordan, Karole Spangler, Lindsay Chamberlin, Laura Ellis, Meg Caudill, Jane Embry Watts, Adama Abramson, and Dawn Schulz Campbell. LFL is on the touring rosters of the Kentucky Arts Council, the Kentucky Center for the Arts and Alternate ROOTS. They are members of GLI’s Arts and Cultural Alliance, Kentucky Theatre Association, The American Alliance for Theatre and Education, Alternate ROOTS and the Network of Ensemble Theatres. LFL received the 2010 Karen Willis Award from the Kentucky Theatre Association for artistic excellence and commitment to changing Kentucky through theatre. LFL has also been recognized by the International Centre for Women Playwrights with their 50/50 Award for commitment to producing women playwrights. LFL's original devised script, Prevailing Winds, was the recipient of the 2016 Arts-Louisville/Broadway World Awards for Best Full Length Play.
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Looking for Lilith Theatre Company and Teatro Tercera Llamada present Karen Zacarias' Just Like Us, March 2019 at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. Photo by Michael Taggart.
Looking for Lilith Theatre Company presents Eli Keel's' Note, June 2019 at The MeX Theater at The Kentucky Center. Photo by Holly Stone.