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 School on revising our CHOICES script to be more appropriate for younger students. The resulting new middle school version of CHOICES was then toured with those same students as actors in the performances.
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 FABRIC, FLAMES, AND FERVOR: GIRLS OF THE TRIANGLE at Manhattan Theatre Source (where we had premiered our 2nd play back in 2003), just three blocks from the original factory. n preparation, LFL performed the show at Shelby County Community Theatre in Kentucky. When performing in Manhattan, it was especially poignant and heartbreaking when we found ourselves performing the scenes of the tragic fire itself for the matinee performance - knowing that as we enacted jumping out the windows of the upper floors of the factory, that the real women, men and girls that jumped to their deaths in the actual fire had been doing so exactly 100 years ago, from the windows of a building just steps away, across Washington Square Park from where we were performing.
Early that summer, we again produced an already-scripted show, J. Shafer’s HUNTING THE BASILISK, which explores themes of truth, history, and the often-overlooked narratives of women. This new play, reminiscent of Beckett's Endgame, brings together four women from different time periods (from the French renaissance to the Civil War to the early 2000s), who find themselves trapped in a limbo-esque house together, with the basilisk outside. Trying to avoid this danger, the women stumble upon locked books containing their life stories, which they must explore together.
Late that summer, we were invited to Fort Knox to perform the suffragist-themed short play, FAILURE IS IMPOSSIBLE by Rosemary H. Knower in honor of Women's Equality Day on August 26th. This play brought together texts from many of the most important activists fighting for women's suffrage over the decades leading up to the passing of women's voting rights in the USA through the 19th Amendment in 1920. This constitutional Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, and certified on August 26, 1920, prohibits the U.S. federal and state governments from denying citizens the right to vote on the basis of sex.