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Theatre - Articles |
| LOS ANGELES WOMEN’S THEATRE FESTIVAL CELEBRATES 15TH ANNIVERSARY |
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2008 is a banner year for the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival (LAWTF). Women performers from around the world will join hands to support the Festival for this banner year. Performers will fly in from India, the Netherlands and from across the United States including powerful multicultural and multi-disciplined artists from New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Florida and the Bay Area. This celebratory year will take place at the El Portal Theatre located at 5269 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. The year’s overall theme is ONWARD AND UPWARD! Each of the programs over the four day, six program celebration from March 27-30th will have their individual themes based on the curated artists.
Rewind to 1993.
The month was July of 1993. Adilah Barnes and Miriam Reed met serendipitously at a California Arts Council Touring Roster Conference in Pasadena. The two discovered they were kindred spirits, both performing and touring historical women. Adilah’s seven figures span from slavery with Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman to contemporaries Angela Davis and Maya Angelou. Miriam portrays strong activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
By the end of the conference they attended, Miriam Reed came up with an idea that would prove to be the seed planted for the Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival. When asked if there were any announcements from the attendees, Miriam suggested that all women solo artists join her and Adilah to explore how they might be able to collectively support each other. Barnes and Reed knew they were on to something when they were bombarded by actors, dancers, storytellers, performance artists, performance poets. singers, and more.
Two women in the assembled group offered the Burbank Little Theatre as a place for the first meeting. The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival was born that evening. Fashioned after the Women’s Theatre Festival in Philadelphia, the oldest women’s solo festival in the country, LAWTF took the torch from where they left off in 1992. They had come to Los Angeles to produced a solo festival at UCLA with the intention of creating a national women’s theatre festival with satellites throughout the nation. The Women’s Theatre Festival vision was never fully realized after their stint here but they paved the way for LAWTF.
The mission of LAWTF has always been to produce women solo artists and their original works. Over the last 15 years, the Festival has now produced well over 400 solo artists from around the globe and since 2002 has actualized its vision of an outreach program that serves solo writers and youth. Wisdom Wednesdays, its adult solo writing workshop, has developed and presented over 50 actor/writers on LAWTF’s mainstage as homegrown, organic works in their Hot Off the Press programming.
Since 2005, over 3000 youth have now been served in partnerships with Creative Kids After School Program, Enrichment Works in school programming, Belmont High School performances and the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Service Program.
The Festival has also crossed mediums by taking the Festival to public access television audiences throughout Los Angeles County. The show, “Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival: On the Air!” also streams globally by internet. Hosted by Marla Gibbs, LAWTF has taken the Festival to Los Angeles homes as well as the world.
Fast forward to 2008.
The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival has far exceeded the original vision of the Founding Circle of 1993 by expanding its involvement in the community. To become a part of LAWTF as a volunteer, please call (818) 760-0408 or visit LAWTF’s website at www.lawtf.com.
For tickets to this year’s exciting line-up at the El Portal Theatre, call (866) 811-4111 or go online to www.elportaltheatre.com.
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