Meet The Director - Lily Wolff!
Lily Wolff directs the NNPN rolling world premiere of Stephanie Alison Walker's THE MADRES for Shrewd Productions.
A message from Lily
Stephanie's stunning play stuck with me from the first time I heard it read almost two years ago. Carlo Garcia and Mary Alice Carnes performed in that reading and join us now for NNPN Rolling World Premiere. It stuck with them, too. I think this play inevitably touches everyone who hears it. Although it's set in a very specific place and time, Mary Alice likes to remind us in rehearsal - history repeats itself. And we just don't seem to learn. Or maybe we just don't listen. We desperately need this story in this place and time. Right here. Right now. The echoes are impossible to ignore. The message is urgent and the storytelling is damn good. Duncan Macmillan, who wrote LUNGS, says that really good drama is, at its most essential, just people making decisions in real-time. That's what Stephanie has put on stage. Three dimensional characters, making split-second decisions with life or death consequences. She transports us to 1978 Buenos Aires and we bear witness. Stephanie brings the unseen to the forefront, reveals the invisible front line - just as las Madres de Plaza de Mayo did in front of the Casa Rosada in 1977. Just as people are doing all over this country today. Watching this play, we inevitably ask ourselves: What would I do? What am I doing? Right now? What would I risk? Is it enough? The Madres still march in the Plaza de Mayo to this day.
About Lily Wolff
Lily is a British-American theatre-maker with a passion for new plays. Past directing projects include: CRY IT OUT (Theatre En Bloc), A BRIGHT ROOM CALLED DAY (Southwestern University), THE EFFECT (Capital T Theatre), FAHRENHEIT 451 (Different Stages), LUNGS (Hyde Park Theatre), AS YOU LIKE IT (Shrewd Productions), OUT OF INK and THE ONE MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL (Scriptworks), 14/48 FESTIVAL, GIDION’S KNOT (Capital T Theatre, New Directions 2014), STOP KISS (UT Lab Theatre). Developmental workshops and readings include: DEADLY NIGHTSHADE (Candyce Rusk), THE SECRETARY (Kyle John Schmidt), ROSETTA (Candyce Rusk and Craig Toungate), NEVER SUCH RAIN, SWIVET and COLD WATER ARMY (Tegan McLeod), VISIBLE FROM FOUR STATES (Barbara Hammond), and RATTLERS (Johnna Adams). Lily has Assistant Directed at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, Cornerstone Theatre Company and locally for Capital T Theatre, Whirligig and ZACH Theatre. UK projects include: EAT ME: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MENU, a site-specific dinner event on the river Thames (creator/chef/performer, Cadogan Pier); THE ACCIDENTAL EXPERIENCE (performer, The Roundhouse); CARGO, a collaboratively-devised, all-female performance (director/deviser/performer, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Battersea Mess & Music Hall, Kerrera Island, Scotland). Lily received the Austin Critic's Table Best Direction award for LUNGS in 2017 and is a graduate of UT Austin and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She will be joining the Alley Theatre as Literary Manager in September and is immensely grateful to the Austin theatre community for ten brilliant years.
