AN OFFERING:

THE LILITH PROJECT

“I have been researching and creating work based on Lilith – her stories, legends, historical research, creations by other artists (poetry, essays, stories, novels, visual art, music), since at least 2016.  Lilith flies through Sumerian, Mesoamerican, Babylonian, Assyrian, Cannanite, Persian, Hebrew, Arabic and Teutonic mythology. She shows up in two contradictory versions of Creation within the book of Genesis. She is sexuality in all its complexities. She’s Pussy Riot, the Guerrilla Girls and the Patriarchy’s worst nightmare.

From my research I have created a collection of monologues, an ensemble work, and a collaboration.  The Lilith Project is an offering of these creations available for performing; and prompts for devising so that others may create their Liliths.”

– Celeste, 2025

The Offerings:

What D’ya Say, Lilith? Monologues

Solo “talking dance” performance by Celeste with live music by Chip Epsten. (Adaptable to theatres, galleries, living rooms and other imaginative spaces.) The monologues are also available as texts for other performers to work with or adapt.

Hey, Lilith! Ensemble

A choreoscript for ensembles, who are interested in creating a devised interpretation.

Who’s/Whose/Which, Lilith Workshop

Celeste facilitates movement, story, journaling explorations of Lilith materials with individuals, or ensemble, may use to develop their own Lilith material.

Background:

Hey, Lilith! was an ensemble work with script and choreography by Celeste Miller, created in collaboration with the Grinnell College Dance Ensemble/ACTivate, an ensemble of curious movers, singers and actors.  Fall 2019.

The Lilith monologues were first performed inside of a larger work At Water’s Edge/Al Filo del Agua. This international collaboration co-created by choreographers/co-directors Celeste Miller and Dora Arreola, with dancer Miroslava Wilson and members of Mujeres en Ritual Danza Teatro, At Water’s Edge/Al Filo del Agua was developed through a multi-site process at the artists' various locations: Florida and Iowa in the U.S.A., and Baja California in Mexico. Through improvisations, site-specific interventions, personal stories, queer and feminist re-tellings of legends and myths. The project received a National Performance Network Creation fund award (2019) and an NPN Development Fund Award (2021), with co-commissioning partner Art2Action. It was conceived of as a bilingual (English/Spanish) theatre and dance performance with live music, created by three women from different generations and different geographic locations—one in the United States, the other in Mexico, and the third at the edge of the two. At Water’s Edge/Al Filo del Agua premiered at the Museum of Fine Art in St. Petersburg, Florida (June 2022) and then went on to be presented at the Radial Festival in Coslada, Spain (October 2022)and Grinnell College Department of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies in Iowa, (April 2023).

AT WATER’S EDGE/AL FILO DEL AGUA: a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund project co-commissioned by Art2Action, in partnership with Grinnell College. Additional support comes from the NPN Artist Engagement Fund and the Ford Foundation.

AT WATER’S EDGE/AL FILO DEL AGUA received a NPN Documentation & Storytelling grant in fall 2022, to document the performance for the Radial Festival.

Additional funding through a grant from the Network of Ensemble Theaters’ Travel & Exchange Network (NET/TEN), supported by lead funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

AT WATER’S EDGE/AL FILO DEL AGUA is an Art2Action A2A Original.

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