I'm Carol wartenberg I'm the founder and artistic director of the lesbian thespians when I retired um I had an opportunity to start up a theater troop and I thought well why not can't be that hard let's do it reminds me of the old days of Mickey Rooney when he used to say to all the kids in his Mickey Rooney Bunch let's do a play and they all would just make a play so that's how we started out and over time we've grown and grown and grown with lots of talent lots of people that are are really excellent directors actors dancers singers and all of that kind of thing we we've just been very very fortunate and I've learned so much and now I have people that are so much more talented than me what what did I say I have no ego in this except for to put on the very best production for lesbian thespians and for our audiences we're so excited to have you here today this is a world premiere of the boxes we keep um it was written by Anne Valentino she won our play contest last year and we're producing her play this year we're just so thrilled to be part of of helping our community grow and get better and better welcome thank you we're really about providing women with opportunities to perform we also are looking at having a spoken word group and we just want to give women opportunities to follow the Arts that maybe they didn't have Once Upon a Time so it's really exciting we have emerging playwrights we have emerging directors we have emerging actors and we're so excited to be providing women with these opportunities to be able to get on stage and per form in front of their peers in fact one of the actors said it's the first time that she's been able to be in a lesbian play in front of lesbians and and how much that meant to her as far as her gender identity and her sexual identity and and that kind of thing that she was so excited about that opportunity we've had transgender women perform with us we have cisgendered women we of course have lesbian and bisexual women um and we actually had men in some of our performances so you know we really try to um be as diverse as we can and to be as inclusive as we can and this and these how do I look now lesbian thesbian is about bringing the lesbian Community together or those who identify with being a lesbian or those who are allies to the lesbian Community to be able to perform in the Arts tell our stories engage the community and highlight how brilliant we are from day to day with just everyday life issues you bite your serpent like tongue my serpent like tongue it allows for anyone to come and sit and hear stories hear funny stories yes it starts out with us inviting our friends our families but then we share with our neighbors we share with strangers and say guess what there's a lesbian thesbian company cuz there's always been a a play on those words anyway and people find it engaging it's like I want to come check that out the inmates have control of the Asylum listen lesbian thespians is it means new to me this is the first uh show I'm actually working with lesbian thespians before and really when I came in and when we started talking and I got to talk with Carol the founder who is just amazing she loves everything she gets to do and she's wonderful it's it's inclusivity she goes out of her way her and her board they go out of their way to include as many new people as possible people who maybe don't do theater as much people who do theater all the time they love love love everything so I think lesbian thespians is kind of trying to include everything everyone get everyone to have new experiences different experiences and different people and ideas and it's just it's a creative web it's it's very creative you know I'm cool like that I see I have met so many amazing people and heard so many incredible stories and I'm really excited to be supporting a brand new production this is the result of the winner of a playwriting contest so it's very cool to be among the first people to ever see this play and it's been really exciting and really fun being part of it motivation the fact is there's a lot of people here tonight that I have never seen before in the community never and it's nice that people are coming out to support it it's great because it brings in new people all the time and because it's so supportive of women in the community and that's incredibly important to me you know there was a period where the L didn't mean much in the in the gay community there was a period where it started with the gay and lesbian community and over time just through activism that L became first it became the number one thing it did not put men second but it created a space for us to be included and inclusive of other identities as well coming to Florida with lesbian lesbians has opened up my whole world of being more free before we just had to look up to Ellen and Rosie but now we are looking up to organizations such as ours you know that help us to blend with each other and just have fun and and communicate and just party with each other really and truly