Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival

Los Angeles Women's Theatre Festival Website

The Los Angeles Women’s Theatre Festival (LAWTF) was founded in 1993 by Adilah Barnes and Miriam Reed, who met at a California Arts Council Touring Roster Conference in Pasadena and discussed the possibility of giving solo artists within Los Angeles their own festival and circle of support. The duo was shortly joined by Helene McCardle, Joyce Guy, Judith Heineman, Nina Kaufman, and Phylise Smith. Their wide-ranging backgrounds in the performing arts led them to become LAWTF’s seven co-founders.

They were inspired by the already-established Women’s Theatre Festival in Philadelphia, which came to LA in 1992 looking for a satellite in order to expand their organization into what they were hoping to call the “National Women’s Theatre Festival”. However, opinions quickly changed as the Philadelphia Festival decided not to say in Los Angeles, unknowingly allowing the city to come into its own.

“The beauty is that by the time our group came together the following year, I said, ‘Why don’t we pick up the torch where they left off last year? They brought something wonderful here, something we did not have here—let us not end it.’”

It wasn’t long before soloists flocked to the group and sent them submissions in the hopes of being selected for the festival. According to Barnes and Guy, solo acts were less common in the early ’90s, which made LAWTF that much more attractive to the often overlooked theater community in this city, although the acting was not the only category that was showcased. “We wanted a variety of people,” says McCardle, “Not only actors but dancers and movement and poetry—as much of a broad range as we could.”