Next in our “Meet the Artist” series is the lovely Lisa Kitchens!
Lisa giving a presentation with a photo of the Arctic projected on the wall behind her.
Lisa Kitchens (she/her) is a theatre artist and nature-based educator. with over ten years of professional theatre experience as a creator, actor, writer, and educator. She has a particular interest in the connections we share with the natural world and how those connections influence our lives.
Lisa is the founder of Earth Stories Initiative, an initiative that uses storytelling and art to connect young children living in cities to the natural world. Lisa was a 2018 recipient of the Voices of the Wilderness Artist Residency through the USDA Forest Service in Alaska. From this residency, she created an original play, The Edge of the Earth, which was performed at the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art and Storytelling. She has been selected to join The Arctic Circle Residency in Svalbard, Norway next April from which she will create a new play about the Arctic for Earth Stories.
Lisa is an ensemble member with Spellbound Theatre and Flying Leap Productions. She’s a certified Forest School Teacher through the Eastern Regional Association of Forest and Nature Schools and teaches with Brooklyn Forest School. She holds an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater and a BFA from The University of Evansville.
We asked Lisa three questions about her work:
What is a memorable moment you have had on a Flying Leap Project?
Lisa observing a performance of The Garden, watching a family with a young child gleefully holding two sticks.
“During the developmental period of the garden, we had a workshop showing in Sunset Park, which at the time was my neighborhood, and we had the people who were on the list. And we, of course, expected that others from Mary might trickle in if they saw something interesting. And I remember so many families trickling in and watching this performance. And in particular, I remember there was a section of the garden where children are given sticks to like drum on stumps and on the earth. And this one child, with such joy came and started drumming on the stumps in the middle of the of the performance, and continued to drum after the other children had sat back down with their families. This child just stayed there in the center with such delight and such wonder, it was just a magical moment of theater.”
What is a value that is important in your work?
“I find myself really drawn to experiential, process driven work. I love starting out with a the seed of an idea or a curiosity and exploring with others or through a series of, you know, independent exercises, exploring where that takes me and creating from that place, I am very process driven when it comes to my own personal work, both collaborative and independent projects, and a value I find very important in my work is creating work that is grounded and rooted in the earth and in values of belonging to and with the earth.”
Lisa with a young child, smiling and offering a crayon as they look down at a large paper roll on the floor.
What is something artistically that you are working on?
A project I'm currently working on that has been growing for a long time and is entering a new phase is a children's story. It is about a girl and a wave and their companionship and how they both are interrelated. I'm looking forward to the day I can share it with you!