About LAWTF

20th Anniversary Festival Logo

LAWTF was founded in 1993 as an annual venue for solo multi-discipline women performers. Inspired by Philadelphia's Women's Theatre Festival (WTF), LAWTF was conceived following the National Women's Theatre Festival, a satellite program, held at UCLA in 1992. Following the close of the festival, co-founders Miriam Reed and Adilah Barnes convened a group of solo artists to determine how they might collectively support each other. 

LAWTF identifies and satisfies a need for women artists to share their individual voices, both culturally and experientially. Solo artists of diverse disciplines including actors, dancers, story tellers, performance artists, performance poets, sculptors and comedians, are the reason why LAWTF is a celebration of women as artists and cherishes the dignity of women in their roles as daughters, mothers and shapers of the community.

It is hard to believe that what began as a passionate group of women solo artists with the mission of collectively supporting each other, has resulted in:

• Producing over 500 diverse solo artists of excellence from around the globe

• Developing and producing new works in our Wisdom Wednesdays solo writing    workshops

• Expanded outreach programming to touch the lives of over 3000 youth in schools

• Crossed mediums to reach television audiences globally through our cable show

• Bestowing over 50 theatre awards to women in theatre

Thank you for supporting our organization. With the generosity of our funders, Board members, performers, teaching artists, volunteers and you, we have far surpassed our early vision.

Visit our Website: www.lawtf.org