News
Lilia! Graces the Longyear Portrait Gallery Stage
March 14, 2011
On Saturday evening, February 12, more than 100 guests from throughout New England gathered in the Longyear Portrait Gallery to see Lilia!, a heart-warming one-woman show by Libby Skala. Following the play guests participated in a special question and answer session with the playwright/actress, and enjoyed dessert in the Museum’s Wingaway Foyer.
This play captured the indomitable spirit of Libby’s grandmother, Lilia Skala, Austria’s first female architect and a European stage star. Lilia fled Nazism in 1939 and worked her way out of a New York zipper factory to an acting career culminating in an Oscar nomination for her performance in Lilies of the Field. In the 1920s, Lilia was introduced to Christian Science in Vienna. Possessing a high opinion of her own intellect, she took it upon herself to “single-handedly blow wide open this American swindle – a religion founded by a woman!” After vigorously studying the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, without finding holes in Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings, she became a devoted student of Christian Science.
Libby has performed Lilia! to sold-out houses across North America, in London, at the Edinburgh Festival, and in Berlin and Dresden, Germany.
rainbow hue.
I wish to be a window pane
To let the sun shine through.
A clean pane, a clear pane,
That’s what I long to be –
Free from temperament and
personality.
I’d have love shining
through me
So that my friends would say
Not, “What a lovely piece of glass,”
But, “What a lovely day.”
-Katherine Collins
“This poem is like a motto and professional slogan to me.” – Lilia Skala
