ALLEGANY, N.Y. — Playwright and actress Libby Skala will perform her one-woman show “Lilia!” at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 16, at St. Bonaventure University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts.
It is the sixth performance in the Friends of Good Music’s 2017-18 performance season.
In advance of this theatrical performance, the Quick Center will screen the film “Lilies of the Field,” for which Lilia Skala received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, at 7 p.m. Thursday.
Libby Skala has enchanted audiences internationally with critically acclaimed solo plays about her notable Austrian family: “Lilia!,” about her grandmother, Lilia Skala; “A Time to Dance,” about her dance therapy pioneering aunt Elizabeth Polk; and “Felicitas,” about her great-aunt Lizi, a tough-love baby nurse.
Austrian-born Lilia Skala was one of the first women to graduate in architecture and engineering from the University of Dresden. She then worked as an architect in Vienna. Buoyed by a resolute faith, she fled the Third Reich for America.
Lilia Skala labored in a New York City zipper factory before working her way to an acting career on Broadway and the silver screen. She appeared on countless television shows and serials, including “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” between 1952 and 1985. And as Grand Duchess Sophie, she kept company on Broadway with Ethel Merman in “Call Me Madam.”
She died in New York in 1994. “Lilia!,” ran off-Broadway, where it was produced by Mirror Repertory Company, and for three weeks in London, sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum London.
Single tickets for this performance are $20 at full price, $16 for St. Bonaventure employees and senior citizens, and $5 for students. The performance is partially funded by the New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant Program supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state Legislature, and administered by the Cattaraugus County Arts Council.
