The Theater Cooperative presents The Storm Rider, the gripping story of Lili Bita's own journey through tragedy, triumph, and loss as she raises an abused child to manhood and confronts her inner demons. Join Lili for this most personal and inspiring of her epic Fringe performances. Directed by Ruchama Bilenky.
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The Theater Cooperative, in collaboration with Dysfunctional Theater, is proud to announce its sixteenth collaboration with the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Its offering for this year features the renowned Greek actress Lili Bita in her most revealing role.
The Storm Rider is Lili’s personal memoir of love, loss, and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. Through her unforgettable portrayals of the great heroines of Greek drama—among them, Medea, Clytemnestra, and Lysistrata—Lili has brought to life the passion and sensuality of the theater’s most celebrated and iconic women.
Now, Lili tells her own story. It is, fittingly, one no less vivid, dramatic, and inspiring than that of any of the figures of legend she has brought us before. It is a story of rebellion and liberation against overwhelming odds, of one woman’s struggle to express herself as an artist and an individual and to take her rightful place in the world. It is also a story of the costs of that struggle.
At its center, The Storm Rider is the story of a mother and her son. Conceived in Greece, born in Germany, and raised in America, Philip is the product of a broken home in a broken time—a time of war, social dislocation, and a cultural rebellion that expressed itself, for the young, in sex, drugs, and violence.
Philip’s quest for identity began, as it did for so many, in a rejection of those closest to him. It led him to embrace a Greek story of his own, that of the young adventurer Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on wings of wax and plummeted back to earth. Philip’s wings were nylon, but they melted too in fire as he fell from a California sky, and began a journey back toward love against all odds. His story, and Lili’s, is one unlike any you have ever known. At the same time, it is the story of every mother and son, of every family searching to heal and forgive. Above all, it is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and to the unconquerable power of love—a power beyond death and time.
