LOBA

LOBA is a series of movement pieces inspired by four stories of the wild woman archetype from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run with the Wolves, interspersed with four elemental rituals. The audience will be free to move from room to room as the scores unfold.

Ensemble: Amadea Dyrhsen, Faith Schneider-Reuter, Lucia Contreras, Milana Aernova, Natalie Koski Stillwater & Savanna Torres

Live Music: Lexi Pulido, Lianna Rose Dosik & Zack Stillwater

Tech Design: Zane Schrem-Besnoy

Directed by: Natalie Koski Stillwater

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The Story Behind LOBA

In 2018, I began reading Clarissa Pinkola Estés' Women Who Run With the Wolves while simultaneously writing a series of staged scenes and choreopoems based on the folk tales in the book — woven from intercultural myths and my own lived experience. I came to call the work Once There Was and Once There Was Not, borrowing from a traditional opening line of folk tales. By 2023, the play felt largely complete, and in January 2024 I collaborated with earthbased.media to create a short film based on the work.

After allowing the piece rest, I launched The LOBA Project in fall 2025 as the next evolution of my relationship to the material. A small group of women began gathering regularly to read, feed, move, and tune to the work together. Over time, and built from the bones of Women Who Run With the Wolves and Once There Was and Once There Was Not, an entirely new vision emerged — one that naturally took on the name of its own creative process: LOBA.

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