Last week or so we bid our final goodbyes to Lili Bita who died in a tragic accident. Lila was a talented actress, writer, and pianist who I knew through my partner Barbara McPherson who drummed with Lili at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival for nearly twenty-years. The following is an early collaboration between Lili and Barbara in Lili’s production of Medea.
Below the YouTube video is a creative obituary and a poem that I received on a poetry e-mail list. You can scroll down to read more.
Lili Bita, a prominent figure in Philadelphia’s cultural life for more than thirty years as an author and actress and whose career won international acclaim, passed away on February 12. Lili, a native of Greece, emigrated to the United States after performing leading roles on the Greek stage, including ancient drama, Shakespeare, Ibsen, O’Neill, and others. With her one-woman shows, “The Greek Woman Through the Ages,” “Body Light,” and “Freedom or Death,” she toured widely in America and abroad, and as Artistic Director of the Theater Cooperative, which she founded with her husband and collaborator, Robert Zaller, she was a fixture for nearly two decades at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The Greek government sent her to India in 1995 as an ambassador of Hellenism, and in 2014 she was inducted into the Hellenic Authors Society, the oldest and most prestigious literary organization in Greece, in recognition of her lifetime achievement.
Lili was the author of a score of books of verse, fiction, memoir, and literary translation, which won praise from such figures as Nikos Kazantzakis and Anais Nin. Her last six books, including her collected love poems, Fleshfire, were published by Somerset Hall Press of Boston, from which they are available. Commemorative events for Lili are being planned for the Rotunda, the Manayunk Arts Center, and other venues.
Lili was a figure admired and beloved in equal measure, and her passion for life, love, and the exercise of her art was equaled as well by her care, kindness, and generosity of heart and spirit. The poem she concluded all her public readings with was “Credo”:
The young pines
guard the narrow path
to the grotto.
The sea greets us with a blast of emerald
and a hidden tremor of wings.
The air is vivid with dawn.
You slide into my crotch.
A wave breaks over my breasts.
Slow poison bleeds into my veins.
When I was a girl
I believed that men and women
copulate only once
because their ecstasy
must kill them.
The stones grind into my back.
Nakedness is not enough.
The spilled entrails
the crushed bones
the blood and urine mixed
and drunk into the earth
would not be enough.
Before I knew
the facts of life
I believed that men and women
copulate only once
and die of their pleasure.
Make me believe it again.
What I didn’t say to my student is that I find LGBT books to be more interesting. I want to know how people survive – and often thrive — outside the box in a culture that is based on conformity. I didn’t say this, because my student might find to be a defensive statement. Maybe it is. Perhaps it is because I am a lesbian that I find diversity to be more interesting. I am the first to admit that I like to see myself reflected on the page. But I am also captivated by the lives of imaginary characters who are different than me.
Janet Mason, author 