• 
• 
Trillium Performing Arts Collective manifested in 1982 when Carli Mareneck, Beth White and Lorrie Monte began working together. White and Monte met at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado in the years before they both migrated to West Virginia. White arrived first, and in 1981 Monte followed. Both wanted to create dance, but needed other people to perform, so they began teaching dance classes in whatever spaces would accommodate them. They quickly connected with Carli Mareneck, a dancer who was teaching classes in Union. The three women began rehearsing and performing throughout Greenbrier and neighboring counties.
In 1982, Trillium was officially incorporated in West Virginia and moved into studio space on Washington Street in Lewisburg to continue teaching classes and choreographing original dance. In 1992, Trillium received federal non-profit status with the help of Beth White, Elizabeth Janeczek and Jo Weisbrod.
Trillium quickly grew and established itself as an outlet for many local women and men looking to fulfill their creative needs. Dance performances and movement theater served as a great way for many of the area’s artists to express ideas and political views. Musicians began to get involved and live music was soon featured in the shows.
The Trillium artists soon realized the need for an informal forum for artists of all levels to perform and so they created the Friday Night Alive! series, which continues today. Friday Night Alive! began as an open-mic style venue to allow dancers to show works-in-progress, musicians to unveil new songs, and others to perform their comedic, and often political, skits. Friday Night Alive! is now held eight times a year at the Lewis Theatre.
In addition to Friday Night Alive!, Trillium artists also choreographed and produced professional dance concerts on a regular basis. For twenty-six years, they performed at least one concert of original work a year using the spaces available, from Carnegie Hall to the Greenbrier Valley Theatre. In fact, they followed those performance spaces as they grew from a condemned building, in Carnegie Hall’s case, and a fledgling barn venue, as was Greenbrier Valley Theatre’s original performance space, to the well funded and state-of-the-art spaces they are now.
Although grateful for the spaces, Trillium had to schedule around these organizations existing programming, which limited the number of performance opportunities. As more artists joined in and more performance time was needed, Trillium dreamed of finding a venue of their own. In 2007, three board members, Ann Davis, Lin Preston, and Larry Levine, took a giant step toward making that dream a reality by forming ALL Arts, LLC., a limited liability company whose pooled resources allowed for the complete purchase of the Lewis Theatre building. ALL Arts serves as the managing body for the facility, including the movie theater itself. In turn, Trillium has become the artist-in-residence organization for the theater. They also began a capital campaign to renovate the theatre into a space suitable for live performances. By late 2009, the first phase of renovation was complete, allowing Trillium to host its first concert production in its new home at the Lewis Theatre.
In the fall of 2008, Trillium took steps to increase its service to the community in the role of education by taking over the administration of the Dance Studio. Formerly owned by Trillium artists Carli Mareneck and Beth White, the Dance Studio taught dance and creative movement to 3-18 year olds, as well as classes for adults in modern dance, ballet, improvisation and yoga. Now called the Trillium School for Performing Arts, classes held at Carnegie Hall and the Lewis Theatre.
The original founders have seen the organization evolve from a haphazard entity, without its own space or creed, to a full-fledged non-profit organization. In the mean time, many new artists have joined forces to create original dance and movement theater performances. Our collective is now comprised of artists, teachers, students, a large band of community performers, board members, donors, staff, and an ever-growing audience. Each group is as vital as the next in helping us fulfill our mission to encourage artistic expression and creative opportunities through education, participation and performance.