I am no longer that girl...    

Alecia Whitaker attended the Governor’s School for the Arts as a sophomore in 1995, studying Creative Writing under the instruction of Frank X Walker and Anne Shelby. The following summer, Ellen Hagan attended the same program as a junior, studying Creative Writing with teachers Frank X Walker and Kelly Ellis.

Just missing each other in their youth, Whitaker and Hagan were destined to meet. In 1997, as freshmen at the University of Kentucky, they met on the first day of classes… in an audition turned ugly for the both of them. Sensing a kindred spirit (writers/actors who should perhaps avoid musical theatre), they began what has now become a beautiful friendship and working relationship.

In their sophomore year, they collaborated with four other women to create their first one-act show entitled The Man Chronicles. Whitaker went on to the semi-finals at the American College Theatre Festival, winning recognition for an original one-act play, Mixed Messages. Hagan penned an incredible one-woman show, Skin This, which chronicles, in a humorous and tragic way, the pressures felt by a young high school woman.

After receiving her BFA Theatre, Hagan then graduated and moved to New York to earn her MFA in Creative Writing. Whitaker stayed around one more year to earn a BFA Theatre and also a BA in Advertising (copywriting). Whitaker spent that summer in New York interning at The Ad-Store, but finding herself more comfortable on the stage of the Nuyorican Poets Café, where she experimented with slam poetry.

Though Hagan has been in New York for three years and Whitaker remains in Kentucky, the ladies have held tight to the working relationship they cultivated in college. In the summer of 2002, the ladies were invited to perform for the Governor’s School for the Arts - an honor - Whitaker performing some of her new poetry and Hagan featuring a new one-woman show entitled, America What? I Dream an America.

Feeling how good it was to be performing together again, they began grant-writing, receiving funding from both the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Toyota Alumni Performance Fund (GSA). This allowed the women to write an original two-woman show Becoming Woman, a coming-of-age piece using their personal stories to address issues pertinent to high schoolers. Following the 50 minute show, Whitaker and Hagan lead 50 minute workshop to help their Kentucky high school women tell their own stories (some of which have been used for their portfolios).

Since their debut performance at the Governor’s School for the Arts in 2003, the ladies have performed Becoming Woman for over 750 people.

To find out more information about each of us:

Ellen Hagan

Alecia Whitaker