Libby Skala  Libby Skala (April 20, 1967–December 1, 2019) was an American actress and writer best known for plays about her Austrian-American relatives. She wrote four one-woman shows, including "Lilia!", "A Time to Dance", and "Felicitas", which she performed across North America and Europe. Skala was the eldest daughter of Mary and Martin Skala, a Canadian textile designer and Austrian-born financial writer for "The Christian Science Monitor". Her father's mother was Austrian-American actress Lilia Skala. Libby Skala was born in Englewood, New Jersey, and moved to Darien, Connecticut, with her parents and her younger sister Emily when she was nine. After graduating from Oberlin College (also her father's alma mater) with a degree in English Literature/Theatre Emphasis, and attending cattle calls in New York, Skala moved to Seattle where she earned her union cards and studied with Gary Austin, founder of the improvisational theatre company The Groundlings. In 1995, months after her grandmother Lilia Skala's death, Gary Austin encouraged Skala to write a one-woman show about her Academy Award-nominated actress grandmother. The show "Lilia!" was developed in Austin's workshop and went on to receive rave reviews internationally. It ran successfully off-Broadway at the Arclight Theatre, produced by Mirror Repertory Company; at The Groundlings Theatre in Los Angeles (presented by Gary Austin); at Pacific Theatre in Vancouver; at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland; in London, sponsored by the Austrian Cultural Forum; in Tbilisi, Georgia; and in Berlin and Dresden, Germany. Skala's second play "A Time to Dance" won "Best Solo Performer Award" at the London Fringe Theatre Festival. It portrays the story of Skala's great aunt Elizabeth "Lisl" Polk, a pioneer of dance therapy, and is based on a series of interviews recorded while Skala was researching "Lilia!". The play has toured North America and Europe. Skala collaborated with her husband, musician Steven May, to create her third show, "Felicitas", which was premiered at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2014. May created the mandolin music score which he performs live on stage to underscore Skala's story of her great-aunt Felicitas Sofer, a highly trained professional baby nurse who migrated from Vienna, Austria, to join her sisters Lilia and Lisl in America.