Purple Porchlight is a woman-owned, Mankato-based theatre and video production company. Through collaborations with partners, PPL aims to: illuminate the stories of local residents, businesses and organizations; and provide a supportive and transformative space for others to develop their creative selves and tell their own stories.
Purple Porchlight is available for hire for your video and theatre needs. Please contact Jill Fischer at [email protected], cell 507-384-7119, or via facebook / messenger to discuss your video needs and pricing.
Purple Porchlight is owned by Jill Fischer, a local theatre artist, video storyteller, writer, mom, and wife. Purple Porchlight seeks engaging and enriching partnerships with others in doing creative work.
Jill was born and raised on a farm in southwestern Minnesota, and spent her college years in the beautiful river city of Winona. After college she settled in the Uptown area of Minneapolis working at the UofM in study abroad and doing theatre on the side, until meeting her husband and shortly thereafter moving to Southern California. In California she worked in the theatre and film industries gathering film credits in sfx production, and establishing a small, collaborative theatre company. In 2001, Jill returned to the midwest to be closer to family. She spent six years in northwest Iowa before landing back in Minnesota, and Mankato, in 2007. Her career spans a long tenure in higher education study abroad and cross-cultural training/learning, as well as various theatre, video and other creative ventures.
Jill has as a BA in theatre and psychology, and an MS in experiential educational. She’s been involved in theatre for over 30 years, and is a founding member of one of Mankato’s newest theatre companies, On The Verge Theatre. She is a lover of a great film and great stories, and has several years experience in film/video production to include working in ‘the industry’ in southern California and as well as her video work in Mankato. She been a judge for the Speeachless Film Festival, and is active in the thriving Mankato arts and culture scene. In video, she enjoys crafting stories in the interview process and editing room, and letting the footage direct her artistic interpretation.
Jill looks forward to collaborating with others in the storytelling process.
WHY PURPLE PORCHLIGHT?
The name Purple Porchlight is derived from a number of influences.
First, it was inspired by Project Greenlight, an HBO documentary created to provide a platform and support for unknown writers and filmmakers to develop and produce their scripts. Early iterations of the name included the word “project”, and there is a similarity in sound.
Second, purple is Jill’s and her mother’s signature color, representing strength, courage, and balance, virtues to which Jill aspires. This venture is dedicated to her mom, Susie Mae, the stead-fast and courageous matriarch of the Fischer clan.
The color purple is a color “intermediate between red and blue”. From BournCreative.com: “Purple combines the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. The color purple is often associated with royalty, nobility, luxury, power, and ambition...[it] also represents meanings of wealth, extravagance, creativity, wisdom, dignity, grandeur, devotion, peace, pride, mystery, independence, and magic.”
Purple also holds a significant place in the bible, particularly in Lydia’s story as shared in Acts. Lydia, a successful female businessperson, sold garments dyed of a color purple known only to that area (Thyatira). Lydia was noted to be a “seller of purple”, a savvy businessperson, an hospitable host, and a woman encomapssing grace and knowledge. She was also Paul’s first European convert to Christianity. There is much to admire and aspire to also in Lydia’s story:
Purple can also be seen as a stronger pink, and, therefore, represents a strong female voice and female empowerment.
Finally, Porchlight comes from Jill’s love of her summer porch, and the gentle, calming light, and lively and friendly conversations of a long summer night, with a brilliant moon, which often take place there. A porch - neither inside nor outside, is a place and space all its own, often meditative and transitional.
Purple Porchlight's mission is to provide a transformative, meditative space and vehicle for artistic creation, and to help illuminate the stories of our lives, organizations, and businesses through video storytelling and theatre.
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Purple Porchlight is about finding one’s vocation - that place where one’s gifts and passion, and the world’s need, meet.
"Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions…..Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. I must listen for the truths and values at the heart of my own identity, not the standards by which I must live-but the standards by which I cannot help but live if I am living my own life." -Parker J. Palmer
