A Few Hundred Other Things you Could Call a Theater Restaurant
The downstairs eatery at Actors Theatre of Louisville is under new management and has been renamed Milkwood, a title reminiscent of a Dylan Thomas play. (It’s only a matter of time before someone uses...
View ArticleA Web of Tale-Spinning
The plays of Humana 37 are a diverse lot, admirably so. But it’s not that hard to pick out a prevailing theme: myths and legends. From the grounded yet magical odyssey of Gnit to the generations-old...
View ArticleDebate: Should critics even be allowed into a new play festival?
Should a new play festival be a nurturing place for playwrights, free of the potentially debilitating glare of outside critics? Or is it beneficial to have scribes chiming in on what they see on stage?...
View ArticleLive blog of #NewPlay Directors in Conversation
Charting the Course; New Play Directions in Conversation
View ArticlePrize! You Can Win!
The Courier-Journal is offering the opportunity to win a prize at tonight’s performance of Appropriate. The contest invites participants to summarize the play in six words by writing that summary on a...
View ArticleFirst Look: 6-Word Summaries of Appropriate
Family reunions aren’t really that fraught… are they? We asked the audience at tonight’s performance of Appropriate to sum up the play in 6 words. Then you posted those snapshots on the lobby wall...
View Article“What is a New Play?”
Is it a new story? Is it something that launches a writer? Is it something that furthers the artform? It’s hard to walk out of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins ‘new play’ “Appropriate” without these questions...
View ArticleCongratulations Nate Pederson
Nate Pederson has won the drawing for a trip to Indianapolis. The drawing was made Friday night at 11 PM from entries submitted at the evening performance of “Appropriate” and picked by Courier-Journal...
View ArticleBackstage Quits Reviews: Some Reviews Of This Announcement
The art of theatre criticism suffered another blow this week when the trade publication Backstage announced it was getting out of the theatre criticism business. [View the story "Backstage Ends All...
View Article“When I get a ‘pop-up’… I just want it to go away!”
Part of the joy of a festival is the seat chatter. Being in the South with a lanyard around your neck marking you as one of the theater tribe, avoiding preshow conversation is impossible. Many...
View ArticlePre-Curtain Revelation
It’s one of those things that, once you see it, you go: of course! Let the young actor, full of hope and aspiration, welcome the audience and thank the funder. I know it’s a Humana tradition to have...
View ArticleTicket Envelope
That’s my ticket envelope with a color coded, visually legible, dare I say useful, schedule of my plays. The rest of the American Theater could learn a thing or two from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville....
View ArticleThe iPhone as Chorus
The 13 year old is sitting on the couch when she pulls out her iphone to post to instagram a photo of a lynching: the woman next to me in the audience gasps. We’re watching Branden Jacobs-Jenkins play...
View ArticleWords as Music: Sleep Rock Thy Brain and the haste of old age
Sleep Rock Thy Brain, the Humana Festival’s arresting trio of sleep-disorder themed one-act plays using stage flight effects — yep, another entry in that hoary old genre! — was commissioned for the...
View ArticleLearning to Fly
March Madness has double meaning. Sure, Kentucky is basketball country, but it’s also home to one of the best regional theatres in the country. Right now, trucks are tearing through the city honking in...
View ArticleNew Play Awards: Lumps-In-Throats
Four playwrights won awards Saturday night in Louisville, and it’s a big deal. Playwrights are the heart of the Humana Festival. Recognition by the American Theatre Critics Association is a big boost....
View ArticleDifferent Angle, Different Play: Cry Old Kingdom‘s mysterious McGuffin
One idea that Center Stage artistic director Kwame Kwei-Armah returned to repeatedly in the panel of Humana Festival play directors he moderated on Friday afternoon is that in the theater, a director’s...
View ArticleTruth In Movement
Martha Graham said, “movement never lies.” This is true not just in dance, but for theatre. On the stage, words can be telling you one thing and the body quite another and – from my perspective as a...
View ArticleHumanaFest in Six Words
Our colleague Lou Harry is one heckuva wordsmith — and he’s always up for a creative challenge. In that spirit, I asked him to write six-word reviews for each show in the festival. Here’s what he...
View ArticleWhat The Hell is a Dramaturg?
An attempt to squeeze the job description into one sentence, or one tweet - with some associated questions about why it's not dramaturge.
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