This year will mark the 25th anniversary of Fifth Third Bank’s sponsorship of holiday favorites Dracula and A Christmas Carol. Thanks to strong community support, thousands of audience members each season enjoy thrills, chills and holiday memories with their families at Actors Theatre.

Actors Theatre kicks off the Brown-Forman Series with Hype Man: a break beat play by Idris Goodwin, a Humana Festival alumnus (How We Got On) and producing artistic director of Louisville’s Stage One Family Theatre. Beginning September 11 in the Victor Jory Theatre, Hype Man is the story of an ambitious hip-hop trio who confront their relationships to music, racism, and each other when the shooting of a young black man makes headlines. TheaterMania described Hype Man as “a loud and clear clarion call for blacks and whites, cops and civilians, and everyone to get on up and openly, honestly discuss America’s ongoing problems of racial violence and inequality.”

Actors Theatre and award-winning creative ensemble Fiasco Theater will untangle Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure with “song, sex, slapstick, scandal, and settling scores” (New Haven Independent).  Fiasco company members Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld will co-direct in the Pamela Brown Auditorium as part of the Bingham Signature Shakespeare Series; performances begin October 9.

Award-winning playwright Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves will kick off 2020 at Actors Theatre. The titular “Wolves” are a high school girls’ soccer team, and the play follows their warm-ups as they navigate questions big and small, vividly capturing “the scary, exhilarating brightness of raw adolescence” (The New York Times). Critically acclaimed for its incisive voice and heart, and described by Forbes as “a milestone for women in entertainment,” The Wolves was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2016 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Yale Drama Series Prize. Performances begin January 8 in the Bingham Theatre.

The season continues with Jubilee, a moving and uplifting a cappella tribute about America’s earliest and most famous singing group. Described as a “Band of Angels,” The Fisk Jubilee Singers toured the country and Europe, using their glorious voices to sing songs in the hope of raising funds to save their school in Nashville, Tennessee. Written and directed by Tazewell Thompson with vocal arrangements by Dianne Adams McDowell, Jubilee features more than 36 spirituals performed by a company of 13 talented performers. Jubilee begins performances on January 29 in the Pamela Brown Auditorium.

Actors Theatre will celebrate the holidays with Louisville’s favorite traditions: Fifth Third Bank’s Dracula, adapted by William McNulty, September 6—October 31, and Fifth Third Bank’s A Christmas Carol, adapted by Barbara Field, November 23—December 23.  Joe Mantello’s theatrical adaptation of David Sedaris’s hilarious The Santaland Diaries is back by popular demand; the irreverent audience favorite will play in the Victor Jory Theatre, November 24—December 23.

The 2019-2020 Season will culminate in the 44th Humana Festival of New American Plays, March 1—April 12, 2020. The Humana Festival is a world-renowned event, and an opportunity to see groundbreaking, brand-new work by the American theatre’s most talented playwrights. The Festival is underwritten by the Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Humana, Inc. The 44th Humana Festival lineup will be announced in November 2019.

The 2019-2020 Season will once again feature a season of performances produced by the Theatre’s Professional Training Company (PTC) including the New Voices Young Playwrights Festival. The PTC season often includes free or low-cost performances presented outside the Theatre’s downtown complex, part of the Theatre’s commitment to promoting brave and inclusive work. The 2019-2020 PTC season will be announced in early September.

The 2019-2020 Season is generously supported by Brown-Forman, the official season sponsor, with additional support from Fund for the Arts, the Kentucky Arts Council and Yum! Brands, which supports the student matinee series.

2019-2020 Season Ticket Packages are on sale now, with 6- and 8-Play Brown-Forman Series Season Ticket Packages starting at $139. Brown-Forman Season Ticket Holders receive a host of benefits, including free admission to exciting Actors Theatre events, 30% off additional ticket purchases and discounted parking. Packages are also available for seniors, educators and individuals 35 years of age and under. Single tickets for Fifth Third Bank’s Dracula and A Christmas Carol as well as The Santaland Diaries will go on sale on July 9 and the entire 2019-2020 Season will go on sale on July 31. Actors Theatre’s Box Office is located at 316 West Main Street, Louisville, KY, 40202, and can be reached by calling 502.584.1205.

Actors Theatre is committed to making the theatregoing experience accessible to everyone and offers open captioned, audio-described and sensory-friendly and relaxed performances throughout the season. Large print programs, assistive listening devices and sensory sensitivity kits are available at every performance. For a full performance schedule and more information about Actors Theatre’s access services, visit ActorsTheatre.org/accessibility.
ovember 2019.

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This year, 836 students submitted plays in consideration for the New Voices Festival. This includes students from 32 schools in 6 counties in Kentucky and Indiana. Selected plays for the festival were chosen by a group of 37 readers, made up of Actors Theatre staff and volunteers. The winning playwrights represent seven different high schools.

This year’s festival marks the first time a winner has been chosen from Washington County, KY (Washington County High School) and the second time a winner has been selected from the Kentucky School for the Blind.

The festival is produced by the Education Department at Actors Theatre. Each piece is assigned a director, a dramaturg, a design team, and a group of actors from the Professional Training Company (PTC), who work in conjunction with the playwrights to bring these pieces to life. Together, each team participates in workshops, production meetings, and a full rehearsal process before the festival in April. Each year, the plays produced in the festival are also published in the New Voices Young Playwrights Anthology.

Actors Theatre’s Professional Training Company is generously supported by a significant grant from The Roy Cockrum Foundation. The $1.2 million award supports grants over a ten-year period for each apprentice during the nine-month program, and enables year-round employment for the program’s leadership. Founded by Roy Cockrum, the Foundation supports world-class performing arts projects in not-for-profit professional theatres throughout the United States. The Foundation considers grants by invitation only and is dedicated to helping non-profit theatres reach beyond their normal scope of activities and undertake ambitious and creative productions.

The selections for this year’s 14^th Annual New Voices Young Playwrights Festival include:

The Wilting
by Gabriel Cora (Floyd Central High School)

The Circle of Leaf
by Sophie Ice (Assumption High School)

Purple
by Katelyn Spencer (Washington County High School)

Misaligned Skies
by Ariana Tulay (Moore Traditional High School)

What’s More Important
by Claire Binford (Male High School)

Luna
by Maddie Gaughan (Youth Performing Arts High School)

Sickcom
by Sara Sandfort (Male High School)

A Man of Dance
by Corbin Gravil (Kentucky School for the Blind)

Honorable Mentions:

Just Another Hunt
by Abigail Scott (New Albany High School)

Oh Crap! Bees Are Attacking Our Airbase
by Quinton Byrd (Jeffersonville High School)

Listing Information

14^th New Voices Young Playwrights Festival

An Evening of New Work

Written by Local High School Students

Sponsored by LG&E, KU Energy and the Robert W. Rounsavall Jr. Family Foundation

Actors Theatre of Louisville

316 W. Main Street

Louisville, KY 40202

Bingham Theatre

April 23, 24, 25 at 7:00 p.m.

Tickets are $5, plus sales tax and fees.

Tickets will be available starting in April.

Call the Box Office at 502.584.1205 or visit ActorsTheatre.org.

The post Actors Theatre’s 2018-19 Season Culminates with the 14th Annual New Voices Young Playwrights Festival appeared first on Actors Theatre of Louisville.

It may seem like the only difference between ten-minute plays and full plays are their length. However, Shareef Elkady, PTC directing apprentice and director of one of the pieces in The Tens, shares a metaphor to help understand why they are special. “10 minute plays are these little bites of life, I once had a theatre professor call them lemon squares: small, sweet, delightful.” Sugary treats and theatre? Our two favorite things!

2. You get to experience six plays — not just one!

You’re going to experience six wildly different worlds. The variety makes for a fast-paced evening of excitement. “It’s a lot of bang for your buck!” says Emily Moler, PTC directing apprentice and director for The Tens, “You’re not just getting one fully realized world but you’re getting six.”

3. Have we mentioned the price?

Speaking of bucks, it’s only ten of them if you buy your tickets in advance! (Taxes and fees apply, but it’s still one of the most affordable entertainment options you’ll find). Still not convinced? You can also pay what you can at the door.

4. The talent, though

There are some talented artists that put together this show. Directing assistant (and PTC member!) Rachel Bischoff said it best: “It is incredible to be in the rehearsal room with other young theatre professionals and see the work that people our age are capable of creating.”

5. We want to party with you!

We’re in the mood to celebrate this amazing production. And we want you to join us! Every night, starting an hour before the show, we’re throwing a special pre-show hangout in our lobby. Join us for music, drinks, a photo booth and a chance to write your own ten-word play! And that’s not all…

6. We’re also featuring talented community performers

Not only will you get to see the next great theatre artists from our Professional Training Company, we’re bringing in five different members of the community (one for each night). Come see a ten-minute performance from your future favorite artist. That’s before the show even starts!

7. Signature Cocktail: The Perfect 10

It’s a five dollar treat that will leave you feeling like a 10! Packing a big punch, this number is filled with ginger beer and bourbon, garnished with a sweet slice of orange.

Not feeling it? Let us get you something else! We’ll have a full bar available during our pre-show party.

8. The past meets the present

The past meets the present in an exciting and new way this year. The Tens will feature six ten-minute plays from our theatre’s extensive library of original plays. Your favorite pieces from Tasha Gordon-Solmon, Gregory Hischak, Mike Lew, Marco Ramirez, Emily Schwend, Sarah Grace Welbourn and Annabeth Bondor-Stone are coming back to the Actors Theatre stage and you DON’T want to miss their revival.

One of the perks of The Tens is the collaboration between Professional Training Company members and guest artists. One of this year’s directors, Rachel Dart, is an alumna of the Professional Training Company. “It’s been so much fun for me as a PTC alumna myself — I feel like we share a baseline common language in a really fun way. I can’t wait to see what they all do next.” It’s one of the exciting reminders that the network of the Professional Training Company extends well past the apprentices’ time in Louisville.

9. Get to know the next generation of American Theatre

You may have seen them perform this fall, but this is your chance to get to know the whole PTC in one evening of theatre. Like many members of the PTC, Directing Assistant Emma Leff says she’s really passionate about theatre that’s produced by young people, ensemble-based and intimately staged. (Ladies and gentlemen, the PTC season.) “I think the combination of those factors means that there is a lot of heart and spirit in these pieces,” says Leff.

10. It’s just going to be fun and exciting!

Honestly, this is theatre at it’s best. It’s funny, it’s moving, it’s unexpected, it’s wild — all in ten minutes. You’ll see stories with mimes, coffee shop romances, drag racing and copy machine tragedies. “It’s exciting to get a full story told to you in such a short time,” states Kyle Haden, another of the directors.

We’re convinced: a ten-minute play really is the perfect bite size, lemon square.

Join us for The Tens, January 15-19! You can grab your tickets in advance for just $10 or pay what you can at the door.

The post Ten Reasons to Get Yourself to THE TENS appeared first on Actors Theatre of Louisville.

This year’s event is themed It’s Showtime!, a night to celebrate why #LouisvilleLovesTheatre. The night will take patrons on a behind-the-scenes tour of the experience of bringing a show to life. Don’t miss your chance to be featured in the spotlight! Consistently rated as one of Louisville’s “best parties” (The Voice-Tribune), Lobster Feast features all-you-can-eat lobster and a locally-sourced dinner buffet, Old Forester cocktails and open bar, live and silent auctions, and a dance floor for celebrating all night.

For this year’s event, Community leader and Board member Barbara Juckett and our volunteers have put together an exciting line-up of live auction items. Select items include Wimbledon and Tuscany trips, private dinners at The Hermitage with Chef Susan Hershberg of Wiltshire Pantry and a private dinner in your home with Chef Josh Moore of Volare Italian  Ristorante. Live auction items are now available for preview: Bidpal.net/LobsterFeast

Lobster Feast is Actors Theatre’s largest annual fundraising event, generating significant support toward the theatre’s annual fundraising goal of more than $4 million. From a season of celebrated works and the internationally-acclaimed Humana Festival of New American Plays, to education workshops and residencies in our schools, the funds raised ensure that Actors Theatre continues to provide quality arts experiences for this community.

Tickets are on sale now at $300 per person and $3,000 for a table of ten. $5,000 VIP tables in the Inner Circle and additional sponsorship opportunities are available. Order tickets at LobsterFeast.org or contact Matthew Brown, Development Coordinator, at mbrown@actorstheatre.org or 502.584.1265 x3085.

You’re Invited!

 What: Lobster Feast 2019: It’s Showtime!

Where: Louisville Marriott Downtown, 280 West Jefferson Street, Louisville, KY 40202

When: Saturday, January 26, 2019

Schedule:                

6 p.m. Doors open, Cocktails, Appetizers and Silent Auction.

8 p.m. Parade of the Lobsters. Dinner is served.

9 p.m. Live Auction.

10 p.m. Dancing until midnight with music by Hay DJ.

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Sedaris is now a literary celebrity. he’s one of the few writers who can fill Carnegie Hall with his adoring fans and who’s been considered funny enough to appear regularly on The Late Show with David Letterman. During his days as Crumpet the Elf, however, he never thought he’d see his dream of being a published author come true. “I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this,” Sedaris-as-Crumpet quips darkly. But his career would profit immensely from this time spent faking holiday cheer and herding frazzled families for their photo with Santa. It was “Santaland Diaries” that introduced Sedaris’s signature deadpan humor to a national audience, catapulting him to fame in the early 1990s.

Bear Brummel as Sedaris’s “Crumpet” in The Santaland Diaries, 2018. Photo by Andrew McCawley.

Since 1977, Sedaris had kept a diary, often carrying a notebook with him to record experiences both bizarre and mundane. (He’s known for his ability to highlight the weirdness of everyday life, zeroing in on personal quirks or strange encounters that are often highly relateable, but that we might never think to document in such comic detail.) As with many of his other early writings, the pithy observations in “Santaland Diaries” originally came from these journal entries. According to Sedaris, “‘Santaland’ was just stuff in my diary. All I did was take things from my diary and arrange them.”

One night, he was reading exceprts from his diary onstage at a small New York club. He later recounted in an NPR interview:

[Radio host] Ira Glass was in the audience. He introduced himself…Later, he called, asking if I had anything Christmassy for a show that he was doing at the time called…So I recorded the Santa story for that, and he put it on [the daily NPR program] Morning Edition.

Sedaris could never have predicted the rush of popularity that followed. “My life just changed completely,” he has said, “like someone waved a magic wand.”

The rest is history. Thanks to the wild success of “Santaland Diaries,” Sedaris, in his words, “went from having 50 listeners to 50 million listeners.” Soon after, he landed the book contract that led to his first published collection of essays and short fiction, the critically acclaimed Barrel Fever (in which “Santaland Diaries” also appears). Today, there are more than 10 million copies of Sedaris’s books in print, and his work has been translated into 25 languages. Meanwhile, his recording of “Santaland Diaries” has aired on Morning Edition during the Christmas season every year since 2004, and is one of the show’s most requested features. Not too shabby for a man who’d often joked that he was only qualified for “jobs that needed no skills.”

See this hilarious Christmas comedy onstage

The post The Little Elf That Could appeared first on Actors Theatre of Louisville.

March 1 – April 7, 2019

FEATURING WORLD PREMIERES BY

Kara Lee Corthron
Emily Feldman
Dave Harris
Lucas Hnath
Ismail Khalidi
Matthew Paul Olmos
Lily Padilla
Naomi Wallace

Louisville, KY – Actors Theatre of Louisville proudly announces the lineup for the 43^rd Humana Festival of New American Plays.  A cultural highlight for theatre lovers, artists and producers across the country, the Humana Festival runs March 1 through April 7, 2019 in Louisville.

This year’s Festival program will feature five world premieres, listed in order of first performance:

• We’ve Come to Believe by Kara Lee Corthron, Emily Feldman and Matthew Paul Olmos
• The Corpse Washer adapted by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace, from the novel of the same name by Sinan Antoon
• The Thin Place by Lucas Hnath
• How to Defend Yourself by Lily Padilla, co-world premiere with Victory Gardens Theater
• Everybody Black by Dave Harris

By investing in the future of playwriting, Actors Theatre makes a significant impact not only on the national theatre canon, but also on the economic prosperity and cultural vibrancy of Louisville. The 2018 Festival was attended by more than 38,000 people, with visitors from 41 states and 52 colleges and universities represented in the audience.

For over four decades, Actors Theatre of Louisville has been a driving force in new play development, introducing more than 450 plays into the American theatre repertoire and representing the work of more than 400 playwrights and ensembles. The internationally acclaimed Humana Festival is recognized as a crucial incubator for new work and a launchpad for myriad subsequent productions around the country and the world. Plays  that have recently premiered at Actors Theatre—including Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry it Out, Leah Nanako Winkler’s God Said This, Jen Silverman’s The Roommate and Colman Domingo’s Dot—have continued to be produced on stages far and wide.

This year’s lineup of plays will be performed in rotating repertory in three theatres located in Actors Theatre’s downtown Louisville complex: the 633-seat Pamela Brown Auditorium, 318-seat Bingham Theatre and 159-seat Victor Jory Theatre. The 2019 Humana Festival schedule also offers a weekend of enrichment events for college students, and features special weekend packages for theatre lovers and practitioners alike. These weekends are packed with discussions, networking opportunities and parties, making Louisville an exciting destination for the American theatre this spring.

Weekend packages for the 2019 Humana Festival of New American Plays are now on sale. Single tickets go on sale January 3, 2019. For more information, please visit ActorsTheatre.org or call our Box Office at 502.584.1205.

Actors Theatre celebrates the 43^rd Humana Festival with underwriter the Humana Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Humana, Inc. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.

Introducing the work featured in the 43^rd Humana Festival of New American Plays: 

The Corpse Washer
adapted for the stage by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace
from the novel of the same name by Sinan Antoon
directed by Mark Brokaw
commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville
March 1 – April 7
in the Bingham Theatre

A haunting portrait of an artist’s fight to survive in war-torn Iraq, where life and death are inextricably intertwined.

In an Iraq beset by decades of war and occupation, Jawad faces a difficult choice. Must he follow in his father’s footsteps washing the bodies of the dead—an honored Muslim tradition—or can he pursue his dreams of being an artist? Adapted from Iraqi writer Sinan Antoon’s award-winning novel, The Corpse Washer is a haunting portrait of a young man coming of age and a society’s fight for survival, in a country where life and death are inextricably intertwined.

The Corpse Washer was developed with support from New York Theatre Workshop.

Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace’s commission to adapt The Corpse Washer has been generously underwritten by Jacqueline R. and Theodore S. Rosky as part of the Les Waters New Works Fund.

Ismail Khalidi’s plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater, 2005), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre, 2010), Foot (Teatro Amal, 2016), Sabra Falling (Pangea World Theater, 2017), an adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (with Naomi Wallace, Finborough Theatre, 2018) and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, 2018). His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as The Nation, Mizna, Guernica, American Theatre and Remezcla. Khalidi co-edited (also with Naomi Wallace) Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG, 2015). Khalidi has received commissions from The Public Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Noor Theatre and Pangea World Theater. He is currently a visiting artist with Teatro Amal in Chile, and holds an M.F.A. from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Naomi Wallace’s plays―produced in the United States, the United Kingdom and the Middle East―include One Flea Spare, The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, Things of Dry Hours, The Fever Chart, And I and Silence, Night is a Room and Returning to Haifa (adapted with Ismail Khalidi). In 2009, One Flea Spare was incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, the Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to the Comédie’s repertoire in 300 years. Awards: MacArthur Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, Obie Award and the Horton Foote Prize. Wallace received the inaugural Windham-Campbell Prize in drama and an Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

The Thin Place
by Lucas Hnath
directed by Les Waters
commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville
March 5 – April 7
in the Victor Jory Theatre

It’s where the line between this world and another is very, very thin.

Everyone who ever died is here, just in a different part of here. And if you listen, really listen, you can hear them—in the thin places—the places where the line between our world and some other world is very thin. It’s like if you were to imagine an octopus in an aquarium, pressed up against glass…except that there’s no glass, and no octopus. An eerie new play by the Tony-nominated author of The Christians, Death Tax, and A Doll’s House, Part 2.

The Thin Place is a recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award. The Thin Place was developed at the Colorado New Play Festival, June 2018.

Lucas Hnath’s commission for The Thin Place has been generously underwritten by Ms. Elizabeth Rounsavall as part of the Les Waters New Works Fund.

Lucas Hnath’s plays include A Doll’s House, Part 2 (8 Tony Award nominations, including Best Play); Hillary and Clinton; Red Speedo; The Christians; A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney; Isaac’s Eye and Death Tax. He has been produced on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre and Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Ensemble Studio Theatre. His plays have been produced nationally and internationally, with premieres at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, Victory Gardens Theater and South Coast Repertory. He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. Awards: Steinberg Playwright Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Award, two Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations, Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, an Obie Award and the Windham-Campbell Prize.

How to Defend Yourself
by Lily Padilla
directed by Marti Lyons
co-world premiere with Victory Gardens Theater
March 13 – April 7
in the Bingham Theatre

In a self-defense workshop, college students reckon with what it really means to fight back.

Your body is a weapon. So says Brandi, who starts teaching her peers self-defense after fraternity brothers assault one of her sorority sisters. Joined by two male classmates who show up in support, the group learns how to fight back, while wrestling with their own complicated experiences and desires. But how much can a class actually teach them about protecting themselves—and each other? Visceral and provocative, How to Defend Yourself examines the impact of rape culture, on campus and beyond.

How to Defend Yourself was developed in the 2018 Wagner New Play Festival at the University of California, San Diego directed by Kim Rubinstein and mentored by Naomi Iizuka, Allan Havis, Deborah Stein and Kim Rubinstein. The roles were originated by University of California, San Diego undergraduate and graduate actors. The play was further developed in the 2018 IGNITION New Play Festival at Victory Gardens Theater and the 2018 Ojai Playwrights Conference. 

Lily Padilla makes plays about sex, intersectional communities and what it means to heal in a violent world. They just received their M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego, where they were mentored by Naomi Iizuka, Deborah Stein, Allan Havis and Kim Rubinstein. Padilla’s work has been developed with the Ojai Playwrights Conference, Victory Gardens Theater, INTAR Theatre and San Diego Repertory Theatre. Her immersive audio installation And Then You Wait, co-created with Dylan Key, reimagined an abandoned grain silo as an apocalyptic fallout shelter in the 2017 La Jolla Playhouse WOW Festival. (w)holeness was a finalist for the 2018 Latinx Theatre Commons Carnaval of New Work. Padilla facilitates playwriting workshops with the La Jolla Playhouse/TCG Veterans & Theatre Institute. They hold a BFA from NYU Tisch, ETW & Playwrights Horizons. She is also a director, actor and community builder who looks at rehearsal as a laboratory for how we might be together. www.lilypadilla.com

Everybody Black
by Dave Harris
directed by Awoye Timpo
March 19 – April 7
in the Pamela Brown Auditorium

A blisteringly funny, 100% definitive tour of The Black Experience.

When some wealthy white folks offer a big paycheck, a black historian agrees to write the definitive version of The Black Experience. The problem is, the historian has never met another black person. What emerges is a blisteringly funny satire filled with unforgettable characters, including a brazen Barack Obama here to set the record straight, and a talk show about black people addicted to dating white people. With searing wit and bold candor, Everybody Black explores how we chronicle—and make sense of—Black History.

Dave Harris is a poet and playwright from West Philly. His plays include White History (Victory Gardens Theater IGNITION New Play Festival, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist, Relentless Award semi-finalist), Exception to the Rule (O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist), Tambo & Bones (Black Swan Lab at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, SPACE on Ryder Farm) and Incendiary (National New Play Network/The Kennedy Center’s M.F.A. Playwrights’ Workshop). He is a member of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm, a Cave Canem Poetry Fellow, a Callaloo Poetry Fellow and the 2018 winner of The Rattle Poetry Prize. His first full-length collection of poetry, Patricide, will be published in May 2019 from Button Poetry. Harris received his B.A. from Yale University and is a second-year M.F.A. playwright at the University of California, San Diego.

We’ve Come to Believe
by Kara Lee Corthron, Emily Feldman and Matthew Paul Olmos
directed by Will Davis
performed by the actors of the 2018-2019 Professional Training Company
commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville
February 24 – April 7
in the Bingham Theatre

Welcome to the bizarre world of collective delusion—and the alarming places it can lead.

Consider the raw power of groupthink: hordes of collectors losing their minds over the latest consumer fad, hundreds of followers duped by a charismatic leader, and entire communities gripped by irrational panic. How do so many people come to share the same bizarre beliefs? How would we know if we are the ones who are deluded? Writing for the actors in this season’s Professional Training Company, three fearless playwrights dive into the absurd and sometimes hilarious world of collective delusion, and the alarming places it can lead.

We’ve Come to Believe is supported in part by The Roy Cockrum Foundation.

Kara Lee Corthron’s plays include Welcome to Fear City (Contemporary American Theater Festival, Kansas City Repertory Theatre), AliceGraceAnon (New Georges), Holly Down in Heaven (Forum Theatre, Washington, D.C.) and Listen for the Light (Know Theatre of Cincinnati). She’s the author of the young adult novel The Truth of Right Now, from Simon & Schuster. Awards include the Parents’ Choice Gold Award for The Truth of Right Now, Vineyard Theatre’s Paula Vogel Playwriting Award, the Princess Grace and Helen Merrill Playwriting Awards, four MacDowell Fellowships, and residencies at Bogliasco (Italy), Skriðuklaustur (Iceland), and Hawthornden (Scotland), and she’s a proud member of New Dramatists. Her work has been developed at Ars Nova, Atlantic Theater Company, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, LAByrinth Theater Company, Page 73, PlayPenn, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and South Coast Repertory, among others. Corthron is currently under commission from La Jolla Playhouse, and writes for the TV drama You on Lifetime. She is an alumna of The Juilliard School. For more information, please visit karaleecorthron.com.

Emily Feldman’s work has been developed by the Playwrights’ Center, Colt Coeur, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Magic Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Playwrights Realm, JAW at Portland Center Stage, Cape Cod Theatre Project, WildWind Performance Lab, The New Harmony Project and Second Stage Theater, among others. Feldman is an alumna of The Working Farm at SPACE on Ryder Farm and the Jerome Fellowship/Core Apprenticeship at the Playwrights’ Center, was an Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition finalist, and was a Shank Playwright in Residence at Playwrights Horizons. She’s currently a member of Interstate 73 at Page 73, The Orchard Project NYC Greenhouse and Two River Theater’s Emerging Playwrights Group, and is working on new commissions from Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons and Arena Stage. She received her M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego and her B.A. from Middlebury College. 

Matthew Paul Olmos is a three-time Sundance Institute Fellowship/Residency recipient, a New Dramatists Resident Playwright, and an alumnus of Center Theatre Group’s L.A. Writers’ Workshop, Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab and Echo Theater Company’s Playwrights Lab. He received a Princess Grace Award in Playwriting, was selected by Sam Shepard for La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Emerging Playwright Award, and was mentored by Ruth Maleczech through Mabou Mines/SUITE. Other Residencies and Fellowships: New York Theatre Workshop, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Dramatists Guild, Primary Stages and INTAR. He is an Ensemble Studio Theatre lifetime member and a proud Kilroys nominator. His work has been presented nationally and internationally, and is published and taught in universities. He is currently devising American Nationalism Project, developed through New York Theatre Workshop, and a play with music, We Walk Along The Christmas Bridge, developed through Center Theatre Group. Upcoming: so go the ghosts of méxico, part three at Undermain Theatre, Dallas. For more information, visit matthewpaulolmos.com.

Tickets

Festival Ticket Packages will be on sale beginning November 15 and are available for the following weekends, enabling you to see a variety of Humana Festival plays and access special events: March 15-17, March 22-24, March 29-31 and April 5-7, 2019. Packages are available for theatre lovers and practitioners on all Festival weekends, and for college students and professors the weekend of March 22-24.

Single ticket prices start at $25, and tickets will be on sale beginning January 3, 2019. For more information or to purchase Humana Festival weekend packages, visit ActorsTheatre.org or call 502.584.1205.

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Silvia Daly Bond

“This song just gets me pumped for rehearsal, and angry at all of the labels and facades we buy into…We’ve had a great time talking about how social media lets us run away from what really scares us.”

Josh Fulton

“‘Plastic’ by Moses Sumney…represents my piece perfectly because it’s all about feeling alone and unseen and how one doesn’t feel as though they’re enough. However, the vibe of it is so peaceful and calming, and in my opinion, hopeful.”

Russell Sperberg

“My dad’s family is from West Texas, so this whole album holds an oddly personal place in my heart. The last verse always gets me. It’s important to hail Satan every once in a while.”

Angelica Santiago

“When this song first came out I was completely amazing that an artist actually had written a song that speaks on the struggle people today go through when it comes to accepting themselves and the truly dark places people go when they can’t. I feel that especially today with social media and television this world is now so focused on being the most beautiful, looking one certain way and maintaining the perfect image which unfortunately leads people to the exact opposite. This song for me brings light to a dark, lonely place that will spark change!”

Ashley N. Hildreth

“My piece for Solo Mio celebrates what it means to be a black woman and why BLACKGIRLMAGIC is so important. I feel like these songs embody this sentiment.”

David Ball

“Jack Kerouac said it best: ‘The only truth is music.’ [My] playlist was playing every time I sat down to write! I love all these tracks and I hope you do to! If your day is stuffed or your life is stressed or you’ just need a lil pick me up… take a simple breath in… then out…and push play.”

The Professional Training Company performs its final round of Solo Mios beginning November 2. Tickets are free but require a reservation. Learn more about the Solo Mio Round Three and reserve your free ticket.

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After the actor writes their Solo Mio, the designers go through the script to determine what the piece needs. This could be a sound cue or a particular hat or the need to convey to the audience that they’re in an elevator. Costume Designer Jessica Land describes that initial read: “Things I focus on include time, place, tone and characterization, all of which inform what costume I think would fit best for the piece.” The needs of the plays may be very specific requests from the artistic team or they may be more open-ended challenges, allowing the designers to get creative.

Of course, there are plenty of constraints the designers face. Light Designer Seth Torres starts his process with the script itself. “After that, I start to think about what is feasible in the room,” he says. It’s a busy fall at Actors Theatre, and all three of the performance spaces are active with different productions. This means that the Solo Mios have to fit into what’s already happening on those stages. Torres, however, enjoys this challenge. “Being able to make interesting looks for a show wildly different than what the lights were designed for can be challenging but is also part of the fun!”

“It’s the chance to spread my design wings.”

– Cheyenne Zuck

There’s plenty to keep these apprentices on their toes, however. “One challenge is the short timespan we have to produce the shows. In the course of two weeks I come up with six or seven different concepts, pull from stock, have fittings, and complete alterations,” Land explains. “Also, the extremely small budget makes me be very resourceful.”

Throughout the entire process, these designers must work closely with one another. Sound Designer Cheyenne Zuck and Torres, in particular, must collaborate. “We were on the same page from the beginning in pieces that needed sound and lights to go together,” Zuck describes. Additionally, the designers stay in close contact with the rest of the artistic team. “I am there to service the character, so I need to hear who the actor, director and dramaturg think the character is,” Land says. “These plays transform so much that I need to constantly check in to make sure that our visions still align.”

“The challenge of each piece is inherent to the world the actor creates,” Zuck concludes. “Some of them are dramatic and others are historical, but each is personal, and I’m excited to make these pieces come to life in a different way.”

This fall, the Professional Training Company performs three rounds of Solo Mios, beginning October 20. Tickets are free but require a reservation. Learn more about the Solo Mio Round Two and reserve your free ticket.

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Nora and Torvald Helmer seem to be the perfect couple, with a lovely middle-class home and three young children. Nora, however, has a secret: years ago, she forged her father’s signature to help secure a loan from a man named Krogstad, and she’s been laboring to pay it back ever since. The money was needed for a long trip Torvald had to take for health reasons. Essentially, Nora saved Torvald’s life, but he has no idea; he thinks Nora inherited the money from her father.

When Krogstad uses Nora’s forgery to blackmail her and later Torvald, Nora is both anxious and hopeful that Torvald will do the chivalrous thing and take responsibility for her crime, sacrificing himself to save her honor. Instead, when he finds out about the forgery, he berates her, vows to cover up the scandal in any way he can, and forbids her from raising their children.

Torvald ultimately forgives Nora after Krogstad has a sudden change of heart and drops his threats. But Nora has discovered how little her husband respects her. To Torvald, she’s only a child or a doll—his pet, not his partner. In the last scene, Nora confronts him about their marriage, and the play ends with a resounding door slam as Nora leaves her family in search of independence and her own identity.

Lucas Hnath on ‘A Doll’s House’

A Doll’s House, Part 2 is set fifteen years after the end of A Doll’s House. Discussing the origins of Part 2 in an interview last year, playwright Lucas Hnath reflected on why Ibsen’s work remains powerful:

[T]he action that takes place at the end [of A Doll’s House] was a shock when it was first produced, and it’s still a shock today. The way that it’s built is it’s a couple that actually is failing to talk to each other for most of the play. Then you hit that final scene where Nora says, ‘We need to talk.’ That is such a resonant moment, and it’s such a familiar moment too. It cuts to the heart of a problem in all intimate relationships. Also, Ibsen is trying to define what freedom is and is identifying the ways in which we are not as free as we think we are. Fears about reputation and how we’re viewed in the world, and anxieties about money and social standing—I think those are all shackles that remain today.

Purchase tickets to A Doll’s House, Part 2

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During their first weeks at Actors Theatre, the acting apprentices write the initial drafts of their solo pieces. As they work, they are paired with a director and a dramaturg. These three form a cohesive, artistic unit. The actor generates the ideas, the dramaturg refines them and the director brings them to life. This close partnership makes it a unique process for all involved.

“Solo Mios truly embrace theatre as a collaborative art form and serve as a huge lesson for young, emerging theatre artists,” says Shareef Elkady, director of two of the pieces in the first round of Solo Mios. Actor Reagan Stovenour adds, “Everyone can share their knowledge on developing new work in a hands-on way.” This challenges all of the artists to approach the process differently than they normally would.

It’s one thing to interpret someone else’s words and stories, but getting a chance to hear myself is inspiring.

– Rasell Holt

This isn’t always easy, and the actors, directors and dramaturgs have to discover the best way to collaborate. Actor Rasell Holt insists that the Solo Mios are “a reminder not to make anything too precious. As actors are creators of these pieces, they can be our babies, but it’s nice to hear how other voices can help shape them.”

Learning to work together is a vital part of the creative growth of these young artists. Susan Yassky, one of the dramaturgs for the series, offers her take: “You have to be willing to invite someone else to step into your shoes without being threatened by someone else inhabiting your role for a few minutes. It’s also just an incredible bonding experience for us as apprentices to work so closely together and to get to know each others’ intellects and creative processes so intimately.”

“I think this series is such an amazing opportunity for the actors to really take agency in their artistry,” says dramaturg Alonna Ray. “By giving them the opportunity to generate their own work, they are able to reach deep into their wells of creativity and produce something that they otherwise may not have had the chance to produce.”

This fall, the Professional Training Company performs three rounds of Solo Mios, beginning September 26. Tickets are free but require a reservation. Learn more about the Solo Mio Round One and reserve your free ticket.

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