humana festival of new american plays

'Sleep Rock Thy Brain' Play Uses Science As Inspiration

Erin Keane — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:49:24 +0000

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

Well, now a more subjective study of dreams. It comes from the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. The festival was founded by Actors Theatre of Louisville. And each year, that theater commissions a new work for its company of apprentice actors.

REVIEW | Immerse Yourself in 'O Guru Guru Guru'

Erin Keane — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:53:45 +0000

Playwright Mallery Avidon had an unconventional upbringing. As a kid and young teen she lived, on and off, in an ashram -- the same ashram that later cropped up as a setting in Elizabeth Gilbert's nonfiction book "Eat Pray Love," later made into a movie starring Julia Roberts. Avidon mines those experiences in her engaging autobiographical play, "O Guru Guru Guru or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you," an attempt to reconcile several complicated, competing emotions about contentment, identity and spirituality.

An Audience of One: Playwright Mallery Avidon on Writing for Herself

Erin Keane — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:31:41 +0000

Playwright Mallery Avidon mines her unconventional childhood for her new play, “O Guru Guru Guru, or why I don't want to go to yoga class with you.”

"Part of that unconventional upbringing has to do with the ashram that Elizabeth Gilbert goes to in the book 'Eat Pray Love,' that Julia Roberts goes to in the movie 'Eat Pray Love.' The play is an investigation of the way that unconventional spirituality affected my life," says Avidon.

REVIEW | Family Secrets Fester in 'Appropriate'

Erin Keane — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 12:08:28 +0000

As the curtain rises on Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' "Appropriate," a rattling chorus of 13-year cicadas fills the Pamela Brown Auditorium. Far from a gentle nocturne, the sound swells with the pregnant heat of a southern summer night, conjuring images of rattling bones. Low lights reveal a man and a younger woman slipping through an open window into the living room of a plantation house that had, to be kind, seen better days.

REVIEW | Smart, Funny, Tough to Love: Will Eno's 'Gnit'

Erin Keane — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:37:16 +0000

Billed as a willfully unfaithful adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic picaresque tale “Peer Gynt,” Will Eno’s “Gnit” up-ends the classic man’s-search-for-meaning quest with an ambitiously absurdist self-discovery journey that stubbornly chafes against the conventions of the genre.

The Terrible Fate of Being Understood: an Interview with Playwright Will Eno

Erin Keane — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:29:59 +0000

The New York Times calls playwright Will Eno “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.” In this year’s Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville, he’s turned his keen sense of irony and compassion to a loose adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Norweigian classic picaresque “Peer Gynt.”

REVIEW | 'Cry Old Kingdom' a Promising Debut

Erin Keane — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 15:57:33 +0000

“Cry Old Kingdom” is playwright Jeff Augustin’s professional debut, an examination of how artists function in times of oppression set in his family’s native Haiti. Directed by Tom Dugdale, “Cry Old Kingdom” is the ambitious story of three individuals searching for a clear pathway through a terrifying political climate. It’s a strong, if slightly uneven, debut from a young playwright with great potential.

Grad Student Makes Playwriting Debut at Humana Festival

Erin Keane — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:11:19 +0000

Playwright Jeff Augustin won the Kennedy Center's prestigious Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award in 2011, but "Cry Old Kingdom," which opened Sunday at Actors Theatre of Louisville, is his first professional production. Augustin is a student in the Master of Fine Arts theater program at the University of California, San Diego.

Exploring the American Family Tragedy: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

Erin Keane — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000

The second play to make its world premiere in this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville is “Appropriate,” a family drama about adult siblings who reunite to sort through their deceased father’s estate.

An Interview with Humana Festival Playwright Sam Marks

Erin Keane — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:38:18 +0000

Actors Theatre of Louisville’s annual Humana Festival of New American Plays is underway, and the first production to open is Sam Marks' “The Delling Shore.”

Directed by associate artistic director Meredith McDonough, "The Delling Shore" is a dark comedy about two feuding middle-aged novelists and their daughters who reunite for a disastrous weekend in the country.

WFPL’s Erin Keane spoke with playwright Sam Marks about fatherhood, success, and his play’s journey from draft to the Humana Festival.