Erin Keane

Stage One Family Theatre opens its first public performances of Barbara Robinson’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” at the Kentucky Center Saturday. The family-friendly play is recommended for grades 4-8. 

Directed by Lucas Adams, the play is about how a small town reacts when the rowdiest children in town—the Herdmans —decide to muscle their way into the annual Christmas play.

It used to be those Wagner-filled Warner Brothers cartoons and film scores by composers like John Williams that introduced symphonic music to new audiences.  Now video games are taking that role.

The Louisville Orchestra goes into multiplayer mode this weekend with an interactive orchestral performance of music from video games. Part of the contemporary L.O. Wow! Series, the orchestra will play along with guest performers in “Video Games Live!” Saturday evening at The Palace.

Broadway in Louisville brings the hugely popular musical "Jersey Boys" back to the Kentucky Center today for a two-week run. "Jersey Boys" tells the entertaining true story of how four blue-collar kids became Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Their iconic hit singles—written by Bob Gaudio and produced by Bob Crewe—emit an instant retro signal. But they're also pretty timeless, so they work really well in film soundtracks.

Actors Theatre of Louisville opened Sam Shepard’s “True West” last night. Directed by Obie Award-winning playwright and director Adam Rapp (“Finer Noble Gases,” “The Edge of Our Bodies,”), “True West” is a viciously funny and tragic portrayal of two brothers testing the boundaries of love, resentment and civilization.

This week on our audio diary series "The Big Break," Louisville Ballet trainee Claire Horrocks sees the cast list for "The Nutcracker" and learns her new choreography for the familiar show. Actors Theatre apprentice Samantha Beach sits in on rehearsal for "True West," where she discovers a hidden talent, and Kentucky Opera studio artist Brad Raymond takes "Tosca" on the road.

The National Book Award ceremony is tonight, and if you didn't score tickets to this year's revamped, glammed-up awards dinner in New York's Cipriani Wall Street, where you can rub elbows with Gen X darling actress/author Molly Ringwald and McSweeney's founder (and fiction nominee) Dave Eggers, the event will be live-streamed. The action starts at 9 p.m.

Adam Rapp is no stranger to Actors Theatre of Louisville. Several of his plays have made their world premieres at the Humana Festival of New American Plays (the most recent, "The Edge of Our Bodies," opened in 2011), debut productions which Rapp has also directed. In fact, his directing career has focused on new plays, but when artistic director Les Waters invited him to direct a production of Sam Shepard's 1980 play "True West" this season, he took the challenge. 

The Slant Culture Theatre Festival opened over the weekend with a full slate of productions, workshops, special guests and events (read the overview). Five Louisville theater companies joined together to produce a repertory festival featuring five mainstage plays and about a dozen special events.

Given the sheer numbers every Christmas movie is up against, it's a wonder any of them end up in the holiday canon. We know and love "It's a Wonderful Life" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," and it seems as though "Love, Actually" has inched its way into new holiday classic territory, but what of "The Star Wars Holiday Special" or, indeed, most of the fourth quarter content on the Hallmark Channel? There's a lot of noise to cut through, but if a holiday movie makes it to the top with "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Miracle on 34th Street," it stays there. 

The Speed Art Museum has closed its doors for a$50 million renovation and expansion project, but that doesn’t mean the institution will go to sleep for the next three years. One community outreach initiative launches this month. The "Art & Dialogues" series will bring influential curators, collectors and critics from the modern and contemporary art world to Louisville for public lectures and university visits.