Tagged: Arts

As a soloist with the Royal Ballet and a principal dancer with the London Ballet Festival, Helen Starr danced many of the lead roles in classical ballets. But she didn’t dance the role of Juliet to Sergei Prokofiev’s score until 1985 when her husband Alun Jones, then artistic director, choreographed his version of the ballet in Louisville.

Now retired from the company, Jones and Starr return every five or six years to stage the version of Shakespeare’s tragic love story that they created together. They open another production this weekend in the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall.

After 35 seasons, Kentucky Repertory Theatre (formerly Horse Cave Theatre) in Hart County has turned off the lights. Jobe Publishing reported earlier this week that the board of directors voted to close the organization. 

If downtown feels a bit more dramatic than usual next week, it’s not your imagination. It’s more than 4,000 actors, theater designers, producers, administrators, educators and theater students gathering for the country's largest regional theater convention. The annual Southeastern Theatre Conference convention runs March 6-10 at the Galt House.  

On our audio diary series The Big Break, two of our emerging performers take us inside rehearsals for upcoming productions while a third says farewell to Louisville. Over at the Louisville Ballet, trainee Claire Horrocks discusses the gravity of the understudy role in rehearsal, while at Actors Theatre of Louisville, apprentice Samantha Beach sits in on rehearsals for the five productions opening soon in the Humana Festival of New American Plays.