Tagged: Arts

Any list of celebrated American 20th century dramatists will include Pulitzer Prize winners Tennessee Williams and William Saroyan. Their work is a natural fit for Louisville's  Savage Rose Classical Theatre, which draws on a classical repertoire covering roughly 2,000 years of theater, from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century modern classics. 

Savage Rose's "American One Acts," which opens tonight in the Kentucky Center's MeX Theatre, features Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and Saroyan's "Hello Out There." But it's Pendleton King's "Cocaine" that's the intriguing dark horse,  the kind of lesser-known, infrequently-staged classic that Savage Rose is known for producing.

Leaders from non-profit homeless and arts agencies are criticizing Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer’s decision to reduce the funding levels for their external agencies.

When the Fischer administration first unveiled its $528 million spending proposal last month, the mayor's office highlighted a 21 percent increase to funding for community ministries.

It also outlined how external agencies would receive more than $1 million in grants at continued levels from last year.

Fischer's decision to fund external agencies comes from three panels made up of Metro Council members and mayoral appointees who recommend expenditures for community ministries and social service agencies.

Those recommendations are in Fischer’s budget proposal without any changes, and citizens who sit on the panels sign agreements to keep the deliberations confidential.

Natalie Harris, executive director of the Coalition of the Homeless, says the decision-making process is troubling because groups like hers cannot conference with Fischer's panels to make answer important questions.

"I definitely don’t think the process is transparent. There isn’t any way for that committee to ask questions of the groups or for them to answer any issues that might come up during the committee meetings. And there’s also not a process to go back to that committee before the announcements are made," she says.

Writer and performer Polly Frost revels in the life lessons she learned at the hands of nontraditional mentors in her new one-woman show, "Bad Role Models and What I Learned From Them." The show runs Saturday at The Bard's Town. New York-based Frost last performed in Louisville in 2011, with her show “How to Survive Your Adult Relationship With Your Family.”