Arts and Humanities

One of the plays in Actors Theatre Apprentice Company's current reading series centers on the victim of a crime, recounting the experience from her point of view. The remarkable thing is, it was written by the crime's perpetrator. "Voices Inside: A Prison Play Series" -- the apprentice company's current creation, is a series of 10-minute plays written by inmates at Northpoint Training Center, a medium-security prison in Burgin, Ky.

This week on our audio diary series "The Big Break," Louisville Ballet trainee Claire Horrocks gets a nice surprise during her last public performance. Actors Theatre apprentice Samantha Beach closes "Dracula" without ever going on for the role she understudied, but she already knows she'll take the stage in "A Christmas Story" during student matinees. In "Cinderella," Kentucky Opera studio artist Brad Raymond learns there's no such thing as a small role. 

When Bellarmine University theater professor and playwright Carlos Chavarria decided to write a play about Frida Kahlo, he immersed himself in the celebrated surrealist painter's life and work.

“I submerged myself for a year and a half in Frida, Frida, Frida," says Chavarria, who heads up Bellarmine's theater program. "My life has been Frida ever since.” 

The New York Times published an op-ed by poet Maurice Manning yesterday on his understanding of conservatism. In the essay, the Kentucky native and Washington County resident explains how he exercises his conservative values through his work on his farm and in his rural community: