Actors Theater of Louisville Humana New
Play Festival Fest ’06 –A 30th Anniversary
Extravaganza
For
the second year in a row, I attended Humana Festival (The Actor’s Theater of Louisville
Festival of New Plays). The 2005 Fest reminded me of never-ending earnest,
honest and but tedious acting class scenes presented as final exams – interesting,
but…. This year, I saw eight plays in two and 1/2 days and I am still smiling!
This
year, the offerings exploded - seven new plays and three one acts that
challenged, intrigued, frightened and inspired me over the course of 96 hours
of thrilling theater. Some local Philadelphia producing faces spotted in the
audience included Sara Garonzik of PTC, Terry Nolan of the Arden Theatre, Bill
Felty from the Wilma, along with reps from the Walnut, Interact, and other
Philadelphia area theaters.
The show
selection was brilliant this year - suiting a variety of tastes ranging from
abstract imagery for the intellectual crowd to angry hip-hop-oriented theater
of protest, to new explorations of the WWII generation, to a tour de force for
the environmentally activist - the magic of theater ruled.
The
level of playwriting, design and acting in the 30th Anniversary of
the Humana Festival eclipses that if the 29th festival. From what I
saw in the first four plays (three more to review in next posting), the theater
arts are alive and well in 2006. Hopefully all those familiar faces of regional
and local producers in the audience took note.
“Low”
written, produced and performed by Rha
Goddess
Directed by Chay Yew
This one-woman show examines the plight
of an inquisitive, opinionated and passionate, black teenager whose descent into
homelessness, addiction and madness is almost predetermined by the schools,
social agencies, and economic assistance in place to help her. Performed in rap
, hip-hop, dance, poetry, and exceptionally fine acting, Rha Goddess manages to
make an individual’s plight universal and reminds us that we are all the
victims and the perpetuators of the system.
“Hotel Cassiopeia”
Written by Charles L. Mee, directed by
Anne Bogart ,
created and performed by the SITI
Company
This is a play that requires program
notes and I quote: “Hotel Cassiopeia
is one of a quartet of plays Mee is writing about American artists, relearning
theater as he shapes his plays through their specific visual point of view. He
knows that Joseph Cornell’s way of seeing ‘will be hard to put on stage. But
one thing I love about beginning with the life of an artist – trying to do a
piece inspired by a way of seeing the world – is that it leads to discovering
very different theatrical forms. I’ve learned a lot about making theater from
Max Ernst and Rauschenberg, and now, I hope, Cornell.”
Mee’s play strives to capture the
viewpoint of collage and box artist Joseph Cornell. His abstract exploration of
Joseph Cornell’s life and ideas is brilliantly conveyed by Anne Bogart of “Viewpoints”
fame and the SITI company. With stage directions like ”We see skyscrapers a
dark blue night sky, Lauren Bacall behind a glass frame, an orange ball “ this bizarre,
imagistic and abstract masterpiece, “Hotel Cassiopeia,” was intellectually the most
daunting, but rewarding performance at the Festival.
“Six Years”
By Sharr White, directed by Hal Brooks
“Six Years” examines what happened to one
of the “Band of Brothers”/“Greatest Generation” who struggles to put together a
life after saving the world from Hitler. White follows a marriage through 24
years, visiting the couple and their neighbors every six years from 1951 as
America goes from victory in Europe to the morass of Vietnam. Beautifully acted
by a cast led by Michael Reilly and Karen Mares and directed within a hair’s
breadth of soap opera by Hal Brooks, the company pulls off a sleight of hand
because as we watch G.I. Joe and family lose their faith, decency, and each
other, we have great empathy for ”how and what” they were and what Americans have
lost in becoming what we are. It’s a marvelous story almost Homeric in its
tragedy.
And last , but not least, in this first
posting from The Humana Festival:
“The Scene” by Theresa Rebeck, directed
by Rebecca Bayla Taichman,
A comedy of manners with language as “now” and brilliantly empty as the au courant
wannabees who speak it. “The Scene” explores an artistic New
York couple (he’s an out of work actor and she’s an unhappy booker on a
television talk show) who continually complain about their vapid friends,
bosses, jobs and lives. The husband gets run over by sexually predatory “gonnabee”
who destroys his marriage, his friendship, his career and his future. A 2006
version of Eve Harrington of “All About Eve” fame climbs over the couple’s
marriage, good intentions and lives leaving stiletto heel marks three feet deep
in everyone’s back without a backward glance. The actors in “The Scene”
, Stephen Barker Turner, David William Barnes , Anna Camp and Carla
Harting perform this artfully crafted tale of woe with all the verve of a darkly
written Restoration comedy. Theresa Rebeck spares nothing as she skewers the
current artistic /entertainment scene and reminds us why Noel Coward warned all
the Mrs. Worthingtons about allowing their daughters on the stage.
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