Humana Festival Of New American Plays
   HOME
*





Humana Festival Of New American Plays
Humana Festival of New American Plays is an internationally renowned festival that celebrates the contemporary American playwright. Produced annually in Louisville, Kentucky by Actors Theatre of Louisville, this festival showcases new theatrical works and draws producers, critics, playwrights, and theatre lovers from around the world. The festival was founded in 1976 by Jon Jory, who was Producing Director of Actors Theatre of Louisville from 1969 to 2000. Since 1979 The Humana Festival has been sponsored by the Humana Foundation which is the philanthropic arm of Humana. History The Actor's Theater of Louisville hosted the first Festival of New American Plays in March 1977. It was founded by the former artistic director of the Actor's Theater, Jon Jory. The Gin Game by D.L. Coburn, one of the plays presented that year, went on to open on Broadway later that year and would win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1978. The 1978 festival line up included Marsha Norman's Getting Out, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Theresa Rebeck
Theresa Rebeck (born February 19, 1958) is an American playwright, television writer, and novelist. Her work has appeared on the Broadway and Off-Broadway stage, in film, and on television. Among her awards are the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award. In 2012, she received the Athena Film Festival Award for Excellence as a Playwright and Author of Films, Books, and Television. She is a 2009 recipient of the Alex Awards. Her works have influenced American playwrights by bringing a feminist edge in her old works. Early life and education Rebeck was born in Kenwood, Ohio, and graduated from Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy in 1976.Kiesewetter, Johntitle = Kenwood native delves into criminal mind on ''Law & Order'' ''Cincinnati Enquirer''. November 18, 2001. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Notre Dame in 1980, and followed that with three degrees from Brandeis University: an MA in English 1983, a MFA in Playwriting in 1986, and a PhD in Victorian era melo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Wendy Kesselman
Wendy Kesselman is an American playwright. Life Wendy Kesselman came to the Actors Theater of Louisville in 1980. She lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Awards She won the 1981 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, for ''My Sister in this House''. Works *''Becca'', 1977 *, 1980 *''Merry-Go-Round'', 1981 *, 1981 *''I Love You, I Love You Not'', 1982 *, 1982 *''Cinderella In A Mirror'', 1987 *''The Griffin, And The Minor Cannon'', 1988 *''A Tale Of Two Cities'', 1992 *''The Butcher's Daughter'', 1993 *''Sand In My Shoes,'' 1995 *''The Diary of Anne Frank (play), The Diary of Anne Frank'', 1997 (adaptation)http://cardinalstage.org/anne_frank.html *''The Last Bridge'', 2002 * *''The Black Monk'', 2008 *''Olympe And The Executioner'' Film ''I Love You, I Love You Not'' 1997 * ''Sister, My Sister'', 1994 References External links''Charlie Rose Interview''"Making Young Audiences Think: The Case for Playwright Wendy Kesselman", Lowell Swortzell, ''Youth Theatre Journal'', v3 n4 p3-5 Spr 19 ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Mary Gallagher
Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included ''Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers'', ''Ama'' and ''The Scottish Play''. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the American Theatre Wing. As the Tony Awards cover Broadway productions, the Obie Awards cover off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. Background The Obie Awards were initiated by Edwin (Ed) Fancher, publisher of ''The Village Voice,'' who handled the financing and business side of the project. They were first given in 1956 under the direction of theater critic Jerry Tallmer. Initially, only off-Broadway productions were eligible; in 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible. The first Obie Awards ceremony was held at Helen Gee's cafe.Aletti, Vince"Helen Gee 1919–2004" ''Village Voice'' (New York City), 12 October 2004, accessed on 21 November 2013 With the exception of the Lifetime Achievement and Best New American Pl ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Naomi Wallace
Naomi Wallace (born 1960) is an American playwright, screenwriter and poet from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays, and has received several distinguished awards for her work. Biography Naomi Wallace was born in Prospect, Kentucky, to Henry F. Wallace, a photo journalist and correspondent for ''Time'' and ''Life'' magazines, and Sonja de Vries, a Dutch justice and human rights worker. Wallace obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hampshire College. She then received two master's degrees from the University of Iowa. Currently, she divides her time between Kentucky and the Yorkshire Dales in Northern England (UK), where she lives with her partner, Bruce McLeod, with whom she has three children. Wallace has taught English literature, poetry and playwrighting at Yale University, UCLA, University of Iowa, Illinois State University, Merrimack College, Hampshire College, American University of Cairo, Vrije University of Amsterdam and other institutions. She has also wor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


One Flea Spare
''One Flea Spare'', by Naomi Wallace, is a play set in plague-ravaged 17th Century London. Synopsis A wealthy couple is preparing to flee their home when a mysterious sailor and a young girl appear sneaking into their boarded up house. Now, quarantined together for 28 days, the only thing these strangers fear more than the Plague is each other. Definitions of morality are up for grabs and survival takes many forms in this dark, fiercely intense & humorous play. The play deals with the clash of cultural, social, and sexual boundaries. The play is published by Broadway Play Publishing Inc. The title is derived from the poem ''The Flea'' by John Donne. Productions London (1995) ''One Flea Spare'' premièred in London at the Bush Theatre on 18 October 1995. Louisville, Kentucky (1996) It had its American premiere in Louisville, Kentucky at the Humana Festival of New American Plays on 27 February 1996. New York (1996) The play opened in New York at The Public Theater on 9 Ma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


José Rivera (playwright)
José Rivera (born March 24, 1955) is a playwright and the first Puerto Rican screenwriter to be nominated for an Oscar. Early years Rivera was born in the Santurce section of San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1955. He was raised in Arecibo where he lived until 1959. Rivera's family migrated from Puerto Rico when he was 5 years old, and moved to New York City. They settled down in Long Island, whose small town environment would be of an influence to him in the future. His father was a taxi driver, he said "...for a long time I just wanted to do better than him...so for years I wanted to be a bus driver." His parents were very religious and he grew up in a household whose only book was the Bible. His family enjoyed telling stories and he learned a lot by hearing these stories. As a child, he also enjoyed watching ''The Twilight Zone'' and '' The Outer Limits'' T.V. series. He received his primary and secondary education in the New York state public school system. In 1968, when Rivera ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Marisol (play)
''Marisol'' is a play in two acts written by the Puerto Rican playwright José Rivera. The work earned Rivera a 1993 Obie Award for playwriting. Synopsis Marisol Perez, a young Puerto Rican woman, is a copy editor for a Manhattan publisher. Although she has elevated herself into the white collar class, she continues to live alone in the dangerous Bronx neighborhood of her childhood. As the play begins, Marisol narrowly escapes a vicious attack by a golf club-wielding madman while traveling home on the subway. Later that evening Marisol is visited by her guardian angel who informs her that she can no longer serve as Marisol's protector because she has been called to join the revolution already in progress against an old and senile God who is dying and "taking the rest of the universe with him." The war in heaven spills over into New York City, reducing it to a smoldering urban wasteland where giant fires send noxious smoke to darken the skies, where the moon has not been seen in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Susan Miller (playwright)
Susan Miller, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting, is perhaps best known as the author/performer of the critically acclaimed one woman play, ''My Left Breast'' and as Executive Producer and writer for the award-winning web series ''Anyone But Me''. For her work on the web series she (and creative partner Tina Cesa Ward) won the first Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing Original New Media. Career Miller is a writer for stage, screen and new media. She has received playwriting fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as a Rockefeller Grant and a residency at Yaddo. Miller won her first Obie Award for ''Nasty Rumors And Final Remarks''. ''A Map Of Doubt And Rescue'' won the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Pinter Prize for Drama. She won a second Obie Award, as well as a shared Blackburn Prize, for her one-woman play, ''My Left Breast'' which she performed all over the country. Her plays have been produced b ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work ''Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn of the 21st Century he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner made his Broadway debut in 1993 with both '' Angels in America: Millennium Approaches'' and '' Angels in America: Perestroika''. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play. He then adapted it into a 2003 miniseries directed by Mike Nichols for which Kushner received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series or Movie. In 2003 he wrote the lyrics and book to the musical ''Caroline, or Change'' which earned Kushner Tony Award nominations for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. He has collabor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Slavs!
''Slavs!: Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness'' is a 1994 play by Tony Kushner, set in the USSR as it crumbles and during its later rebirth as a collection of independent states. The play has four acts, beginning in 1985 and ending in 1992. The play premiered at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky on 8 March 1994. It later moved to the New York Theatre Workshop on 12 December 1994, in a production featuring Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei and Mischa Barton. Plot The action begins in Moscow in March 1985 as Mikhail Gorbachev succeeds Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary of the Communist Party. Katherina is a feisty lesbian security guard at a Soviet archive facility that holds the brains of the USSR's late leaders. After getting her the job at the facility, Popolitipov (Jones), an apparatchik, attempts to woo her. Unfortunately for Popolitipov, she has already fallen for the oncologist Bonfila (Schulz), a descendant of one o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]