All Hail Hurricane Gordo

The routines of daily life get blown apart when two brothers take in a plucky young houseguest.

IN PERFORMANCE:CONTEMPORARY MONOLOGUES FOR TEENS

Far from the glittering lights of Broadway, in a city known more for its horse racing than its artistic endeavors, an annual festival in Louisville, Kentucky, has transformed the landscape of the American theater. The Actors Theatre of Louisville—the Tony Award–winning state theater of Kentucky—in 1976 successfully created what became the nation's most respected new-play festival, the Humana Festival of New American Plays. The Humana Festival: The History of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville examines the success of the festival and theater’s Pulitzer Prize–winning productions that for decades have reflected new-play trends in regional theaters and on Broadway—the result of the calculated decisions, dogged determination, and good luck of its producing director, Jon Jory. The volume details how Actors Theatre of Louisville was established, why the Humana Festival became successful in a short time, and how the event’s success has been maintained by the Louisville venue that has drawn theater critics from around the world for more than thirty years. Author Jeffrey Ullom charts the theater’s early struggles to survive, the battles between troupe leaders, and the desperate measures to secure financial support from the Louisville community. He examines how Jory established and expanded the festival to garner extraordinary local support, attract international attention, and entice preeminent American playwrights to premier their works in the Kentucky city. In The Humana Festival, Ullom provides a broad view of new-play development within artistic, administrative, and financial contexts. He analyzes the relationship between Broadway and regional theaters, outlining how the Humana Festival has changed the process of new-play development and even Broadway’s approach to discovering new work, and also highlights the struggles facing regional theaters across the country as they strive to balance artistic ingenuity and economic viability. Offering a rare look at the annual event, The Humana Festival provides the first insider’s view of the extraordinary efforts that produced the nation’s most successful new-play festival.

This unique compilation is a must-have for any theatre aficionado's bookshelf.

"Here in this 86th edition of The Best Plays Theater Yearbook are all of the many features that have long distinguished this indispensable reference work on the American theater. What makes the series unique is its unequaled depth and breadth of information on the season under review and its record of the key achievements in theater over a multitude of earlier seasons: detailed listings of all plays produced on and Off Broadway, and hundreds Off Off Broadway, between June 2004 and May 2005; essays by distinguished theater critics and commentators on all 10 of the chosen plays; listings of the longest-running plays and of the winners of the notable theater awards, in many cases ever since those awards were established; and the full membership of the Theater Hall of Fame." "But the scope of this book extends far beyond New York, recognizing as it does the vitality and the innovative contributions of resident theaters throughout the country. The invaluable survey of the season around the United States includes the American Theatre Critics Association's Steinberg New Play Award and Citations, plus a directory of more than 300 new play productions and readings at resident theaters everywhere." "As always this compendious book is illustrated with scores of photographs of productions in New York and around the United States." --Book Jacket.