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New plays from established scribes Charles Mee and Theresa Rebeck, along with premiere offerings from the younger crew of Jordan Harrison, Eric Coble, Sharr White and activist-artist Rha Goddess, headline the 2006 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theater of Louisville.
The 30th-anniversary slate of the annual fete — the leading nonprofit showcase for new plays in the U.S. — continues to reflect artistic director Marc Masterson’s alternative-progressive aesthetic. Mee’s “Hotel Cassiopoeia” will be a take on artist Joseph Cornell and other arts issues. It will be performed by members of the SITI Company and directed by Ann Bogart, a frequent visitor to Louisville, Ky. Rebeck, who co-wrote “Omnium Gatherum,” is working alone this time on “The Scene,” a darkly comic take on New York relationships, the entertainment biz and the dangers of being eclipsed in more ways than one by a hot young thing. Other main titles are Goddess’s “Low’s Journey: Diary of a Psychotic Rapper.” Subtitled “Meditations With the Goddess Trilogy, Part One,” the play is a one-woman, multidisciplinary piece. Harrison’s “Act Like a Lady” is set in a small, Prohibition-era town; White’s “Six Years” looks at social change in the post-WWII era; and Coble’s “Natural Selection” weighs in on blogs, culture and evolution. The annual dramatic anthology (a multi-author, themed play), this year will be set in Las Vegas. The authors of “Neon Mirage” are Liz Duffy Adams, Dan Dietz, Rick Hip-Flores, Julie Jensen, Lisa Kron, Tracey Scott Wilson and Chay Yew. This year’s Humana Fest runs March 7-April 8. The annual media weekend is skedded for March 31-April 2, with industry professionals invited March 24-25.
