All the Way to ... Louisville?
Columbus Theatre-Makers Hit the Road
to Visit America's New Play Mecca - The Humana Festival.
Raise your hand if you're aware that the most important new play festival in America takes place each spring in Louisville, Kentucky.
Don't feel bad if you're hand's not up. It's a fairly well-kept secret, despite the fact that it's reviewed every year in national newspapers and the plays are published in a beautiful anthology 12 months later.
Despite the fact that a few of the 6 full-length plays debuted in Louisville each year inevitably go on to be some of the most performed plays across the country.
Despite the fact that the Humana alumni roll-call is over-flowing with the most important playwrights around - Tony Kushner, Paula Vogel, Marsha Norman, Jose Rivera, Arthur Kopit, Naomi Iizuka, Donald Margulies, and even the mysterious Jane Martin (long-rumored to be a pseudonym for former ATL Artistic Director Jon Jory, his wife, and former ATL Literary Manager Michael Bigelow Dixon).
And despite the fact that a rather large number of perennial favorites have come from Humana. Plays like Crimes of the Heart, The Gin Game, Talking With, Keely and Du, Anton in Show Business, Big Love, Below the Belt, Marisol, A Piece of My Heart, Tent Meeting, Aloha Say the Pretty Girls, and the Festival's 3rd Pulitzer Prize-winner Dinner with Friends.
Despite all this, there are still a large number of theatre junkies who are less than totally aware of what goes on in Kentucky each year. That's where our story begins.
I hit the road on April 1 with 10 other friends from the Columbus theatre community to go to Louisville and see 11 plays (and one movie) in 3 days. The players were:
We left a little late this morning. 45 minutes or 75 minutes late, depending on how you count it.
Dranschak: It's just because not every puts a show from scratch in four weeks.
Not everyone can say, "Look! An issue, let's do a play!?
So, we're speeding up, we're running behind, we're passing a house on wheels at the moment. We'll be looking forward to roundtable discussions at bars around Louisville. John, any closing comments?
Dranschak: We're quivering with anticipation.
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This year was my 6th Humana Festival, it was John's 4th and Acaica's 4th. Tara DiLorenzo has also been many times. Ben, Brant, & Emily (as well as Geoff Martin) have all been a couple of times since we started taking BlueForms trips to the Festival. Mike Holmes was making his second trip. The rest were all there for the first time. My favorite Festival was in 2000, when I went with a group of grad students. There were 4 plays that year that were simply amazing. Also, the SITI company had a show up that year. The past three Festivals have been, unfortunately, sans SITI.
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Here's how to go to Humana.
So here we are 45 minutes later. We just called Actors Theatre of Louisville. This is something we should clarify. Here's how to go to Humana. Have one person get a subscription. Then have that one person call and get half-price tickets to everything for your whole group. You'll end up putting a thousand dollars on your credit card, but it's totally worth it, because everyone ends-up saving at least a hundred bucks. But you may not have tickets to everything going in. You may have to wait in a couple of lines. The intern show and the 10-minute plays usually sell-out. We got lucky and got 10-minute tickets, despite not having tickets to 3 other plays. But we called at 11am this morning and they had just released the last 20 group packages. That's some other bullshit, more on that later. So, now we have tickets to everything but the intern show, which we have two chances to wait in line and see. It's in the Bingham, which is the mid-sized theatre, so we're not worried. We have two chances to get empty seat passes. We're gonna rock this Humana. So, everyone's really pumped because we have tickets to everything, except Lonelle who's gonna miss Hazard County because she's coming later.
This is the thing, the weekend we always go is the last weekend. It's Critics' Weekend. Which is cool for a couple of reasons. First of all, the 10-minute plays are only performed that weekend. This year we have four 10-minute plays, in the past there have been 3. Usually, they aren't all that good, but on occasion they are cool. Three years ago there was a really good one, and a few years
before that, there was a David Ives play, which was performed by members of the SITI company, which I didn't actually see, but the point is that there's an opportunity to see something cool. So, the Critic's Weekend, or Special Visitors' Weekend, is the only chance to see the 10-minute plays, and if you're completists, like we are, you have to get there. Also, the critics are all there, so you can say hi to Michael Grossberg and Jay Weitz and his lovely wife Esther. It's also when lots of cool people like Anne Bogart and a lot of playwrights go as well. I met Chuck Mee once. All the Festival playwrights are there. It's the hip, happening weekend to go. It's a more exciting atmosphere than any other weekend.
Thus, it's harder to get tickets, because they have all these package deals for the Critics and celebs and they save those packages the longest. They just put together a package of all the plays for you and you pay a simple price, but it's much more expensive than doing it our way. They hold on to the packages and release a few unsold sets of tickets at a time. So you call one day and a show is sold-out, then you call 3 days later and it's not sold-out. You have to keep calling. Well, apparently they released 20 group packages this morning, which is ridiculous. Who's gonna call on Thursday night and say, "I just realized I feel like seeing 11 plays this weekend, got anything?? So, we called and got 11 tickets to th
e last few shows.
So, we've decided we're going to give some advice. We've been going to Humana for quite a few years and we'll have some advice on how to do it.
This year, we found an extended-stay hotel, which is about $180 with the tax and everything and that gets us a week in the hotel if we want it. So, if you have any connections to hotel discounts, it's worth getting on top of it early. Share hotel rooms.
We have our favorite restaurant, Ramsi's, to which we go every year. We'll see how we do trying to get a table for 11 this year. They may hate us, we may have to split. There's a great coffee shop, there's Ear Ecstasy, one of the best record stores in the country. I like to get up early on Saturday morning, go to the coffee shop and read for awhile, then go to the record store and spend an hour finding those 5 perfect platters that absolutely have to go home with me.
What else? There's that same coffee shop where a couple of years ago we just chilled out for a couple of hours, read some American Theatres. You can do some journalling, napping, writing, whatever needs to be done.
It's good to spread the plays out. We have a big break on Saturday afternoon, which gives us time for coffee and a really nice meal together. Then we see a late show. Don't do 4 plays in a day if you can help it. I've played that game. It's painful.
Dranschak: We also recommend going to the Galt House across the street from ATL. Sit down, have a drink, and send two of your friends to race elevators.
That's something else to look into. If you get a group package, you get a discount at the Galt House. We found out this year that apparently, if you call the Galt House and just tell them you're going to the Humana Festival, you can get the special rate. That's something else to keep in mind. The Galt House is very convenient, right downtown, though that may keep you from doing some of the cool stuff away from downtown. There is, unfortunately, just about nothing downtown. Though, Dan Welsh mentioned that there's a new area that reminded him of Los Angeles. There's something on 4th with a Borders and a two-story thing called Live in Louisville, or something like that. We'll check it out. We also just found out that there's a great brunch at the Hilton downtown, at 4th and Muhammed Ali. I hear crab legs, salmon, and marinate flank steak on a bagel, which is one of John's all-time favorites.
This tape recorder is fun to talk into. I'm enjoying myself. This could be a damned long article. It'll be the Humana super-spectacular!
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11:45am
A couple more things we thought of that are important about going to Humana Festival.
Leave on time. Leave on time. For God's sakes, just leave on time. Allow three and a half hours for the drive, at least. If you traffic it can be longer. It's a bad scene. You don't want to get there and be late for a show. A couple of these theatres are small, it's embarrassing to walk in late. Just do what you gotta do. If you've gotta allow 5 hours, do it. Allow 5 hours. Get food if you arrive early. It's Humana, it's worth it. You've also gotta be careful, when you get south of Cincinnati, you're on 71 together with 75 and there's a split. You have to take 71, you have to watch the sign. If you end-up on 75, at some point you'll hit Lexington, and then you think, "What the fuck am I doing in Lexington?? And if you're like me and it's the most important day of your life, and your going to a SITI company rehearsal, then you have to drive 100 miles per hour across the state of Kentucky and you'll be praying not to see a cop. So, watch for the split, stay on 71. It's a pretty easy drive other than that. Allow plenty of time.
Right now, part of our group left 45 minutes after they should of and they have to pick-up our tickets. It's a bad scene.
So, we just passed the sign at 11:56am which said Louisville 100 miles, which makes us think we can turn this into a 3 hour drive, which is good news. Although, we have been hauling serious ass, 80- the whole way. I don't recommend this course of action.
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1:45pm
The density of theatre-lovers.
We have an hour and 15 minutes. We're going to get something to eat. John made the drive in 2 hours and 50 minutes. Wow!
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2:58pm
We're in our seats now. It is 2 minutes till 3 o'clock. We're in the Bingham theatre, in row GG, right at the top. I love these seats. We're about to see Hazard County, which has a crazy looking set. It looks like a junkyard on the back lot of an acreage of farm or something. There's a tree strung with lights. A broken down car, a couple refrigerators, a stove.
It was really cool, everyone arrived at the same moment. We walked into the lobby, and Brant and Emily were coming one way, then the elevator opened and it was Tara and Ben, then we spotted Acacia, Mike and Dave.
.
I saw, but did not yet say hello to Illana Brownstein, who I went to college with at Wooster, which is really bizarre. She used to intern here, but I haven't seen her in ten years. TEN YEARS!
Everything has worked out great and we're really excited and charged up because we love this time of year so much. We all agree that the density of theatre lovers in the room is greater than it ever is anywhere else in the universe. I think even if we went to Lincoln Center at the start of their season, a lot of those people would just be socialites and rich patrons, but I doubt there's anyone at ATL this weekend who's not just a lover of theatre. And there's Michael Grossberg entering, talking to John Dranschak.
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Hazard County was a bizarre, very interesting play. The biggest problem most people had with it was that it tried to cover too much ground. Just when you think it's a really good play about rural living, it starts to talk about reality TV. Next thing you know, it's about racism, then it's a love story. And somehow, The Dukes of Hazard was the string connecting these disparate themes. What was it really about? Got me. It was, however, extremely well-performed and produced, and was a totally enjoyable start to the Festival.
Later that evening we stood in line to see the intern show. Every year ATL has a large apprentice company. These actors get small roles in shows throughout the year and do a lot of grunt work to make the festival happen. In return, there's a Humana show that serves as their showcase for agents and such. It's usually a collaborative piece, written in parts by a group of playwrights. In all honesty, the intern shows are usually pretty boring. This year, however, the performed Uncle Sam's Satiric Spectacular. The show had singing, dancing, rapping, and stripping. Unfortunately, it was also too, too long and pretty simple-minded. We stood in back watching it, hoping that it would end soon enough for us to catch the 12:15am showing of Sin City. Alas, we didn't leave the theatre till about
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12:20am. We got some food at Meijer and then went to bed.
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2:
15pm, Saturday
Hipster, new-age, action-packed, Golden Girls type deal.
Okay, we're halfway through The Shaker Chair and Mike Holmes had a great comment. What was it?
Holmes: Not in the tape recorder, this is totally non-spontaneous. Oh well. I said it's like a hipster, new-age, action-packed Golden Girls type deal.
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3:30pm, after The Shaker Chair, in the car.
So what'd we think of the play?
Duncan: Excellent. There's thumbs-up in the front seat.
You like it Dave?
Wallingford: Yes, it was the least-flawed script we've seen so far.
Yoder: I had some issues with the delivery of the dialouge. I felt like they were delivering it as written. It seemed like it was written to be kind of stuttery.
It was kind of Mamet-like.
Wallingford: Yeah, that's probably why I didn't like it.
Holmes: See, I like that kind of thing for what it is. The biggest problem I had with it was the section with the young, black revolutionary. The girl was just one-note the whole time.
Yeah, I wanted to smack her.
(Yeahs all around.)
I was pretty impressed with how they worked the content it. The social message came out of nowhere, but not out of left field.
Wallingford: Everything we've seen this weekend has been kind of preachy.
Holmes: They're big on that. They didn't, however, do what I thought they were going to do, which would have been something really obvious, in terms of writing, which would have been to have a parallel with the sister and Frank where they stand-up to Frank.
Yoder: Yeah, the liberation thing. I really loved that relationship. It was a terrible relationship, but so well done.
Duncan: Yeah, that scene was probably my favorite.
What a jerk. ?You need to learn to forgive."
Holmes: ?Or we'll never be happy again." Good shit.
Yoder: I wanted to slap him during that scene.
Duncan: He was so good at what he was doing.
Yoder: Actually, he was really good at the dialogue thing, the jerkiness of it.
He would start, and stop and decide to start again.
Yoder: It was to the point that I wondered if he was messing-up his lines.
I asked for the script.
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Here's something else. If you're with an organization, you can have ATL's literary department send you copies of the manuscripts from all the plays. If you're really on the ball and ask for them on Friday, you can get them in person.
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So, we made our way to Bardstown Road. It's the campus-like area of town. Lots of cool shops, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Plenty to do, plenty to eat. Our favorite is Days, and we can truly say that we've been going there for years now.
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4pm @ Day's Coffee Shop
Dranschak: I thought the actors struggled with the dialogue in the first scene especially. It was very stylized. There were times when they were good with and there were times when they just couldn't get it. They got better throughout the play, which surprised me, because usually the first scene is so well-rehearsed.
I thought the other actors were better.
Dranschak: The men were better. I thought that there were some great things. At first I was curious as to whether the movement of the chair was a playwright choice or a director choice. The more I think about it the more I think it's a playwright choice. Part of that may be biased to my discovery that it was directed by Marc Masterson.
I also wondered who directed it and was surprised. It may have been a playwright slash director choice.
Dranschak: Michael and I were talking about the obstacle of making people take their shoes off with nowhere to sit at the door. That seems more like a director choice, although taking the shoes off may be in the script.
We can't forget the set designer, either.
Dranschak: I did like the set design.
I thought the set was awesome. It was so simple and there were so many playing areas.
Dranschak: I liked the pig. How could you not?
Well, I like the pig, and yet U was so pissed off that the pig was a special effect. It never came back.
Dranschak: I thought it was the best structured play. There was disagreement about whether or not people bought her change at the end. Her change did feel a little abrupt. I understand the logic of the hange, and logically it worked, but what might have helped would have been to show more of the depth of the relationship between the two in the first act. The told us about the depth of the relationship, but they didn't show it. The logic works, though.
The logic was really cool. When she said, "I could undo a bolt? I really felt the moment. I was all, "Go, girl!? right then.
Dranschak: Like I said, I think it plays, but they could have strengthened it in the first act. I loved how everything was tied up in the chair and the metaphor of the chair. It was cool.
It's was an unexpected place for a play about three elderly women to go. It's so interesting that he, the "young guy" playwright chose to write about that.
Dranschak: It was especially interesting, having read the stuff in the program where he asks, "What is the obligation of women that age to be activists"? He says his mom and, I think, his aunt are both activists. He sees it almost as a call to be more active. Hi says we need more voice from women of that age.
What did you think of the resolution, or lack thereof of the Frank/Dolly subplot.
Dranschak: I found it to be very true. For so many women it doesn't ever happen. Many women stay in those relationships.
What I was thinking about was that at the same time Marion's circle opens up, it also kind of closed-off in the middle. She started out by caring about Dolly and her friends, but she cuts Dolly off at the same time she's opening up to the rest of the world. That, actually, was the one moment of the play that I didn't like was Jesse's speech in which she just suddenly jumped to stating the theme of the play, "Why isn't your circle big enough for other people?? It was strange that he didn't work up to that, or have a metaphor there, especially since so much of the dialogue was so stunted. She just bursts out with it very directly.
Dranschak: Yeah, I hope he buries that in subtext on the re-write.
Definitely.
Dranschak: I think that play will go on to production.
I'd kind of like to do it. Catco should totally do it. It's funny, it's smart, it's accessible, it has three great roles for those women. Frank is a great role, too.
Dranschak: It's a little bit hard to cast in Columbus, although maybe you could convince Jackie Bates to play Dolly.
Jackie, Lynn, Ben was talking about Tatiana, what about Cate Blair-Wilhelm?
Dranschak: Cate would be great at Marion. If you could convince Cate and Jackie to do it, you've got a show.
I definitely dig it.
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In the meantime, BlueForms found out that they had been accused of Steroid abuse by Greg McGill of MadLab (April Fools!) in his weekly email newsletter. "Perhaps that's how they're able to create such vivid stage pictures." Funny stuff.
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Michael, what'd you think of The Shaker Chair? I heard you loved it.
Herring: Yeah, yeah I did. It actually moved me in ways that I didn't expect and really don't understand why, but that's the beauty of theatre. I loved the structure of the play. I thought it was very simple, very clear. I fully loved the obstacle of making the characters take off their shoes when they came into the room, but having no place for them to take their shoes off, so they had to balance. It was an intersting obstacle for them to overcome. I also liked the metaphor of the floor, the cleanliness of the floor with what she was all about as a character. When she changed at the end of the play, realizing it's just a floor and there's something much more important. I liked all the different layers. I thought the characters were interesting. I completely hated the character of Frank.
In the way we're supposed to?
Herring: Yeah, in rhe way we're supposed to. He was just such a scumbag. What a great scene. It was one of those times when you wanted to yell out to the actor on stage like, "You haven't even asked for forgiveness yet!" The line was "You really have a problem with forgiveness." I really loved the set, the way the floor just floated in the on top of the stage. The stage just disappeared with that uneven edge around it. I really enjoyed it. What'd you think?
I thought it was great. There was only one moment that I even questioned it. Her last speech was about making a difference, yet was so simple and small, a bolt, the smallest thing.
Herring: It's the simplicity of the line of the chair. It kind of ties on what I'm working on here. In my cultural policy class, we trace the history of art in the United States and at the time when the Shakers were around, they didn't have time for fine art, so art was expressed in crafts. The pride they took in the actual making of the chair was a symbol for how you they were as human beings. If you made a shitty chair, then you were a shitty human being, you don't care enough to make a good chair.
That was one of my favorite lines when they said, "Everything they did was a prayer."
Herring: The way th playwright found that metaphor of this hugely contemporary issue and connected it with a 19th century culture was brilliant. It was absolute;ly brilliant. I loved the way it was directed, the obstacles, when Frank is there, saying, "You're going to the beach," cutting her off so she can't get ou the door. When Marion was standing between Dolly and Jesse, trying to negotiate. For once a play with blocking that makes sense. It helps you understand what's going on. So many times you have directors trying to make pretty stage pictures and the thing that they forgot is what the plays about and how they're supposed to have blocking the supposed to serve the tension. I think it's the best thing we've seen so far. For some reason I cried, parts were just so touch. I just wanted to yell, "Go to the beach! Don't go with him!" After seeing Nervous Smile last night and this today ... aren't there plays with noble men any more? We're just seeing these schmucks. Their pathetic individuals.
Hazard County?
Herring: Yeah, he was just all about using these women to get ahead in his career.
That's really interesting, I wonder if that'll play out in the rest of the festival.
Herring: What does that say about the stories that we're telling and the issues that we're faced with?
Well, Memory House will be just two women, no men. Moot is about politics, so there'll be more scummy men.
Herring: Occasionally I run across plays that I see and I just need space and time to process because they've taken me to such a profound place that I find it hard to find my way back. And that's a good thing, that's why do theatre. That's why people see it.
That's a sign of a real success, when you're not just an observer.
Herring: Right, you're going somewhere with it and afterwards you need a break. I need a way to find my equilibrium, because right now I'm not in my skin. I'm having so much fun.
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Part Two
What Humana is all about.
Bardstown Road is where everything we like other than the theatre is. To get to Bardstown road from the theatre, you take a right on third, take a left on Liberty, go past the freeway. It'll curve under a bridge and you'll take a right on Baxter, which then curves around and slants you into Bardstown Road. Coming back, you don't have to make a left on Liberty. It'll curve you right into it, then you head downtown, take a right on 2nd and a left on Main then right into the garage.
Something else you'll see all the time at the theatre are lines of usually a couple dozen people, sometimes many more ? these are people who have empty seat passes, waiting to get into the s
hows for free. At about curtain time for each show, they count the number of empty seats and then let that many people into the show. You can get an empty seat pass up to an hour before showtime at the box office, it doesn't cost anything, it's just a yellow slip of paper. In a couple of the theatres, they even have standing-room-only. So, if you don't mind sitting alone and whatnot, it's a great way to see some good theatre. Lots of people do it every year for all the shows.
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Saturday night we saw the 10-minute plays which were, as usual, quite disappointing. My favorite review was Jay Weitz's who said that "Long Dream in Summer" had "something to do with baseball and the Spanish-American War." Very appropriate. I guess it just goes to show hard difficult it really is to write a decent short play. Every year they find 6 interesting full-lengths, but they struggle to find even one short play that can keep our attention for 10 minutes.
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The next day, we went to brunch at the Steelbach Hilton. There were no crab legs, but I ate five servings of the mocha crme brulee. There were fresh omlettes, Salmon, steak, tons of fruit, and several cheesecakes. It ended-up being $31 a head, but it was well-wroth. Highly recommended.
We then shipped off to Atl for Carlyle Brown's Pure Confidence in the huge Pamela Brown auditorium.
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3:50pm ... post Pure Confidence>, waiting to see Memory House
Dranschak: So what did everybody think of the last one?
DiLorenzo: That's what Humana is all about.
Duncan: I enjoyed it.
Herring: I thought it was great. It was an amazing script. It was very well constructed. I thought the acting was fabulous and I loved the freedom monologue, where he was riding the horse, it was an aria. It wasn't just a monologue, it turned into an aria.
Dranschak: He had the audience in the palm of his hand.
Duncan: So did she, though. She was the reason they got the huge laughs at the end.
Herring: Well, whenever there's a whipping sound and a woman screaming ...
(Laughs and groans all around.)
Dranschak: Is that something you're going to edit out?
That may be left in.
Duncan: It was interesting, someone said, as we were exiting, that the 2nd act was like an Ibsen play.
Herring: That's true, it was a very similar structure.
DiLorenzo: Ben made the observation that it was exactly like Ruby Sunrise. Something happens in the past and then it's rehashed at the end.
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Did anyone think that the soldier was gay?
So, here we are, last day of Humana, we have one more play to see, Moot the Messenger. We saw Memory House this afternoon. It was pretty
good. What I've been saying is that every single play has been surprisingly good. Which is nice. It's always cool to be surprised and more impressed than you expect. We ate dinner at the restaurant downstairs at the theatre. It was the second or third meal I've had down there the past couple of years, and y'know, I just think that I should never, ever eat in the ATL restaurant. The service is horrible. And the food's not very good. I've never had what I would call a positive experience there and today was the worst ever. So, I'm officially putting it in writing here, don't bother.
And now we're going to Starbucks and it's closed because it's only open to noon on a Sunday. So, we have to walk further to the Starbucks that's at the hotel. Let's see if we can snag some coffee there.
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It closed at 2pm. Aaarrrggghhh!!!
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So, it's true that there is something called 4th Street Live in Louisville now. We're standing in the middle of it at Liberty and 4th. There's a Hard Rock Cafe, a pub thing, a Cool Shades place, Borders, Subway, a Cold Stone Creamery, EB Games, Hallmark, Wendy's. It's pretty deserted at the moment, but it is 7:30 on a Sunday evening. There's a big guitar. A Fridays, Lucky Strike, something called Red Cheetah - I can hear the horrible music. Fashion Shop, CVS, something Beach, Saddle Ridge something, Makers Mark Bourbon House Shop and Lounge. And the Red Star tavern.
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We failed in our mission to find coffee. I feared I was too tired for a 3 hour play. Tara and Ben chose forgo the experience and head home. Brant and Emily, who'd already seen Moot, took off earlier in the day. Our numbers had dwindled to 7 and we were all dreading to see what we had been told was a long, boring, uninteresting play.
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9:15pm ... Intermission at Moot
Herring: I haven't gone to sleep yet. They're preaching to the choir, it's a very preachy play.
Wallingford: Like everything else.
Herring: Well, not everything else has been preachy. Pure Confidence wasn't preachy at all.
Dranschak: True, he had something to say and he said it well.
Herring: And I didn't think The Shaker Chair was preachy. And even in Nervous Smile ...
Dranschak: In Nervous Smile, I thought the end was a little preachy.
Wallingford: Yeah.
Dranschak: I really liked it, but I would have changed the end.
Herring: You would have changed it?
Dranschak: But this, I think I'd be responding more if we hadn't done InVulnerable 6 months ago.
Wallingford: Yeah, having just done InVulnerable ...
Herring: And it's a story we all know and we all hate. Yeah, I don't know how many people in this audience would really support George Bush.
Dranschak: I imagine if you polled it would be very much the opposite of the election results.
Herring: Absolutely. Look at the intern show, the jokes about wanting a different president. That was one of the most enthusiastic ovations we saw all weekend. So, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. What do you think, John?
Dranschak: I think I would be responding more if I hadn't already done a show on this topic. I think it's well-performed, I think it's well-staged, I'm just not crazy about the script.
Herring: I have to admit that I really liked the costumes when the girls were sitting around in bed. It was like, "No, they don't have to get dressed yet, do they"? But, that'll just be between me and Mr. Tape Recorder, I'm sure.
Holmes, how do you feel about the play so far.
Holmes: I'm not likin' it. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the bells and whistles of the rest of the weekend, and now they're not using it, when I think it might really add something to the show. I was talking with Dave about how, content and everything aside, it's the little production things that really get me. If you keep throwing information at people like this and it's all on one staccato note the whole time, it eventually becomes just a wall of sound. Regardless of what you're saying, you need to do something, vary it it vocally, or change your stage position, to keep people sharp and there with you as opposed to just rat-tat-tatting at them and hoping that they're gonna get it all.
Yeah, that was my problem with the scene down here where she was talking to the Al Jareez guy. They just kept talking and nothing else and the scene went on forever.
Holmes: I did like it when he lost his place.
The actors must be tired, that's happened a lot.
Holmes: Bootsie seems to like it though. (Whispered.) Bootsie's what I've named the hot Italian chick sitting across the theatre from me.
Duncan: I think the Italian chick is hot as well. I'm on record for that now.
Holmes: You know I just made that up, right. She could be anything.
What did you think of the play so far?
Duncan: It's not as bad as everyone made it out to be. The last part was getting really good. I'm a little disappointed once again with their staging in this theatre, as far as sight lines. The whole last two scenes, I wasn't positive if it was the same girl who was in the play earlier because I never saw her face. The scene in the coffee shop was long and hammering on the same note. Let's talk about this historical topic and now this historical topic.
Oh, I liked that. I liked the beginning of the conversation.
Duncan: Well, he did the same thing. His part was more boring.
Lonelle, what do you think of the play so far.
Yoder: I think that the first two scenes could have been left out entirely and put in the program as liner notes.
...
After the show ... in the car.
Duncan: Okay, last show of the festival, discuss.
Yoder: Too wordy!
Wallingford: Yes.
Duncan: I enjoyed it. I agree that it was a little wordy ...
Yoder: It was important information to know, but that's perfect thing to put in a program note or something like that, for people to read on their own. When you have to stop every 5 minutes in the play to let people in on what you're talking about, you kind of lose the flow of the plot.
Herring: You end up with a two hour and 45 minute play.
Duncan: I think it was also that she focused on a lot of different issues, while it was cool sometimes, it's also why the play went on and on because she would be referencing something relatively obscure that she wanted to explain to the audience and so she did explain to the audience, but it wasn't necessarily a necessity or the specific tale she wanted to tell.
Herring: I went in with the perception that it was just going to be about the war and that stuff, I didn't realize it was going to be about the media. It was more of a play about the role of the media forming contemporary public opinion then it was about the war being bad.
Holmes: I think it was a smart angle to take.
Herring: Yeah, and from that perspective I was kind of relieved. I expected 3 hours of being preached at about something I already feel very passionately about. They didn't have to convince me.
Duncan: I felt well-prepared for the play because of InVulnerable. because we talked about a lot of that media stuff in that show.
They stole our headline business, with the headlines cutting over each other. We did the exact same thing. Ours didn't have the projections on the floor though.
Wallingford: Their's was just transition filler.
Yeah, we actually had a scene about it.
Yoder: It was hard to see the pictures where we were sitting.
Herring: If we'd been sitting up where we were for the other shows it would've been perfect.
But then I bet we would have been even more disengaged.
Herring: Oh yeah, I agree.
I gotta say I found the performances very riveting.
Herring: That's true.
Holmes: I thought the performances were very good.
Herring: I almost stood at the end for the performances. They did a really good job with what they had to work with.
I also thought that the direction was again very frustrating. All those scenes with them just sitting in the same place.
Duncan: Only one of the 3 plays we saw there made it so I didn't think about not being able to see people.
Herring: In the time when she was interviewing for the intern position and he was walking around, at first I thought it was really cool, because he was opening her out to the rest of the audience. Until he was directly behind her and I wondered how she was going to make it believable when she turned around, sitting in the chair backwards talking to this guy. I thought she did okay with it.
Duncan: But there were the two coffee shop scenes where they just sat in their chairs and didn't move. There were two whole scenes where I didn't see one person's face.
I was impressed that the dark haired girl looked almost exactly like the girl who is in the Abu Gharib pictures.
Yoder: I thought she was that girl, that that was her character, that she was her person.
And it ended with Bob Dylan, which just made it all ...
Herring: Cliche!
No ... better. I like Bob Dylan.
Yoder: I wanted to see the brother get out of his wheelchair.
Duncan: Yeah, I wanted to see how he'd done it.
Yoder: Yeah, I kept looking for his legs. I just to see exactly where he had the bottom of his leg.
Herring: Now, at the beginning, did anyone think that the soldier was gay?
I did, I wondered if the actor was gay.
Herring: I thought he was the most nelly army guy I'd ever seen.
Duncan: And he did not look 20 years old. He looked 35, easy. I was waited for him
to get discharged.
Herring: Don't talk don't tell.
Duncan: I loved the last line of the play, that really moved me. First quoting the Nazi and then changing it up.
Herring: They had to end it like that, I suppose, but for it was totally hallmark.
Holmes: All tied up in a nice little package.
Herring: Yeah, a little too neat for me. Look at Pure Confidence, I thought that was a totally uplifting ending, but it didn't seem trite or cliche, or Hallmark.
Yoder: I didn't think it was trite. I didn't have that thought.
Herring: And they needed to hurry up the curtain call. I hate it when shows bring out three actors, and then another 3 and so on.
Yoder: It was their last show, maybe they were just enjoying it.
Herring: No, I think it was choreographed the way a director would do it.
Duncan: I always feel sad when I'm applauding a show and I know it's their last. I see can see it the actors' eyes and I know it's kind of sad.
Herring: Why, cause they might never work again?
Duncan: I guess occasionally it's jubilation for leaving behind. But, you could see that the main actress, she was very upset. It's the melancholy of leaving it behind.
...
The next day. 11:30am
We're checking out of the hotel, it's 11am. Mike Holmes broke the shower. We did half price books this morning. We have a bunch of food left over. It's a pretty nice day, but we're all exhausted. We've all definitely had our fill of theatre for the weekend. Enough theatre to last a month.
We stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home. A sweet ending indeed.
Michael Herring (founder of Red Herring)
John Dranschak (a founder of BlueForms, former Managing Director of Red Herring, and award-winning local director)
Michael Holmes (co-founder of Hand-Dog Theatre)
Dave Wallingford (BlueForms aural aesthetician and co-founder of Eye-Stop Theatre)
Lonelle Yoder (BlueForms member and Pheonix Theatre Circle associate)
Acacia Duncan (a BlueForms founder)
Tara DiLorenzo, Ben Rogers, Brant Jones, Emily Rhodes (all founding members of BlueForms and former Red Herring ensemble members)
I brought a long a tape recorder to capture some moments and our thoughts on the plays. What follows is a partial transcription of the tape with occasional commentary from me. Other speakers are identified by their last names.
Friday, April 1 in the AM.
And here we are true believers, the beginning of another Humana adventure. It's 10:36am on Friday morning. I'm in the car with John Dranschak, we're on I-71 south, going approximately 80 miles-per-hour, now getting in the left-hand lane to pass a car whose bumper stickers say God Bless America. We're definitely on our way to Kentucky.
Dranschak: Amen.
Dranschak: We're a little bit behind schedule.
John, how are you feeling about Humana Festival, are you excited?
Dranschak: More than just a little excited.
We've spent time so far figuring out if we think there's any possible way of getting to the airport on-time for Michael Herring. And we've been looking at the Louisville Courier-Journal's stories on the plays and their reviews and we've also been talking about reviews we've gotten from a member and and an associate of BlueForms - Geoff Martin and Dan Welsh.
So far, the general consensus is that Hazard County is the play to look at, in terms of the fact that the set's really cool and it's performed really well. The Courier-Journal wasn't fond of the play, nor was Dan, but I think Geoff liked it a lot.
The Courier-Journal seems afraid to criticize Nervous Smile, perhaps because of the disability issues associated with it. Adam Bock, probably because he's a young guy - well, he looks young in his picture, but he's actually 43 - he's the closest in relationship to us. He's the young white guy. There's an older African-American man, there's a young African-American woman, there's a middle-aged white woman, a couple of em.
Dranschak: A correctly diverse set of playwrights.
That's true. That definitely seems to be one of Marc Masterson's priorities, [Marc Masterson is the current Artistic Director of ATL.] sometimes at the cost of interesting plays. The Shaker Chair is definitely the play to catch, from what we hear. Dan liked it, Geoff said it was his favorite. It's the one review that out-and-out says, "This is a darned good play."
Kia Corothan is bringing controversy to Actors. Her play last time was Slide Glide the Slippery Slope which talked about genetic engineering and talking sheep. I think we all agreed that at least it was interesting play, but we weren't crazy about it, didn't feel the need to see it again. It was better than Rembrandt's Gift, which doesn't take much. Dan Welsh hated her new play, Moot the Messenger. Hated, hated, hated it. Courier-Journal calls it a lecture with a bit of intrigue. The most damning quote in here says, "Even those whole-heartedly agreeing with Corothan will come away wishing she had honed her sprawling play and allowed the characters to speak with one another, rather than at one another." So, I'm looking forward to that one. It's about the Iraq war and such.
Then we have this play, Pure Confidence, written by Carlyle Brown, who's a 57-year old African-American man. The Courier-Journal headline is hysterical, it reads, "Slavery Explored in a Winning Way." They call it a brisk, fully engaging play, with well-developed characters, which is a good sign.
Dranschak: Come laugh along with the largest blunder in history!
Then we've got Kathleen Tolan's play Memory House. Her first play debuted at Actors 22 years ago and starred Holly Hunter and Mary McDonnell. She's back with play about a mother and a daughter, 90 minutes in the tiny Victor Jory Theatre. The Courier-Journal's pretty funny about this one too, they say, "Towards then one hour mark, I began to hope for a swift and happy resolution or the arrival of an amusing third party. No such character arrived, but the final scene is one of tender promise." They also say that they started being more concerned about the pie than about the characters, which is not a good sign. It doesn't sound promising.
Geoff summed it up saying it was like last year. There were no plays that blew him away, but no tremendous disappointments. Though he did say there was one play he found pretty boring, but he didn't say what it was. I'm guessing that was Moot the Messenger, since maybe Geoff thought that some of us would see the play and really dig it. But he's in BlueForms and was in InVulnerable, so he may have had his fill of this kind of material.
Herring: Hello! This is excellent!
And so our Humana odyssey continues. We spent the afternoon at Day's coffee shop, right next to Sweet Surrender, which has all kinds of great deserts. They do have WiFi internet there. Then we ate dinner at Ramsi's, also on Bardstown road. We got the Brie appetizer, which was great, the foccacia is also excellent. And now we're preparing to see the ten minute plays. The grand lobby, which used to be a bank, is set-up for the reception. Last year was the first and only time I had been to the reception, which was extraordinarily crowded and I myself didn't enjoy it at all.
4:00pm Sunday, after lunch
