Keith Waits - Page 11

There is something magical and mystical about Puccini's much loved Madame Butterfly, in that it can fill an opera house with wonder. And Kentucky Opera's latest production did just that I am happy to say.

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays. One of Shakespeare's bloodiest and goriest plays. One of Shakespeare's least frequently performed plays.

Ten-minute play festivals are often populated by material that cannot be strictly classified as plays. But the academic distinction between sketch and fully formed play may reasonably give way to a simpler, more binary metric: it either works or it doesn't. Some of the finest writing in this sixth year of shorts produced by The Bard's Town feels as if they are either lifted from a longer piece or are the seeds of a larger story.

An Actor's Revenge: Theatre of Blood at The Alley Theater in Louisville

The subject of The 39 Steps isn't an innocent man being chased by spies across Scotland, and it isn't Alfred Hitchcock, although it serves as a fine pastiche of iconic Hitchcock moments. What seems to be on the mind of Patrick Barlow, adapting the 1938 movie more than John Buchan's classic novel, is theatre itself; the nonsensical artificiality that lies at the core of the theatrical experience. It invites us to not just recognize but embrace it in uproarious celebration.

Looking for Lilith Takes Alice in Black & White from Louisville to NYC

Something's Happening On The West Side of Louisville

Collaboration continues to be in the air in the Louisville arts community. This time around it's not just that Kentucky Shakespeare's community weeks embrace both a musical and ballet, but that the Louisville Ballet week features a brand new work, William's Folly, which brings together a selection of Shakespeare's sonnets, original live music and new choreography. What a combination!

Anger, Anxiety, & Strangeness

Finally, the First Annual Derby City Playwrights New Play Festival ends with a new play by the group's founder. It has been awhile since Brian Walker premiered a new, full-length work in Louisville, and High Tide was worth the wait.

Kentucky Shakespeare: A Daring Romeo and Juliet

The subject of immigration fits the social and political mind of Teatro Tercera Llamda as a company, so the embrace of Bashir Lazhar, a rare production of theirs that does not spring from a Spanish-speaking author, makes sense.

Kentucky Shakespeare presents The Winter's Tale

The Bard's Town gives Chisa Hutchinson's Play Its Louisville Preniere

American Premiere of Short Opera by British Composer Robin Haigh

The long-awaited renaming of the merged theatre companies Walden Theatre and Blue Apple Players was announced May 19. The Nancy Niles Sexton Stage was abuzz with students, parents, and members of the theatre community as Charlie Sexton and Paul Lenzi stood at the podium to make the announcement.

There may not be much under the Sun that we cannot claim to have seen in drama. Certainly the tragedy of losing a child has been thoroughly examined, if not exhausted; but it ultimately comes down to how you tell a story. Playwright Lauren Yee tells hers with precision and emotional impact, using nonlinear narrative and semantic legerdemain to make her characters and their circumstance feel new.

Kevin E. Moore will join Actors Theatre of Louisville as Managing Director this summer in advance of the Tony Award-winning theatre's 53rd season. The appointment was announced less than three months after former Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein departed for a leadership position at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Moore, who for the past six years has been the Managing Director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG) in New York City, will transition to this position effective July 6, 2016.

Louisville Orchestra Announces 2016-17 Season And Teddy Abrams Is An Unstoppable Force

This week, a high-energy combination of the Motor City and the Great White Way burst into Louisville with the current Broadway Series production, Motown: the Musical, at the Kentucky Center.