Keith Waits - Page 3

The Ain't I A Women Playfest is one of the most ambitious theatre initiatives to be birthed in Louisville; a call to women playwrights of color for original short plays that speak, as new plays must, to the time in which they are written.

I have described Baby Horse Theatre as Avant-garde, and while the term is apt, it also is limiting in the way that all such terms prescribe how we approach art. Like all theatre artists, they are storytellers.

Theatre always begins as a mystery. Neutral Positions begins with three scenes that seem unrelated; disparate episodes whose relationship to each other eventually becomes evident. But for a tantalizing few minutes, we don't know. Our mind is working. We are thinking actively in hopes of finding the connections. The marketing has clued us in that there is a Theme, and it's a big one: the Death Penalty. So what does a broadly comic scene of a sixth-grade acting class have to do with that? How will the scene of two women, friends since childhood, preparing for a wedding, tie into state execution?

So much depends on identity during youth and adolescence. How others see you, what music you listen to, what you wear, and what crowd you hang out with. Trivial yet all so important at the time. Vidalia Unwin's fresh, new play, Punk Snot explores a group of outcast teens who find salvation and safety in the Punk rock scene of the early 2000s. Decisions, individuality, and anger of youth are juxtaposed against selling out, struggles, and settling down into adulthood.

David Clark's gods play wants desperately to be a movie, and it could very well be adapted as such with little difficulty. A heady mash-up of the visceral and intellectual, Clark imagines a playwright so full of himself that he declares that not even God could write a play better than his latest work. But it doesn't pay to challenge the creator.

Every year, more than 2 million kids in America will face a period of homelessness. This from Covenant House, the largest privately funded provider in the Americas of shelter, food, immediate crisis care, and an array of other services to homeless and runaway youth. That is a pretty sobering statistic, even more so when you consider that the majority, if not all, of that 2 million struggles in silence, unseen.

Among the greatest of the plays written by William Shakespeare, there are several titular roles that are each a veritable Mt. Everest for actors; Charlton Heston called them the 'Man-killers', and I doubt they are any easier for women. Of these, the monarch named Lear stands as a particularly daunting challenge. It has often been said that if you are old enough to truly understand the unique blend of aging, madness, and arrogance required to play it, you may be too old to pull it off onstage.

America since the 2016 election has provoked no small amount of questioning. How could it ever have come to this? Beyond the immediacy of partisanship, the GOP has set about dismantling landmark legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. It has sent us reeling back in time to reexamine modern history for clues, and also to seek comfort in moments in which we felt secure in the march of progressiveness.

Now comes the third chapter in director Amy Attaway's 'Game of Kings' series, which began with Richard II in 2017, followed by Henry IV, Part One a year ago, and will finish with Henry V in the summer of 2020.

Edward Albee has a spurious reputation for writing difficult, inaccessible plays. While the esteemed playwright is usually challenging to mainstream audiences, The Goat Or, Who is Sylvia? functions surprisingly well as domestic farce. It is often flat out funny.

Hamilton is a show whose impact extended well beyond the Great White Way and into the larger culture almost immediately; you have to have literally lived under a rock to have escaped awareness of this revisionist take on early United States history. In 2016, Hamilton received a record-setting 16 Tony nominations, won 11, including Best Musical, and was also the recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Sure, the classics and the standard favorites are fun but watching a new work gain footing for the first time is a thrill. Looking for Lilith's current production is a new work by local writer, Eli Keel, simply called Note. Intimate, honest, and real, the play explores mental health issues with integrity as we peer behind-the-scenes of a one-woman show.

There is something special about this time of year. The school schedule is winding down, the sun shines a bit longer in the day, fireflies come out of their hibernation and the Kentucky Shakespeare Company begins their season. This year will mark the venerable company's 59th Anniversary and they are still going strong. So what magic is weaved that keeps this program going year after year? The answer is quite simple really and can be summed up in a few words: imagination, reinvention, education, and dedication. All of these were on full display in the season opener of As You Like It.

The Derby Dinner Playhouse certainly knows what their audience wants, and as a result, we get another in the long line of Southern-fried comedies from what seems to be their go-to playwriting team, the trio known collectively as Jones Hope Wooten. That's not a dig on the Playhouse; Jones Hope Wooten's plays are not particularly smart, but they are usually quite funny and you can tell the actors are enjoying being in them as much as we enjoy watching them.

Unless you have lived under a rock or somehow managed to stay asleep since 2016, there is a lot of anger in the air, and rightfully so. Eve Theater's The P***y Grabber Plays takes the point of view of eight survivors of sexual harassment, their struggle, and bravery in the shadow of one of the most notorious Presidential elections in American history. This incredibly relevant production is a celebration of these brave survivors and the incredible stories they share.

For an artist, personal and professional development should go hand in hand. Revealing one's innermost self may be not be required, except for maybe some people it inevitably is, and there is a long critical tradition of deconstructing works of art for biographical underpinnings, so if you are an artist, you should expect it.

Why start a theatre company? Louisville already hosts a healthy roster of theatre companies, most of them run by people finding precious hours to make the commitment outside of a full-time job. Against the odds, two veteran actor/directors are starting new initiatives in the community: Jason Cooper (Pandora Productions, CenterStage) is calling his venture The Chicken Coop Theatre Company, while Craig Nolan Highley (Wayward Actors Company, The Alley Theater, CenterStage) and Jeremy Guiterrez (Wayward Actors Company, The Alley Theater) have chosen the moniker, Theatre Reprise. (full disclosure: both Jason Cooper and Craig Nolan Highley are content contributors to Arts-Louisville.com)

Yonkers and Harmonia Gardens swept into town on Tuesday evening to a packed Whitney Hall. This exuberant and big-hearted production of Hello Dolly! leans into its mid-20th origins, with nods to the period staging of the 1880s, while also exploding into the present with contemporary color palettes.

Is Henry V the most accessible of William Shakespeare's History plays? There is a good argument for Richard III, but whatever the political underpinnings of any individual production, King Henry is heroic but complex; the man we want to be.

It was not too long ago that Commonwealth Theatre Center completed the Shakespeare canon of plays. Assuredly, because of the scope and volume of The Bard's works, it doesn't surprise me that it has been a little while since director Charlie Sexton had last brought this fairy tale to life.