Actors Theatre Announces Panel Lineup for 36th Humana Festival

Actors Theatre of Louisville's Artistic Director, Les Waters and Managing Director, Jennifer Bielstein announce the complete schedule of panel discussions during the 36th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, running now through April 15, 2012. The Festival, which annually has a lineup of up to ten new world premieres will host four dynamic panel discussions that will feature national-known playwrights, theatre professionals, artists and local business leaders listed below. All panel discussions are FREE and open to the public. Tickets are required and can be reserved by calling The Actors Theatre Box Office at 502-584-1205 or in-person at 316 West Main Street, Louisville, 40202. Visit http://actorstheatre.org/ for more information.

Actors Theatre of Louisville has formed a new partnership with IF University, a program of Idea Festival, to present two community-centric panel discussions focused on creative and innovative thinking. Kris Kimel, founder of Louisville's IdeaFestival , will facilitate a panel discussion The Groupthink: How Communities Solve Problems on Saturday, March 10 at 11 a.m.exploring how communities have banded together to generate solutions to current issues. The panel will feature a cross-section of artists, educators and entrepreneurs who will share their insights on the problem-solving power of "crowd" intelligence. The panel will include: Louisville-based Filmmaker and Entrepreneur,Gill Holland;Russel Hulsey,Artist;Nat Irvin, University of Louisville Business School;Will McAdams, Theatre artist specializing in community- devised work, and Dr. TEd Smith, Director of the newly-formed Office of Economic Growth and Innovation.There is Another Way! – How artistic thinking inspires new ideas,a discussion on the power of creative thinking in innovation and the role of the artist on stage and beyond, will take place on Sunday, March 18 at12 p.m.and feature Rick Johnson, Kentucky Science and Technology Corp;Lisa Kron,Playwright (The Veri**on Play)and Jae Rhim Lee, MIT Artist-in-Residence. Panel discussions are free but tickets and will be held in the Pamela Brown Auditorium.

This year attendees of the 36th annual Humana Festival will have more opportunities to interact with and learn more about the hot topics in American theatre today from some of with American theatre's practitioners and leaders in the field. During Industry weekends, March 23-25 and March 30- April 1 Actors Theatre will host two panel discussions, The scribes speak: a playwrights' forum on March 25 at 11:30 a.m. will feature members of Actors Theatre's National Playwright Advisory Team including: Molly Smith Metzler, Allison Moore, Adam Rapp and Steven Sapp. Critiquing Criticism: (re)imagining the future on Friday, March 30 at 10:30 a.m. will be moderated by Polly Carl, Editor, Howlround (HowlRound.com) and includes: Sasha Anawalt, Publisher, www.Engine28.com,Bill Hirschman, Theatre Critic and Chair of New Plays Committee American Theatre Critics Association;Thomas Graves, Co-Producing Artistic Director, Rude Mechs;Ilana M. Brownstein, Director of New Work, Company One;Deborah Stein, Playwright. Tickets to the panels are included in Industry Weekend Packages.

Actors Theatre will also partner with New Play TV, a project of www.howlround.com , to livestream the Humana Festival panel discussions. All four panels will be live streamed on New Play TV's project public channel page http://newplaytv.info or via the livestream channel #NEWPLAY TV. During each panel discussion, online viewers can submit questions via Twitter using #HumanaFest.

The Humana Festival of New American Plays draws local, national and international attention and attracting arts professionals and theatre enthusiasts from across the country. Last year's Humana Festival boasted more than 100 performances and attracted visitors from 44 states and 9 countries. This year's Festival showcases seven full-length plays, including a play by five writers commissioned by Actors Theatre and featuring the Acting Apprentice Company, and an evening of three ten-minute plays. The productions will run in rotating repertory in Actors Theatre's 633-seat Pamela Brown Auditorium, 318-seat Bingham Theatre and 159-seat Victor Jory Theatre.

Humana Festival Panel schedule:

SATURDAY, MARCH 10 – 11 a.m. (as part of Locals Week)

In partnership with IF University

The Good Groupthink: How Communities Solve Problems

If two heads are better than one, how about a multitude? Kris Kimel, founder of Louisville's IdeaFestival, facilitates a panel discussion exploring how communities have banded together to generate solutions to current issues. A panel of artists, educators and entrepreneurs will share their insights on the problem-solving power of "crowd" intelligence.

Panel will include: Gill Holland, Filmmaker, Entrepreneur;Russel Hulsey,Artist;Nat Irvin, University of Louisville Business School;Will McAdams, Theatre artist specializing in community- devised work, and Dr. TEd Smith, Director of the newly-formed Office of Economic Growth and Innovation.

Kris Kimmel - Moderator

Kris Kimel is President and a founder of the Kentucky Science and Technology Corporation, a non-profit company with an international reputation for designing and implementing innovative and broad-scale initiatives and programs. He has been the author and contributor to numerous articles and reports on science, technology, entrepreneurship and innovation. Kris is widely recognized as an expert in the field of science and technology policy, programs and entrepreneurship. He is also founder of the international IdeaFestival. Kris was a leader behind the vision and implementation of the KySat Enterprise, now called Kentucky Space. He is a frequent speaker at state and nationAl Small satellite and payload conferences.

Will MacAdams - Panelist

Will MacAdams is a community based theater-maker who creates original plays inspired by local stories. Past projects include: The Black Dirt Cycle, a cycle of three plays about immigration and soil, created with The Farming community of Warwick, NY (Playwright, Director); Peter Handke's Kaspar, performed by theater students in Johannesburg at the beginning of the Mandela era (Director); Eye to Eye, a play about racism and youth-police relations, created with future police officers and young people (Co-Playwright, Director); and Cruising the Divide, an interview-inspired play about race, class, and the celebration of the Kentucky Derby, created with Actors Theater of Louisville's Apprentice/Intern Company (Playwright). Additional directing credits: TopDog/UnderDog (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Game On, The Open Road Anthology (Humana Festival); Moliere's Tartuffe (Barnard College); and One Flea Spare (Columbia University). Awards and Fellowships: the Rockefeller Foundation's Next Generation Leadership Fellowship, a civil rights award from Louisville's Carl Braden Memorial Center, and a Yale University Bates Fellowship, which brought him to Central Java, Indonesia to train in Javanese Shadow Puppetry.

Dr. Nat Irvin, II - Panelist

Nat Irvin, II, is the W.M. Strickler Executive-in-Residence and professor of management at the University of Louisville, College of Business where he teaches change management, leadership and future studies. Irvin also serves as the Chief Learning Officer for the Wondaland Arts Society, a Grammy nominated artistic group based in Atlanta. Irvin has engaged many groups and organizations in strategic conversations about the future focused on the significant social, political, economic, technological and environmental trends and events that will have the greatest impact on urban communities by the year 2020 and beyond. Advertisers and other media use Irvin's findings to identify new demographic groups and target them with customized messages and opportunities. Dr. Irvin is a graduate of the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and a Master's degree in Media Arts. An accomplished composer, he also holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Music Composition from the University of North Texas and is a graduate of the Institute for Educational Management, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Gill Holland - Panelist

Gill Holland and his wife Augusta have been instrumental in turning a formerly economically depressed and run-down east downtown Louisville area into a thriving arts/design and sustainable district, now known as "NuLu" - Louisville's East Market District. Holland coined the term NuLu and was crucial in land-marking and saving from destruction a block of 100-150 year old buildings in the area. Two years ago, Holland opened NuLu's flagship cultural center "The Green Building", a renovated 120 year old building which is now certified LEED "Platinum" and the greenest commercial building in Kentucky. Using sustainability and public art initiatives, NuLu is now a burgeoning arts, design, start-up nexus and general center for all things green. Holland was recently voted President of the East Market District Association.

Russel Hulsey – Panelist

Russel Hulsey is an Artist and Poet living in Louisville Kentucky. He has exhibited work in numerous venues, to include a 2010 Solo Exhibition at21c Museum, a Solo Exhibition at theSanta Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, and in the 2002 Group Show "Other Bodies" at theSpeed Art Museumin Louisville KY. Most recently, he was selected to participate in the Creative Capital Foundation'sProfessional Development Program(2010), and received an Al Smith Fellowship in 2006. Hulsey's recent work may be found at Revelry Gallery, 21c Museum, and Rosenwald Wolf Gallery(Philadelphia); and has recently been published in Vision Magazine (Beijing, CN), and The Paper(www.thelouisvillepaper.com). Hulsey graduated with a BA in Philosophy from theUniversity of Louisville in 2005.

TEd Smith – Panelist

Dr. TEd Smith was appointed by Mayor Greg Fischer as the Director of the newly-formed Office of Economic Growth and Innovation in January 2012. This department seeks to grow our economy through a wide range of means including flexible loan programs, advanced planning activities as well as strategic work in globalization and sustainability. As of July, 2011, Dr. Smith was the city's first Director of Innovation and was tasked with both internal government agency innovation support as well as citizen engagement. Prior to joining city government, he was appointed Senior Advisor on Innovation in Health Information Technology in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) of Health IT in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that role, he led several initiatives focused on encouraging innovation in health IT and public private partnerships. Dr. Smith is an Open Government champion and applied researcher on innovation related to open data and a former member of the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) Open Government Team. He is a successful online media entrepreneur. His most recent company provided news about the treatment of chronic disease. He holds a bachelor of science in Neuroscience from Allegheny College and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Miami University (OH). Dr. Smith completed his post-doctoral studies at MIT in space biomedical measurement and was a Co-Investigator for the Neurolab space shuttle mission.

Sunday, March 18 – 12 p.m. (as part of College Days Weekend)

In partnership with IF University

There Is Another Way! How artistic thinking inspires new ideas

Kris Kimel, founder of Louisville's IdeaFestival, facilitates this panel discussion on the power of creative thinking in innovation and the role of the artist on stage and beyond.

Panel will include: Rick Johnson, Kentucky Science and Technology Corp;Lisa Kron,Playwright (The Veri**on Play) and Jae Rhim Lee, MIT Artist-in-Residence.

Lisa Kron is a founding member of the Obie and Bessie award-winning theatre company, the Five Lesbian Brothers whose most recent playOedipus at Palm Springspremiered this summer at New York Theatre Workshop. Ms. Kron's play2.5 Minute Ridepremiered at The Public Theater in 1999 and has toured extensively. It received an Obie Award, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations, an L.A. Dramalogue Award and the GLAAD award for Best Off-Broadway play. Her play,Well, premiered at The Public Theater in 2004 and was named one of the ten best plays of the year byThe New York Times, Associated Press,Newark Star Ledger,BackstageandThe Advocate. It will premiere on Broadway at the Longacre Theater this spring.

Rick Johnson joined KSTC in February 2011 as a Technology Commercialization Executive in Residence. Previously Mr. Johnson ran two closely held electronic manufacturing companies and divisions of two publicly traded electronic manufacturing companies. Mr. Johnson started his career as a design engineer and progressed into engineering management, sales management and then general management. He has experience in the telecommunications, petrochemical, security, transportation, components, electronic sensing and capital equipment markets. Mr. Johnson holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and an MBA from UCLA. He has also been awarded four US patents.

Jae Rhim Lee is a visual artist and designer whose living units, furniture, wearables, and recycling systems propose unorthodox relationships between the mind/body/self and the built and natural environment. She has exhibited internationally and has given numerous lectures, talks, and demonstrations, including at MIT, the TEDGlobal Conference, Harvard Medical School, and Kampnagel Hamburg. Lee is a recipient of a 2009 Creative Capital Foundation Grant, a 2010 Grant from the Institut fur Raumexperimente/Universitaet der Kunste Berlin, and a 2011 MAK-Schindler Scholarship. Lee is currently a 2011 TED Global Fellow and a Research Affiliate in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.

Sunday, March 25 – 11:30 a.m. (as part of Industry Weekend I)

The scribes speak: a playwrights' forum

In the spirit of the Humana Festival's celebration of the playwright's voice, this artist-driven panel is a chance to hear from scribes themselves-a lively discussion shaped through input from writers about the conversations they would like to see galvanize our field. Participants will include representatives of Actors Theatre's National Playwright Advisory Team, a group of Humana Festival alumni who have provided invaluable insight during the theatre's artistic leadership transition.

Panel will include members of Actors Theatre'sNational Playwright Advisory Team including:Molly Smith Metzler, Allison Moore, Adam Rapp and Steven Sapp.

Friday, March 30 – 10:30 a.m. (as part of Industry Weekend 2)

Critiquing Criticism: (re)imagining the future

As meaningful coverage of the performing arts dwindles in newspapers across the country, six industry experts come together to envision new possibilities for the future of arts criticism. Part idea slam, part dialogue, this forum will attempt to get out ahead of current trends and imagine whatcouldbe. Hear their manifestos and engage in a dynamic conversation about where we ought to be heading-and how to get there.

This panel will be moderated by Polly Carl, Editor, Howlround (HowlRound.com) and includes: Sasha Anawalt, Publisher, www.Engine28.com,Bill Hirschman, Theatre Critic and Chair of New Plays Committee American Theatre Critics Association;Thomas Graves, Co-Producing Artistic Director, Rude Mechs;Ilana M. Brownstein, Director of New Work, Company One;Deborah Stein, Playwright.

Sasha Anawalt is director of USC Annenberg Arts Journalism Programs, including the Masters degree in Specialized Journalism (The Arts) program, a partnership with the five arts schools at USC that she helped create and launch in 2008. Anawalt also directs the USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Program, which in 2011 produced Engine29.org, a site designed by Douglas McLennan for experimental projects and best-thinking practices in arts journalism. From 2005 to 2011, Anawalt directed the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Theater and Musical Theater, where this past spring she created and built with McLennan, Engine28, the pop-up newsroom that covered theater festivals and the TCG conference in Los Angeles. In October 2009, she co-produced the first-ever National Summit on Arts Journalism, a one-day virtual and real conference in Annenberg Auditorium. Anawalt's best-selling cultural biography, "The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company" (Scribner, 1996), will be re-issued in January 2012 as an e-book, timed to coincide with the release of a feature film documentary. "Joffrey: Mavericks of American Dance," by director Bob Hercules, is heavily based on her book. Anawalt was the first chief dance critic for theLos Angeles Herald Examinerand theLA Weeklyand, for nearly a decade, was the voice of "Dance Notes" at KCRW, National Public Radio. Her reviews and features can be found in the archives ofThe New York Times,The New York Times Magazine,Los Angeles Times,Wall Street Journal,SoHo Weekly News,Montreal Gazette,Dance Magazine,TV Guide, KUSC and MSNBC-online sites. Anawalt served on the 2006 and 2007 Pulitzer Prize Committee juries for criticism. A native of New York City and graduate of Barnard College, Anawalt lives in Pasadena with her husband; they have three children.

Ilana M. Brownstein is a dramaturg and director specializing in new play development and local theatre ecologies. She is the Founding Dramaturg at Playwrights' Commons, Director of New Work at Company One, and a professor of dramatic literature and dramaturgy at Boston University's School of Theatre. For seven years she was Literary Manager and dramaturg at The Huntington Theatre Company, where she created the Huntington Playwriting Fellows program and the Breaking Ground Festival; was production dramaturg for all season shows; edited the Limelight Literary Guide; and assisted new plays to premiere at the Huntington, regionally, and on Broadway. She has worked dramaturgically with numerous playwrights, including Melinda Lopez, Lydia Diamond, Kirsten Greenidge, Joyce Van Dyke, August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Theresa Rebeck, Naomi Iizuka, Mat Smart, Lauren Yee, Aditi Kapil, and Sarah Schulman, among others. In 2008, she won the Elliott Hayes Award, an international prize given by Literary Managers & Dramaturgs of the Americas for innovation and excellence in dramaturgy; and in 2011 won LMDA's Dramaturg-Driven Grant for her work with Playwrights' Commons. She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama, and a BA in Directing from The College of Wooster.

Polly Carl will be heading to Emerson College in July to start up the Center for Theatre Commons. She is currently the editor of the online journal HowlRound and the director of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage. Polly produces, dramaturgs, commissions, writes, and consults. She spent two years as Director of Artistic Development at Steppenwolf Theatre and served eleven years at the Playwrights' Center-seven as Producing Artistic Director. She moderates a lot of panels, sits on committees and boards, and passionately loves her dogs. Her Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society is from the University of Minnesota.

Gordon Cox oversees the theater coverage at Variety as a reporter, columnist and editor. Prior to joining Variety in 2005, he spent five years as a theater critic and columnist at New York Newsday. He's also worked at nonprofit performing arts organizations including the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and the American Conservatory Theater.

Thomas Graves is a Co-Producing Producing Artistic Director for Rude Mechs. As such he has developed, performed in and producedCherrywood, Have You Ever Been Assassinated?, DecameRon Day 7: Revenge,the Rudes' re-enactment ofDionysus in 69(William Finley), and appeared at the Humana Festival at ATL in 2010 (The Method Gun). Mr. Graves recently co-directed with Lana Lesley Rude Mechs' new western operettaI've Never Been So Happyat CTG's Kirk Douglas Theatre in LA. Thomas holds an MFA in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin.

Bill Hirschman has been a professional journalist since interning during high school in 1966 in Westchester County, New York. He began reviewing theater for the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1998 and has written about the arts and reviewed books for several decades, especially books. His arts coverage has appeared in Variety, American Theatre magazine, Playbill.com, a&e magazine, the Miami Herald among many other outlets. His work as the founding critic for the South Florida Theater Review won him first place for arts criticism in the Society of Professional Journalists' Sunshine State Awards. He serves on the executive committee of the American Theatre Critics' Association, treasurer of its Foundation and the chairman of its new plays completion which presents the Steinberg/ATCA Award. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a theatre minor, he has been involved in theater as an actor, director, producer and playwright most of his life. He is an award-winning investigative reporter and editor who has worked for newspapers in Florida, New York, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas, covering local government, education, social services and crime. He is the past president of the South Florida and Kansas chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists and winner of the national First Amendment Award.

Deborah Stein's work has been seen nationally at Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Theatre @ Boston Court, the Guthrie, the Public, DTW, and Ars Nova; and internationally in Poland, Ireland, Edinburgh (the Traverse) and Prague. Deborah has collaborated on original ensemble works and site-specific installations with artists including Joseph Chaikin, Dominique Serrand, and most frequently the Pig Iron Theatre Company, with whom she has collaborated since 2000 on six original works. She has received a Bush Fellowship, two Jerome Fellowships, and a McKnight Advancement Grant at the Playwrights' Center, and is published in Theatre Forum, Play: A Journal of Plays, and The Best American Poetry of 1996. She has been resident artist at Hedgebrook, Swarthmore, Princeton, and Tofte Lake Center, and has taught at Yale, NYU, the New School, Northeastern, and Brown University, where she received her MFA. Deborah was formerly co-producing director of the Workhaus Collective in Minneapolis, and is a current resident playwright at New Dramatists. Most recently her play CHIMERA, a collaboration with Suli Holum, was produced at HERE as part of Under the Radar.

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