Far from the glittering lights of Broadway, in a city known more for its horse racing than its artistic endeavors, an annual festival in Louisville, Kentucky, has transformed the landscape of the American theater. The Actors Theatre of Louisville—the Tony Award–winning state theater of Kentucky—in 1976 successfully created what became the nation's most respected new-play festival, the Humana Festival of New American Plays. The Humana Festival: The History of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville examines the success of the festival and theater’s Pulitzer Prize–winning productions that for decades have reflected new-play trends in regional theaters and on Broadway—the result of the calculated decisions, dogged determination, and good luck of its producing director, Jon Jory. The volume details how Actors Theatre of Louisville was established, why the Humana Festival became successful in a short time, and how the event’s success has been maintained by the Louisville venue that has drawn theater critics from around the world for more than thirty years. Author Jeffrey Ullom charts the theater’s early struggles to survive, the battles between troupe leaders, and the desperate measures to secure financial support from the Louisville community. He examines how Jory established and expanded the festival to garner extraordinary local support, attract international attention, and entice preeminent American playwrights to premier their works in the Kentucky city. In The Humana Festival, Ullom provides a broad view of new-play development within artistic, administrative, and financial contexts. He analyzes the relationship between Broadway and regional theaters, outlining how the Humana Festival has changed the process of new-play development and even Broadway’s approach to discovering new work, and also highlights the struggles facing regional theaters across the country as they strive to balance artistic ingenuity and economic viability. Offering a rare look at the annual event, The Humana Festival provides the first insider’s view of the extraordinary efforts that produced the nation’s most successful new-play festival.

A collection of all ten scripts from the 2006 Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.

The Theater of Tony Kushner is a comprehensive portrait of the life and work of one of America's most important contemporary playwrights.

(Theatre World). Applause Theatre & Cinema Books is pleased to make this venerable continuing series complete by publishing Theatre World Volume 63 . Theatre World remains the authoritative pictorial and statistical record of the season on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and for regional theatre companies. Volume 63 features Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's Tony Award-winning Best Musical Spring Awakening , which also earned a Theatre World Award for actor Jonathan Groff. Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia captured the Best Play Tony Award, as well as Tonys for featured actors Billy Crudup and Jennifer Ehle. Frasier star David Hyde Pierce returned to his theatre roots to capture a Tony for Kander and Ebb's Curtains , and other highlights of the season include the Off-Broadway musical In the Heights as well as Passing Strange , which debuted at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Both have since transferred to Broadway and become critical and popular hits. As always, Theatre World 's outstanding features include: * An expanded section of professional regional productions from across the U.S. * The longest running shows on and Off-Broadway * Full coverage of the Theatre World Awards for Broadway and Off-Broadway debuts * Expanded obituaries and a comprehensive index

The Humana Festival of New American Plays has been a leading home for extraordinary playwrights and their imaginations for more than four decades, making Actors Theatre of Louisville one of the nation’s preeminent powerhouses for new play development. For six weeks every spring, Louisville exerts a gravitational pull on producers and theatre lovers from around the country, who travel from far and wide for the adventure of seeing a diverse slate of fully-produced new plays. Many Humana Festival plays have gone on to garner awards and subsequent productions, making a sustained impact on the international dramatic repertoire. Humana Festival 2018: The Complete Plays brings together all six scripts from the 42nd annual cycle of world premieres, featuring a remarkable array of work by some of the most exciting voices in the American theatre. This anthology makes the Humana Festival plays available to an even wider audience, allowing readers to experience the collision of perspectives, styles and stories that makes the festival such an invigorating celebration of the art form. This compilation features the full-length plays Do You Feel Anger? by Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Evocation to Visible Appearance by Mark Schultz, we, the invisibles by Susan Soon He Stanton, Marginal Loss by Deborah Stein, and God Said This by Leah Nanako Winkler, as well as You Across from Me, a collaboratively-written play by four writers—Jaclyn Backhaus, Dipika Guha, Brian Otaño, and Jason Gray Platt.