Coming Soon to a Theater Near You, One Hopes: Promising plays from the 37th Humana Festival
Chris Klimek
When it was founded in 1976, The Humana Festival of New American Plays was unique: It was a centralized showcase of new work from playwrights around the country. Decades later, new play development is no longer consolidated in a single spot, but the festival continues to a enjoy a reputation as a major platform for plays their authors hope will ripple out to stages of every size in the years to come.
I’d never been to Humana, so I was excited by an invitation to Louisville to cover the festival’s closing “industry weekend” with 11 other journalists from around the country, including my pal Michael Phillips, as part of a "pop-up newsroom" called Engine 31. This year’s lineup was the first curated by Obie Award-winning British director Les Waters, who has earned a reputation as a midwife for important new plays by directing premieres from heavy hitters like Sarah Ruhl, Caryl Churchill, and Anne Washburn. The slate Waters programmed featured six new plays (plus a closing-night showcase of 10-minute plays, a festival tradition). I caught four of those, of which three were sufficiently intriguing to make me want to revisit them.
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