Humana Festival 2017: RECENT ALIEN ABDUCTIONS Continues to Haunt

If there is one play from this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays it's hard to forget, it's Recent Alien Abductions by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, directed by Actors Theatre of Louisville Artistic Director Les Waters.

The thing is, Recent Alien Abductions isn't about alien abductions. Instead, Cortiñas unspools a story about family secrets, betrayal, and the violent aftereffects of American Colonialism, as a Puerto Rican man named Álvaro, played beautifully by Jon Norman Schneider, concocts a conspiracy theory around a 1994 episode of The X-Files called Little Green Men. That episode supposedly took place in Puerto Rico, even though Álvaro recognizes from the beginning that the foliage isn't remotely Puerto Rican, and the character he identifies with, a boy also named Álvaro, speaks English with a Mexican accent.

Most of us are familiar with that kind of dramatic license (or dramatic laziness), but to Álvaro, the errors bespeak something deeper. He also thinks that the episode in syndication has been changed from the one he saw the first time. And when he adds that up, he finds a message just for him, straight from The X-Files.

But the story Cortiñas is laying out doesn't stick with Álvaro or his X-Files obsession. Just as Little Green Men sent Mulder to a fake Puerto Rico, Cortiñas sends the action of his play to a fake Puerto Rican house created on the stage of the Pamela Brown Theatre, where we meet Álvaro's mother, who is in poor health physically and mentally, and his brutish brother Néstor, along with Néstor's wife and a friendly neighbor. Bobby Plasencia takes Néstor, a creep and a bully, to uncomfortable places, while Mia Katigbak is sad and affecting as his mother, Carmen H. Herlihy adds warmth as neighbor Beba, and Elia Monte-Brown does her best as Néstor's wife, whose role is somewhat underwritten.

The conflict arises with the arrival of a visitor from the United States, a woman named Patria played by Ronete Levenson with competing strands of strength and naivete. Patria knew Álvaro, who we now learn is dead, and she wants permission from his family to publish the stories he wrote -- science fiction, of course -- as a way of honoring her friend and creating a legacy for him. But there was a reason Álvaro left, a reason he never came back, and a reason he immersed himself in writing far-out stories. When the truth of his past was too hard to bear, Álvaro wrapped himself in fantasy and fiction.

Recent Alien Abductions sets its own pace, with quiet moments where you really need to pay attention, and an explosive scene of violence where you'd really like to look away. Cortiñas has built his play with significant challenges and landmines as part of its structure.

First, there's the 30+-minute monologue that opens the play, with Schneider alone on stage, framed by a ghastly green light around the proscenium. That sets a heavy burden for Schneider, since he is carrying the whole story without any technical bells or whistles to help. He is a very engaging performer and there is certainly justification for setting the character of Álvaro apart from the action. Still, that's a long time to sit with one image.

Jon Norman Schneider in Recent Alien Abductions
Photo by Bill Brymer

Later in the play, Cortiñas sets up an extended scene played off-stage, where we can hear the voices of actors Herlihy, Katigbak and Monte-Brown, but we can't see any of them. That, too, is well supported by the script, as unseen -- but heard -- action from the past is a critical piece of the mystery. But again, even if the reason for the scene is clear, it's somewhat difficult to follow as executed here.

There is no denying that Recent Alien Abductions is a tricky script from beginning to end. And yet... And yet, it is compelling, intense and haunting in the end.

Plan Ahead: Plays and Ticket Info for 2017 Humana Festival of New American Plays

The 41st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced its lineup for spring 2017. The Humana Festival is probably the best-known New Play Festival in the country, launching works like D. L. Coburn's The Gin Game and Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart in its early years and Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' Appropriate and Lucas Hnath's The Christians more recently. Directors, producers, literary managers, scholars and a whole lot of theater critics attend every year to see what's new before the hottest Humana plays show up in major theaters from New York to LA and Chicago in between.

If you're interested in attending one of the four weekends between March 17 and April 9, ticket packages are now on sale. Options range from world premieres of three full-length plays in the First Look Weekend March 17 to 19 to four plays, a keynote address and a panel discussion during Discover Weekend March 24 to 26; a five or six play package plus "a presentation by a leader in American theatre and more" for Ovation Week March 31 to April 2; and a five, six or seven play package, including brand new ten-minute plays and a showcase written for Actors Theatre's "professional training company," during Encore Week April 5 to 7. There are special options for college and university theater faculty and students, audience members under 35, and industry professionals. Check out all the details here.

And if you purchase one of those ticket packages, what will you be seeing? The 2017 schedule of full-length plays includes I Now Pronounce by Tasha Gordon-Solomon, directed by Stephen Brackett and opening March 1; We're Gonna Be Okay by Basil Kreimendahl, directed by Lisa Peterson and opening March 7; Cry It Out by Molly Smith Metzler, directed by Davis McCallum and opening March 10; Recent Alien Abductions by by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, directed by Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters and opening March 17; Airness by Chelsea Marcantel, directed by Associate Artistic Director Meredith McDonough and opening March 24; and The Many Deaths of Nathan Stubblefield, with pieces written by Jeff Augustin, Sarah DeLappe, Claire Kiechel and Ramiz Monself to be performed by the actors of the professional training company, directed by Eric Hoff and also opening March 24.

That last offering involves stories of inspiration and invention from Kentucky's "unsung dreamers," while the others cover an air guitar competition, babies and new moms, bomb shelters and the Cuban Missile Crisis, a lost episode of The X Files, and a wedding with a great deal of drama. If you're trying to figure out which is which, the titles of the plays should be a hint, but I encourage you to click on the links under those titles to get all the details.

This year's ten-minute plays will be revealed later. Last year, we got that news in February. Stay tuned to find out who's who and what's what if ten-minute plays are your thing.

But in the meantime... Ticket packages are now available, with "early bird" discounts in place if you book before February 10, 2017. Just a tip: If you want the full array of plays, including the ten-minute plays, on the last weekend, things tend to fill up fast, so you might want to act now.

Humana Festival 2016: Sarah Ruhl's FOR PETER PAN ON HER 70th BIRTHDAY

If there was a marquee event at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays, it had to be Sarah Ruhl's For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.

Ruhl is currently at the top of the American playwriting ladder; her In the Next Room, or the vibrator play had a Broadway production with multiple Tony nominations, while Stage Kiss, eurydice, Dead Man's Cell Phone and The Clean House (among others) played Off-Broadway and have subsequently been produced all over the country, including across central Illinois. Ruhl was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, as well as winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Whiting Award, the Lilly Award and a PEN Award.

When Ruhl came to Louisville for the Humana Festival, her play got Actors Theatre's artistic director, Les Waters, as its director, with an A-list cast, including Kathleen Chalfant, a multiple Tony nominee herself. It doesn't get much better than that.

Kathleen Chalfant in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday.
Photo Credit: Bill Brymer

So how did her Peter Pan do? In performance, Ruhl's script for Peter Pan showed enough wit to keep it buoyant, a sweet affection for its characters, especially Ann, the one played by Chalfant, and just a shade of sadness. You might expect "I don't want to grow up" as a theme, given the title, and that's definitely there, but it's part of a larger issue, when growing up involves saying goodbye to the generation ahead of us.

It's become something of a running joke that critics inevitably try to find some sort of overall theme for each year's Humana Festival, although the people at Actors Theatre swear they don't pick plays to suit any one idea. This year, American Theatre's Russell M. Dembin touches on the theory that ghosts provided the Festival's throughline. While there were certainly a number of ghosts, for me, confronting mortality emerged as a more pervasive theme, especially within parent/child relationships. That's front and center in For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday, as Ann and her siblings gather to deal with their father's death.

The cast of For Peter Pan on her 70th Birthday.
Photo credit: Bill Brymer

When the play opens, Ann, her sister Wendy, and her brothers Jim, John and Michael sit and wait in their beloved dad's hospital room. Two of Ann's brothers are doctors, as was their father, so they're well aware he doesn't have much time. From there, the play moves to the five of them at the old kitchen table, drinking, reminiscing and arguing during Dad's wake, and then into a sort of dream sequence where each takes on a role in Peter Pan, which Ann starred in as a child.

I don't know how many 70-year-old actresses there are in the world who'd be willing to step into Peter Pan's tights and fly around the stage, but Chalfant is game, as are the younger-but-not-exactly-young Lisa Emery, who plays Wendy, and Scott Jaeck (John), David Chandler (Jim) and Keith Reddin (Michael). The roles they play in Ann's life are reflected in their Peter Pan roles, as well, although the political talking points they hurl at each other and how that sets up Captain Hook in the play-within-a-play come off somewhat forced as a dramatic device.

What was best about the Humana Festival For Peter Pan was, in a word, Chalfant. She had the audience in the palm of her hand from her curtain speech to her flying game, and she made Ruhl's words come alive with the elegance and expertise of her delivery. Looking at the words on the page, I found they don't seem nearly as funny as they did when Kathleen Chalfant was saying them.

Ron Crawford, who played the father they'd all come to honor, also emerged as a major presence in the play, even when he was lying motionless in a hospital bed. His contributions to the second scene -- what Ruhl calls "Movement Two: The Irish Wake" -- were especially well-received, as his timing and wry humor paid off nicely.

Chandler, Emery, Jaeck and Reddin each etched an individual portrait and together with Chalfant, they created a recognizable family dynamic, the kind where being together throws you right back up against the same buttons you've been pushing since you were kids. We don't really ever grow up, after all.

One other strength: A local marching band that came in to cover the scene change between Movements One and Two, playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." It was perfect. Here's hoping other productions will find their own marching bands if For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday pops up in regional theaters.

New Plays Await, but the Deadline for Humana Festival Reservations Looms

Although Actors Theatre of Louisville's 39th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays has already begun, there's still time -- a little time -- to reserve a package of tickets to the "Industry Weekends" that wrap up the Festival in April. The deadline for registration for the Industry Weekends is March 11, which means it's time to get moving if you want to be there!

There are other new play festivals around the country, but the Humana Festival remains one of the most accessible, prestigious and enjoyable. The Industry Weekends -- the last two weekends of the Festival -- bring together press, producers, directors, agents, artistic directors, literary managers, playwrights, publishers and other theatre professionals, gathered to see a crop of new works by rising and established playwrights.

From the descriptions offered by Actors Theatre (although they always claim there is no overriding theme), this year's slate seems to be about how we embrace life and each other, bridging gaps or falling in between. Actors Theatre rolls out their Humana Festival choices over the weeks between March 2 and April 12, with weekend packages offering the possibility of three plays March 20 to 22, five plays March 27 to 29, six plays April 4 to 5, and all six plays plus a program of 10-minute plays April 10 to 12.  Here's what you'll see if you come that last weekend, when the full array is being performed:

THE ROOMMATE
by Jen Silverman.
Sharon considers herself a sensible, middle-aged Midwestern woman. But when she finds herself in need of a roommate to pay the bills, she ends up with Robyn, a vegan from the Bronx who is secretive and a smoker. Sharon is persistent in her efforts to get to know Robyn and to show her that sharing and growing can be good things. But it may be Sharon who changes the most.

DOT
by Colman Domingo
At Christmas time, the Shealy family -- Dotty and her three grown children -- is in need of a whole lot more than a tree to brighten their inner-city home. In this "wild and moving dark comedy," Dotty Shealy and her kids will find open up issues of elder care and midlife crisis along with their Christmas gifts.

I WILL BE GONE
by Erin Courtney
Ghosts, earthquakes, haunted memories... That's the world seventeen-year-old Penelope discovers after her mother dies, when she movies to a small town in the mountains in California to live with her aunt. Set next to a ghost town, I Will Be Gone looks at "the beauty and awkwardness of living with the knowledge that everything ends."

THE GLORY OF THE WORLD
by Charles Mee
Thomas Merton was a world traveler in his youth, but a Trappist monk in Kentucky by the age of 26. He wrote some 70 books on faith and social justice before he died at 53. In this play, Mee celebrates what would have been Merton's 100th birthday with "a wildly theatrical meditation on happiness, love, the values of solitude and...seeking heaven on earth."

I PROMISED MYSELF TO LIVE FASTER
Text by Gregory S. Moss and Pig Iron Theatre Company
Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company brings its "unique method of performance research and collaborative creation, plus a signature physical approach to character" to Louisville with this delirious science fiction allegory about intergalactic nuns in search of a Holy Gay Flame.

THAT HIGH LONESOME SOUND
by Jeff Augustin, Diana Grisanti, Cory Hinkle and Cherise Castro Smith
This year's showcase for Actors Theatre's Apprentice Company is all about bluegrass. Or, as Actors Theatre puts it, "In a lively theatrical album of scenes...four writers respond with playfulness and poignancy to the signature sounds, inherited stories, and cultural impact of this very American—and very Kentucky—music tradition."

Note that Charles Mee's The Glory of the World is the one Actors Theatre's Artistic Director Les Water has chosen to direct.

In addition to these six full-length plays, the Humana Festival also features a program of three 10-minute plays during the second Industry Weekend. Those are Rules of Comedy by Patricia Cotter, Joshua Consumed an Unfortunate Pear by Steve Yockey and So Unnatural a Level by Gary Winter. Winter's play won this year's Heideman Award, granted by Actors Theatre to the winner of its national 10-minute play contest. The Heideman Award also comes with a $1000 check to the winning playwright. To read more about the three 10-minute plays chosen to be performed as part of the Humana Festival, click here.

For more information about the entire Humana Festival of New American Plays and to find reservation information, visit Actors Theatre's website here.

2013 Humana Festival Array of New Plays Announced

As promised, Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced what new plays will be on the schedule for its 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays next spring.

This time out, there will be full-length plays from Jeff Augustin, Mallery Avidon, Will Eno, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Sam Marks, with a piece created for Actors Theatre's Apprentice Company by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn. There will also be a program of 10-minute plays, with Sarah Ruhl the only announced playwright so far, since Actors Theatre's 10-minute play competition is still underway and one or more of the other plays may be chosen from that contest.

New Actors Theatre Artistic Director Les Waters will direct Will Eno's play, called Gnit. As you might guess from the name, Gnit is a new take on Peer Gynt, Henrik Ibsen's rambling adventure about a shiftless sort of man who travels around the world, running into a king, dairymaids, trolls, brownies, nixies, gnomes, Bedoins, madmen, missionaries, the Sphinx and the Devil. This Gnit promises to be a "rollicking and very cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness."

Appropriate is the title of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' new play, although without hearing it said aloud, I don't know if the piece is supposed to be the adjective appropriate, as in suitable or fitting, as opposed to the verb appropriate, as in, borrow without permission. Given that the play's action begins when the three adult children in the Lafayette family "descend upon a crumbling Arkansan plantation to liquidate their dead patriarch’s estate," I'm going to guess it's the verb appropriate, the one that is just a stone's throw from steal.

Gary Griffin, who is the Associate Artistic Director at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, where he recently directed a phenomenal production of Sunday in the Park with George, will be at the helm of Appropriate, his first directing gig at Actors Theatre.

Meredith McDonough, Actors Theatre's Associate Artistic Director, directs The Delling Shore, Sam Marks' look at competing novelists -- one successful and one struggling -- and their daughters, who also aspire to write. It's really hard not to take sides when push comes to shove, when wordplay becomes just as cutting as knives.

Cry Old Kingdom, about an artist trying to survive in Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti, marks Jeff Augustin's professional debut as a playwright. It will be directed by Tom Dugdale, recipient of the 2012 Princess Grace Award in Theater with La Jolla Playhouse.

You can probably surmise from the title of Mallery Avidon's O Guru Guru Guru or why I don’t want to go to yoga class with you that it involves yoga or the lack thereof. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, O Guru Guru is a "disarming look at the precarious process of becoming yourself." Whether that means yoga or not.

The subject matter of the apprentice showcase, conceived by Amy Attaway and Sarah Lunnie, directed by Attaway, and penned by Rinne Groff, Lucas Hnath and Anne Washburn, is also apparent from the title. Sleep Rock Thy Brain is about... Sleep! Or at least the "rich complexities of the sleeping brain," explored through science, spectacle and theatrical invention.

Last year's apprentice piece was about food, and we got brownies on the way out. Maybe this year, they'll give us pillows. That would be exciting.

The Humana Festival, which is supported and sponsored by the Humana Foundation, begins February 27 and runs through April 7, 2013. Various packages and weekend deals are available for different audiences throughout that time period, with specific information on who goes when here.

Save the Date: Humana Festival 2013 March 29-31 or April 5-7

Actors Theatre of Louisville has announced the dates -- March 29-31 and April 5-7 -- for the "industry professionals" part of its 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays, the first festival with new Artistic Director Les Waters at the helm. The announcement of what plays Waters and Actors Theatre staff have chosen for next spring's Humana Festival schedule won't come till this Sunday, but during the "industry professionals" event, you can bank on about 10 events, including around 6 new plays by some of America's best playwrights, a trio of 10-minute plays and some kind of compendium/anthology/showcase piece put together by a group of playwrights and performed by Actors Theatre's apprentice troupe.

The whole Humana Festival, which takes place over several weekends in March and April to accommodate press, producers, directors, agents, students, faculty, arts advocates and just plain fans of new plays, generally takes place in the three theatre spaces at Actors Theatre, although there have been offerings in cars, on t-shirts, and in a museum that took audiences a little farther afield. The theatrical offerings "run the gamut from comedies to dramas to plays that forge new theatrical territory. Combined with world-class design and performances, this celebration of American playwrights’ innovation and imagination has something in it for everyone," according to Actors Theatre materials.

This year, the special college weekend will be March 22-24. That experience involves four productions, career development workshops, networking, audition and intern opportunities, and a very good introduction to the Humana Festival process at a reduced rate.

They also offer New Play Getaway options for theatre fans who want more flexibility, with packages available March 15-17, 22-24, 29-31 and April 5-7. 

The Industry Professional weekends overlap the last two of those on March 29-31 and April 5-7, offering the complete lineup of plays as well as other panel discussions and networking opportunities.

Tickets for all of these packages go on sale Tuesday, November 13. For more information, you may contact the Actors Theatre of Louisville box office at 502-584-1205.

And remember to stay tuned for the big announcement on November 11 about what plays will go up this year.