Humana Festival Begins

Theatre professionals from around the country will be in Louisville over the next few weeks for the 35th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre.The festival begins Sunday. It has become one of the premiere events in American theatre, and Actors Theatre Artistic Director Marc Masterson says competition to get into the festival is high."We read seven or eight hundred scripts a year and we talk about them, we debate them and we choose seven full-length works and what I try to do in that mix of plays is to provide a spectrum of different kinds of writers and different kinds of work."Last year's Humana Festival sold over 36,000 tickets. About 4,000 of those went to visitors from outside the Louisville area.The festival continues through April. This is Masterson's last Humana Festival in his current position. He has taken a job with a regional theater in California.