Humana Festival of New American Plays Lineup Announced

Actors Theatre of Louisville on Tuesday announced the lineup for the 2015 Humana Festival of New American Plays.The 39th iteration of the world-renowned festival begins March 4 and runs through April 12. It will feature six world premieres and the bill of three 10-minute plays, which will be announced in January.Weekend packages and single-performance tickets go on sale Wednesday. Actors Theatre season ticket holders can buy single tickets during a pre-sale today. More information can be found hereor by calling (502) 584.1205.We'll hear more from Actors Theatre artistic director Les Waters today.Here's more about the plays with descriptions from Actors:The Roommateby Jen Silvermandirected by Mike DonahueMarch 4-April 12, 2015in the Bingham Theatre Recently divorced and living in an old house in Iowa, Sharon finds a sensible roommate like herself—a woman in her fifties—to make ends meet. But she quickly learns that Robyn, a vegan from the Bronx, couldn’t be further from the ladies in her book club. Hell-bent on getting to know Robyn despite their differences, Sharon deploys her friendly Midwestern charm at full force. Their sensibilities are humorously mismatched, but turning over a new leaf can have unintended consequences.Dotby Colman Domingodirected by Meredith McDonoughMarch 10-April 12, 2015in the Pamela Brown Auditorium In the Shealy family home just a few days before Christmas, Dotty and her three middle-aged children gather with so much more than the holidays on their minds. Their anxieties go far beyond finding a suitable blue spruce for the living room: this wild and moving dark comedy, served with a large helping of the crackling humor that only families can incite, grapples with aging parents, midlife crises, and the heart of an inner city neighborhood.I Will Be Goneby Erin Courtneydirected by Kip FaganMarch 13-April 12, 2015in the Bingham Theatre Seventeen-year-old Penelope goes to live with her Aunt Josephine in a small town in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains after her mom dies. Everyone in this small town—built right next door to a ghost town—is haunted by something or someone, and no one knows how to behave. Filled with apparitions, earthquakes, and strange attempts to mourn, this play explores the beauty and awkwardness of living with the knowledge that everything ends.The Glory of the Worldby Charles Meedirected by Les Waterscommissioned by Actors Theatre of LouisvilleMarch 20-April 12, 2015in the Pamela Brown Auditorium part of the Brown-Forman Series A series of toasts to Thomas Merton on the occasion of his 100th birthday erupts into a raucous party. Inspired by myriad points of view on the Kentucky-based Trappist monk, writer and social activist—or pacifist, Buddhist, Catholic, Communist, and more, depending on who you ask—Mee’s exuberant play considers how we can live fully in all our contradictions, and leap into the unknown. A wildly theatrical meditation on happiness, love, the values of solitude and of engagement with the world, and seeking heaven on earth.I Promised Myself to Live Fasterdirected by Dan Rothenbergtext by Gregory S Moss and Pig Iron Theatre Companyconceived and created by Pig Iron Theatre CompanyMarch 27-April 12, 2015Victor Jory Theatre Tim’s out trolling for a good time when an order of intergalactic nuns charge him with a quest: retrieve the Holy Gay Flame from the clutches of the evil emperor to save the race of Homosexuals and restore the balance of power in the universe. But when he’s captured by the fabulously androgynous Ah-Ni, Tim’s chances look bleak. Infused with a Charles Ludlam-esque theatricality and a delirious sci-fi sensibility, Live Faster paints a 21st-century allegory of epic proportions. (For mature audiences.)That High Lonesome Soundby Jeff Augustin, Diana Grisanti, Cory Hinkle, and Charise Castro Smithdirected by Pirronne Yousefzadehperformed by the 2014-2015 Acting Apprentice Companycommissioned by Actors Theatre of LouisvilleMarch 27-April 12, 2015in the Bingham Theatre Bluegrass has a long and winding history, from Scottish ballads to African-American work songs, from Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. In a lively theatrical album of scenes created for the Acting Apprentice Company, 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.Update: Artistic director Les Waters is directing "The Glory of the World." He said Merton interests him in part because of his ability to mean different things to different people."People claim him for different things," Waters said. "I was talking to somebody the other day who said, 'Oh yes, of course he's a great Catholic mystic, but he was also a great social activist.' And somebody else who was in the conversation was saying, 'Yes, he was also a great artists and a great photographer and a great writer, in his own sense.'"