About
the Book:
Humana
Festival 1994:
The Complete Plays showcases plays
selected from the 18th annual cycle of world premieres, featuring a
remarkable array of work by some of the most exciting voices in the
American theatre.
The
Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL) – the Tony Award-winning state
theatre of Kentucky – in 1976 produced two new works at its first Humana
Festival – as it is known because of its corporate sponsorship. One was
D.L. Coburn's
The Gin Game, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978 and helped
launch what became the nation's most respected New American Play festival. 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.
This
anthology makes the genius of American playwrights available to an
even wider audience, allowing readers from around the world to
experience the collision of perspectives, styles and stories that
makes the festival such an invigorating celebration of the art form.
• Julie Johnson by Wendy Hammond. Best Friends –
With Benefits. When abusive husbands are given the boot and two women
move in together, the rules of life and love are forever changed.
(Cast: 2 female, 1 male, 1 female teenager, 1 male teenager)
• Shotgun by Romulus
Linney. This one-act play depicts the honest and pathetic
struggle of a man dredging through his past and present in search of
love, truth, and meaning. (Cast: 2 female, 3 male)
• Betty
The Yeti by Jon
Klein. Deep in the forests of northern Oregon environmentalists
clash with loggers in a furious battle to determine the future of the
land. Which is important the preservation of the natural landscape or
the lives of the men and women who depend on the harvesting of
lumber? (Cast: 4 female, 2 male)
• The Survivor: A
Cambodian Odyssey by Jon Lipsky. The biography of Dr. Haing Ngor,
who narrowly escaped the horrors perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge army
forces in his native Cambodia and went on to relive the struggle in
the film, The Killing Fields, which won him an Oscar. A story of
unspeakable struggle and unwavering hope, The Survivor reveals the
spirit of a man tempered by hate and sustained by love. (Cast: 3
female, 3 male)
• Slavs! (Thinking About the Longstanding
Problems of Virtue and Happiness)
by Tony Kushner. A long one-act, composed mostly of
outtakes from Perestroika, about the decline and disintegration of
the USSR and its rebirth as a collection of independent states.
(Cast: 3 female, 7 male)
• My Left Breast
by Susan Miller. A one-woman comedy about her battle
with breast cancer in which the author's mastectomy becomes the
occasion for a thoughtful, carefully constructed elegy on other forms
of loss. This Obie Award-winning play has also been honored with a Susan Smith Blackburn prize. (Cast: 1 female)
• 1969
(or
Howie Takes A Trip) by Tina Landau. This musical
theatre piece looks at the evolving, emerging personalities in a
1960s high school graduating class. It is sort of American Graffiti
crossed with Grease. (Cast: 2 female, 5 male)
• Trip's Cinch by
Phyllis Nagy. In this one-act play a business tycoon
Benjamin Trip has recently been on trial for the rape of Lucy Parks.
The jury acquitted him but now an ambitious academic delves deeper
investigating both parties. Who was really manipulated on that beach
after a pitcher of gin and tonics and a hand of solitaire? (2 female
or male)
• The Last Time We Saw Her
by Jane Anderson. A 10-minute play about a productive,
female employee who comes to her boss's office to divulge that she
has been married to a woman for the past eight years. While he states
that he does not care, he prevents her from sharing this information
with the rest of their coworkers. She must try to make him see the
necessity behind honesty and openness in the office. (Cast: 1 female,
1 male)
• Stone and Bones by
Marion I. McClinton. A poetically resonant 10-minute
play about male-female relationships between two black couples, with
sharp contrasts in verbal and body language. (Cast: 2 female, 2 male)
What people say:
"As a showcase for new
American plays, the annual Humana Festival is a major event of the
theatrical year. The ten dramatic pieces in this collection were
performed at the 18th festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville
this past spring. In his introduction, Jon Jory, producing director
of the Actors Theatre, notes a central theme of loss running through
these plays – loss of youth, ideals, love and country, innocence,
limitations, and trust. Several of the plays, including Jane
Anderson's The Last Time We Saw Her, Wendy Hammond's Julie Johnson,
Tina Landau's 1969, and Susan Miller's My Left Breast, examine issues
confronting lesbians and gays directly and sensitively. This
collection shows that there is great hope for the American theater.
Representing one of America's most important festivals, it is
recommended for academic and large public library drama collection."
— Library Journal
About the Editor:
Marisa Smith has worked in the theatre as an actress,
producer, playwright, and theater book publisher. She is s a graduate
of Wesleyan University.