Staging new drama in an old Kentucky home

Humana Festival now in its 26th year

Last year's Humana Festival featured "bobrauschenbergamerica" by Charles L. Mee, a play made as artist Robert Rauschenberg might have conceived it if he had been a playwright instead of a painter.

(CNN) -- When most people think of Louisville, Kentucky, probably a few things come to mind: Louisville Slugger baseball bats. Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. College basketball. Maybe, if you really know your geography, nearby Fort Knox.

But if you're a "theater person" -- or consider yourself to be -- what you probably think of is plays. New ones.

When it comes to the dramatic arts, Louisville draws grateful mentions from the industry-savvy, along with such cities as Minneapolis for its Guthrie, San Diego for its Old Globe and Washington for the Arena Stage. Those mentions are grateful because this is where a lot of past couple of decades' modern American theater repertory has found its legs.

The Ohio River town of 275,000 is the home of the Actors Theatre of Louisville. During its normal season, Actors Theatre's subscribers see a traditional round of United States professional regional-theater offerings -- in past months, "Dracula," "The Piano Lesson," "A Tuna Christmas." But each spring, the company becomes the site of the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.

The festival has produced some of the best-known American plays of the past quarter-century, including three Pulitzer Prize winners: Donald L. Coburn's "The Gin Game," Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart" and Donald Margulies' "Dinner with Friends." Tony Kushner, Marsha Norman, John Patrick Shanley, and Craig Lucas have contributed works; Kathy Bates, Julianne Moore and Lili Taylor are among the many name actors who have performed.

The goal, says Actors Theatre artistic director Marc Masterson -- who has followed Jon Jory's festival-founding act into a second Humana season -- is to spotlight some of the top talent in the theater world.

"The festival has provided a platform for young and new writers and given them greater visibility," he says. Well-known writers, he notes, like to come back and contribute works to the event.

So, while the festival, now in its 26th year, may fly under the radar of Americans who don't follow stage work, it's an icon in the theatrical world: Masterson and his staff receive hundreds of submissions each year for only a handful of slots.

Interracial relationships and meeting Rembrandt

This year's festival, which runs through April 13, continues the Humana's pattern of featuring both established and up-and-coming playwrights.

Among the full-length works being staged this year are "Limonade Tous Les Jours" by veteran "language playwright" Charles L. Mee; "The Mystery of Attraction" by "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" producer Marlane Meyer; and "A.M. Sunday" by the young Jerome Hairston. The subject matter ranges from interracial relationships to a modern couple who meet Rembrandt and a pair of guys who want to steal a TV.

The range of styles and subject matter are testament to the strength of the festival, Masterson says.

"It's a good sign for the art form," he says.

At its peak, the Humana Festival opens a new play every three days, says Masterson, until all seven full-length works are up. The weekends -- particularly the one on which the national critical press arrives -- are mini-summits for theatergoers, both in terms of seeing the shows and for professional networking.

"Description Beggared: or the allegory of WHITENESS," by Mac Wellman, was part of the 2000-2001 festival. The play is set in a world in which everyone and everything is white.

"Once [all the plays are running], we have festival weekends where people come to see them," he says. "You can see all of them in about two-and-a-half days."

'Audiences are hungry for this work'

The festival began for "local rather than national or international reasons," writes festival founder Jory in a history of the event. The Actors Theatre wanted to put on new plays; by packaging them together, organizers believed subscribers would be willing to put up with a short stretch of new work during the season.

The first festival set the tone. One of the plays was Coburn's "The Gin Game"; among the visitors were Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, and Mike Nichols. "The Gin Game" won a Pulitzer and Tandy later won a Tony for her performance in it on Broadway.

Jory -- who left the company in 2000, 31 years after he started it, for a faculty position with the University of Washington's School of Drama -- eventually would have some difficult Humana years, in which public expectations of a "direct-to-Broadway" hit could weigh on artistic choices.

And clearly mindful of that hit-mentality danger, Masterson says that while the festival is pleased that many of its works have gone on to greater success, it doesn't go out looking for sure-fire audience-pleasers.

"It's very difficult to predict [success]," he says. "These works have been selected based on their artistic merit. They're interesting but not necessarily hit material, and then we're proved to be wrong. But I don't choose things that I think are going on to Broadway."

The Humana Festival -- sponsored since its third year by the Humana Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the Louisville-based health-care giant -- has thrived even as commentators wonder about the future of live theater. Masterson notes that such concerns are warranted, but perhaps overstated.

"If you think back 25 or 30 years ago," he says, "there weren't nearly as many [theater] options as there are now. That doesn't mean we don't struggle for financial support, but audiences are hungry for this work."

And what about Louisville? Masterson says initial thoughts may be misleading.

"This town has a great tradition of supporting the arts," he says. "It's a city where people grow up with the arts, and there's been an assumption of excellence for decades and decades."

-- CNN.com's Porter Anderson contributed to this story.