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At this year's Humana and Pacific Playwrights Festivals, the programming goes local
LOVE NEW PLAYS. LET'S GET THAT OUT OF the way first thing. When given the opportunity to see a play from a young up-and-coming writer about the contemporary experience, I will pick that any day of the week over Shakespeare. So that is one reason, in the month of April, I went to not one but two new-play festivals, absorbing a total of 14 plays (both times in doses of seven plays over three days).
The short version: It was a lot of theatre. The long version: It was a lot of theatre dealing with the concept and significance of place; more specifically, perhaps, about what it means to call a place home.
What is the purpose of a regional theatre today? Is it to present the best new plays from the nation's best new (usually New York City-certified) writers? Is it to reinvent the classics for a contemporary audience? Is it to serve and reflect the interests and concerns of the local community? Most theatres will say it's all of the above and more.
Such questions loomed large over the events I attended: the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Kentucky's Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Pacific Playwrights Festival at California's South Coast Repertory. Both festivals answered the questions above in similar ways, showcasing a mix of plays that spoke to the depth of the theatrical form, from devised work to family dramas. And, notably, both festivals featured works that were inspired by the theatres' own surrounding community.
That's not surprising, considering that Actors Theatre and South Coast Rep have shared personnel, most notably Marc Masterson, who led the Kentucky theatre for 11 years and left in 2011 to head up SCR. And I seemed to be trailing Actors Theatre former literary manager Kimberly Colburn, who gave me a ride to my hotel when I arrived in Louisville- this was her last Humana Festival, she told me, because she was heading to South Coast Rep to become the California company's literary director and co-director of PPF. When I caught up with her again two weeks later on the opening day of PPF, she said, "This is my second day...