Plays by Center playwrights earn raves at Humana

Fissures: lost and found; The Cherry Sisters Revisited; Heist!; and  Lobster Boy written by current or past Playwrights' Center Core Writers and fellows.

This year's Humana Festival of New American Plays, one of the nation's most renowned and prestigious new play celebrations, features four productions penned by Playwrights' Center playwrights, and reviews for each have been glowing.

FISSURES: LOST AND FOUND

"If you see only one play of this year's festival, or even in your whole life, this is it." So says LouisvilleMojo.com's reviewer Sherry Deatrick of Fissures: lost and found.

Fissures, which explores memory and its tendency to shift and change, is a collaboration between playwrights from Playwrights' Center company-in-residence Workhaus Collective and artists from Minneapolis' defunct but celebrated Theatre de la Jeune Lune. It was co-commissioned by the Playwrights' Center and Actors Theatre of Louisville and developed by the Center in two workshops in 2009 and 2010.

LouisvilleMojo.com isn’t alone in praising the production. Louisville Courier-Journal critic Erin Keane calls it "a starkly beautiful meditation," while Louisville culture blog Loueyville.com notes that "plays like Fissures (lost and found) are why I treasure Actors [Theatre of Louisville] and the Humana Festival in particular … So far this is the play that is NOT to be missed." CityPages' Quinton Skinner wrote, "I feel bulletproof against charges of hometown boosterism in noting that the strongest thing I saw was the Workhaus/Jeune Lune hybrid Fissures (lost and found)."

Fissures represents a high-profile success for collaboratively created theater (more recently known by the locution "devised work"), a practice that has recently received a great deal of attention in the theatrical community. It began as a conversation between Dominique Serrand, co-founder of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, and Dominic Orlando, a Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow and Core Writer.

"Dominique Serrand contact me about working with some playwrights, I think mostly because he was impressed with the Playwrights’ Center," said Orlando. "He just wanted to do the Jeune Lune thing with living writers instead of Moliere and Shakespeare."

A group was formed including Steve Epp, co-artistic director of Jeune Lune and a 2009-10 McKnight Theater Artist Fellow at the Playwrights' Center, as well as Orlando's fellow Workhaus playwrights Cory Hinkle, Deborah Stein, and Victoria Stewart.

The project received a joint commission from the Playwrights' Center and Actors Theatre of Louisville with the goal of staging the production at the 2010 Humana Festival of New American Plays. To form the piece, the collaborators participated in two development workshops at the Center, one in Spring 2009 and one in January 2010.

"What’s been fascinating about Fissures is that you have four very, very different writers, and then several other very different perspectives in theater," says playwright Victoria Stewart. "You constantly have to find this balance between all these different perspectives. Which works quite well for the play, because the play is about all these different perspectives on identity and memory."

THE CHERRY SISTERS REVISITED

Core Writer and 2009-10 McKnight National Residency and Commission winner Dan O'Brien penned The Cherry Sisters Revisited, based on the true story of a group of sisters whose vaudeville act was so thoroughly rotten that it regularly sold out. 

"This play was right on point, and moved me on every level," writes Louisville Mojo reviewer J.S. Holland, who also notes that "[t]he entire ensemble works flawlessly together as one, with crackerjack timing and Monty Python-esque rapid-fire precision."

HEIST!

In addition to working on Fissures, former Jerome Fellow and Core Writer Deborah Stein penned the play Heist!, performed by the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Acting Apprentice Company. This wacky, site-specific caper takes place in the lobby and galleries of the 21c Museum Hotel, and involves no small amount of audience interaction.

The Louisville Courier-Journal's Erin Keane notes, "Heist! constantly feels like it's one step away from spinning into chaos … But take a step back and see how tightly the show is written and timed, and how that evil magician hits his mark every time, and not only will you want to high-five those hardworking apprentices, but you might want to buy Daniels and Stein a drink after the show as well."

LOBSTER BOY

Core Alum Dan Dietz won the Actors Theatre of Louisville's Heideman Award for the second time for his ten-minute play Lobster Boy, which will run at the Festival for two days.

The play focuses on a little boy who literally feels no pain and the brother who seeks to cure him. "The older brother hatches a plan to help his sibling learn how to experience pain –– with tragic and ironic consequences," Dietz said to Florida State University in a recent interview.

"The story is assisted by a series of slides that describe elements of the story being told. So the experience feels like part suspenseful story, part lecture. And, then the question arises, is the older man who is telling the story really the older brother within the story? It all makes for an experience that I hope will be creepy, poignant and, at times, even funny.”

Lobster Boy opens March 27.