It started with a bang in 1977. There were only two full-length plays in that first edition of the Humana Festival of New American Plays, but one of them was The Gin Game. D.L. Coburn’s tough and funny duet for actors won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the following year and found a long and rewarding life in the hands of such brilliant acting pairs as Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and, more recently, Julie Harris and Charles Durning.
In the festival’s history to date, more than 290 plays have been produced; 75 percent of the work has been published; five plays have been awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize; other festival plays have been recipients of Pulitzers, American Theatre Critics Awards, Obie awards and other prizes. In addition to the playwrights whose productions are highlighted here, the Humana Festival has been a home-away-from-home for many of the world’s finest stage writers—among them Joan Ackermann, Lee Blessing, Constance Congdon, Steven Dietz, Richard Dresser, Elizabeth Egloff, Horton Foote, Brian Friel, Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka, John Guare, Israel Horovitz, Tina Howe, David Henry Hwang, Naomi Iizuka, David Ives, Ken Jenkins, Wendy Kesselman, Kevin Kling, Tina Landau, Craig Lucas, Eduardo Machado, William Mastrosimone, Heather McDonald, Ellen McLaughlin, Charles L. Mee, Phyllis Nagy, Lynn Nottage, Joyce Carol Oates, John Olive, J. F. O’Keefe, Suzan-Lori Parks, Guillermo Reyes, Jose Rivera, Enid Rudd, Edwin Sanchez, John Patrick Shanley, Regina Taylor, Megan Terry and Lanford Wilson.
1ST FESTIVAL (1976-77)
The Gin Game
BY D. L. COBURN
1978 PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA
“I was one of the early beneficiaries of Jon Jory’s dedication to producing new plays by American playwrights. Jon not only produced The Gin Game, he also made the vital link that my agent claimed for 20 years—he got the script to Hume Cronyn, which assured a life for the play beyond Louisville. I will always be grateful to him.”
D.L. Coburn
2ND FESTIVAL (1977-78)
Getting Out
BY MARSHA NORMAN
“After Getting Out, I remember that wave hitting me when the crowd broke through the back door of the bar and suddenly people were screaming everywhere. Hugging everybody. Board members in business suits were slapping each others’ backs and lifting actresses in the air. The bar rocked like a ship in a gale. I tried to regain my balance, but there was no balance to be had. People were in shock, they had not figured a first-time playwright for any more than a beginner. But in the space of one two-hour drama, everything had changed. They had a major star [Susan Kingsley] and a hit play right there in front of them. Whoever dreams of such a thing?”
Marsha Norman, quoted in ATL’s 25th-anniversary commemorative magazine, published in 1988
3RD FESTIVAL (1978-79)
Crimes of the Heart
BY BETH HENLEY
1981 PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA
“All this acclaim is just the way the cards happened to fall, My kind of writing happens to be salable these days. I’m sure there are a lot of talented people out there who aren’t writing plays, but working in factories while they wait for someone to discover their stuff.”
Beth Henley in an interview with the New York Times after she won the Pulitzer
4TH FESTIVAL (1979-80)
Agnes of God
BY JOHN PIELMEIER
“If the O’Neill Conference laid the track for my early career, Jon Jory drove the engine. He was incredibly supportive, generous and nonjudgmental.”
John Pielmeier
8TH FESTIVAL (1983-84)
Execution of Justice
BY EMILY MANN
“Jon Jory’s contribution to the American theatre is simply incalculable.”
Emily Mann
14TH FESTIVAL (1989-90)
2
BY ROMULLUS LINNEY
“At the Humana Festival over one weekend, you could see a different brand-new play morning, afternoon and evening, then enjoy friends from all over in a cabaret evening. By the end of the third day, it seemed the only way to live.”
Romulus Linney
17TH FESIVAL (1992-93)
Keely and Du
BY JANE MARTIN
“No comment.”
Jane Martin
18TH FESTIVAL (1993-94)
Slavs! (Thinking about the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness)
BY TONY KUSHNER
“When I was director of literary services for TCG, Peter Zeisler made me attend the Humana Festival. I hadn’t wanted to go. I thought of the festival, when I thought of it at all, as the cradle for a dramatic aesthetic to which I was opposed. So I was surprised when I finally went to Louisville to encounter its remarkable variety, vitality and complexity: plays I loved, plays I hated, plays of unfulfilled promise and plays that took everyone by surprise, all bumping up against one another, setting each other off. Part of Jon’s legacy should be an appreciation for the proper care and feeding of plays and playwrights, which includes marvelous actors, smart directors, useful dramaturgs and designers, and generous technical support.”
Tony Kushner
20TH FESTIVAL (1995-96)
One Flea Spare
BY NAOMI WALLACE
SUSAN SMITH BLACKBURN PRIZE
“The Actors Theatre of Louisville was the first American theatre to give my work a home. In addition to producing One Flea Spare, they commissioned The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek (1997). It was though Jon that I formed my relationship with Adrian Hall, which has been very important to my work.”
Naomi Wallace
22ND FESTIVAL (1997-98)
Dinner With Friends
BY DONALD MARGULIES
2000 PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA
“The real gift of a commission, far greater than the modest financial gain it brings to a playwright, is a theatre’s investment in a writer’s work. While it is likely that I would have continued writing plays with or without commissions, whether I would have written July 7, 1994 (commissioned for the festival in 1995) and Dinner With Friends (a 1998 commission) is something I cannot say for certain. I’ll always be grateful to Jon and the folks at ATL for their genuine interest in seeing what I might come up with next.”
Donald Margulies
23RD FESTIVAL (1998-99)
Cabin Pressure
BY ANNE BOGART
AND THE SITI COMPANY
“Life-altering experiences happen every single night in the bar downstairs at Actors Theatre of Louisville during the Humana Festival. Imagine hanging out in this lovely environment, not far from the theatres and rehearsal halls, part of the irrepressible and necessary interaction between playwrights, audiences, apprentices, actors, directors and designers. It’s fun and also revolutionary. This kind of easy communication doesn’t happen so naturally in New York, Chicago, Seattle or Los Angeles.”
Anne Bogart
