ATL – Part 1

My Journey as a Creator

A little “backstory” for those of you not familiar with Actors Theatre of Louisville (ATL for short, as it’s known). Its Humana Festival of New American Plays (with its Great American Play Contest) started in 1976, founded by Jon Jory. As a fellow intern / apprentice actress said when I first moved into a building where we were both renting a Louisville apartment, “It’s true, ATL is Mecca. It’s what the Guthrie Theatre was ten years ago to regional theatres, the Leader of the Pack.” Zoom zoom!

Several plays went from ATL to New York, including but not limited to Marsha Norman’s Getting Out (1977), Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart (1979 and Pulitzer winner 1981)…

(My copy, although not autographed by Beth)

… and John Pielmeier’s Agnes of God (1980). Marsha would win a Pulitzer for ‘night, Mother in 1983, although ATL didn’t do the premiere. Talking to my new neighbor confirmed that it wasn’t just my narrow Midwestern viewpoint that this was the place to be.

(If you’ve ever been on a Zoom meeting with me, you probably noticed this poster behind me on my office wall. I snagged extra posters when I started at ATL — great souvenirs!)

I did not get to work with Marsha, Beth or John P. However (yeah, I’m about to name-drop, something I don’t do very often), I did get to watch many fine, fine actors like Kathy Bates, Joe Morton and Delroy Lindo in action (before they became super famous).

(Not only do I have my journals from back then, I have a few reviews and newspaper articles!)

And writer John Patrick Shanley got a premiere of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (starring up and comer John Turturo) at ATL in 1984 before Mr. Shanley became a household name with his play and movie versions of Doubt and Moonstruck, which won the 1987 Best Original Screenplay Oscar.

Kids, I was in the Big Leagues.

HOWEVER.

Getting a play produced in the Humana Festival was challenging to say the least. New York agents were sending lots o’ scripts (hard copies back then!) for my boss Julie Crutcher to read. The rest of us in the Lit Department (with the help of a few freelance readers) would read the unsolicited ones. I had to catalogue (with 3 x 5 cards) each script that came in… which meant I knew we were getting literally hundreds of submissions. Okay, I wasn’t gonna be able to compete with all that.

BUT.

ATL had a twice-yearly ten-minute play contest (called the Starving Artist Contest – why did they have to emphasize how challenging it is to make a living as an artist??) that anyone on staff could enter. Then some of the chosen winners would be produced in our twice yearly showcase productions featuring the acting apprentices.

A way in for me!

(I would create these funny posters for the Starving Artist Playwriting Contest)

I made note in my journal that the deadline to enter the fall version of the contest was in one month, October 18, and I’d already made a list of four possible entries… plus I wanted to cook up a couple more.

But I also made a ton of notes from famous writers in my journal, including this gem from playwright Romulus Linney (ATL produced his play Holy Ghosts… and, yes, he’s actress Laura Linney’s dad), as he quoted Goethe, “The will cannot do the work of the imagination.” Duly noted.

I wrote in my journal that I should “do something with strawberry roll-ups and all that sugar we had at Waffle House at 2 a.m.”

Remember in my last post I said, Will I be writing? Will I not be inspired?

Hey, ya never know where a play idea is gonna come from!