Kentucky Shakespeare offers up new season, collaborations and much more
By Eli Keel | Posted on February 10, 2019Saturday night at 21c Museum Hotel, amidst Kentucky Shakespeare’s annual fundraiser “Shakespeare in Love,” Artistic Director Matt Wallace, with help from Associate Artistic Director Amy Attaway, announced an exciting slate of shows for Kentucky Shakespeare Festival’s 59th summer season at the C. Douglas Ramey...
Theatre [502]’s ‘The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls’ features fables, fun and fresh faces
By Melissa Chipman | Posted on October 20, 2017My excitement for Theatre [502]‘s seventh season opener, “The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls,” started before the first actor hit the stage. Director Amy Attaway told me in advance the play has a rare all-woman cast, director and design staff (save one). And when...
‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead’: The belly laugh and gut punch we need right now
By Melissa Chipman | Posted on January 4, 2017Let’s just put this right on the table: “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” has been my favorite play for close to two decades. (This year, by the way, is the 50th anniversary of Tom Stoppard winning the Tony Award for it.) In my past...
Kentucky Shakespeare to offer absurd tragicomedy ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
By Melissa Chipman | Posted on December 26, 2016Absurd, existentialist, raucously funny but also wrenchingly sad, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard is the Shakespeare play we all may need right now. And Kentucky Shakespeare is going to give it to us. The 1966 play about two minor characters in...
The past and present kids of StageOne’s ‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’
By Eli Keel | Posted on December 2, 2016On stage, a poor, ragged, dirty-faced little girl, walking with her siblings, is so overpowered by the message she has just heard, she turns and runs, holding a star high above her head. “Hey! Hey! Unto you a child is born,” she yells. Presumably...
Award-winning play ‘River City’ comes home, courtesy of Theatre [502]
By Eli Keel | Posted on October 7, 2016When Theatre [502] presents the Louisville premiere of Diana Grisanti’s “River City” on Friday evening, it will be a homecoming of sorts. It’s a play with big ideas about the racial aspects of Louisville’s difficult past. Despite the fact it is explicitly a Louisville...
Kentucky Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’ on a summer’s night
By Melissa Chipman | Posted on June 17, 2016The preview night of Kentucky Shakespeare‘s “The Winter’s Tale” had the largest crowd of any preview in the company’s history, said producing artistic director Matt Wallace. That was, in part, because there were several thousand high school English teachers in town to grade AP...
Matt Wallace shares Kentucky Shakespeare’s BBC performance and more
By Melissa Chipman | Posted on April 29, 2016Producing artistic director Matt Wallace and four members of Kentucky Shakespeare were invited to Stratford-on-Avon in England to help celebrate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. In fact, Kentucky Shakespeare kicked off the day-long event with a dawn performance of “the blessing of the house”...
Will it be the final curtain call for Theatre Alliance of Louisville?
By Eli Keel | Posted on November 25, 2015Arts organizations across genres and disciplines frequently find themselves competing for resources. Maybe it’s funding or grants, maybe it’s audiences, maybe it’s artists. But does hoarding your resources make your arts group stronger? For almost a decade, the Theatre Alliance of Louisville (TAL), a group...
Kentucky Shakespeare reveals a bigger and better 56th season
By Eli Keel | Posted on October 26, 2015An eager crowd of Bardophiles gathered at Garage Bar in NuLu on Monday to hear artistic director Matt Wallace announce the lineup for the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival‘s 56th season. While there is plenty of great news, the biggest single addition is a first-ever full-on production...