Since moving to New York, I’ve found the most exhausting aspect of my life is summoning the motivation to pursue my artistic goals. I alone am responsible for gathering auditions and contacts, improving my work, and keeping my creative self alive. It is a huge change from the life I held last year at The Actors Theatre of Louisville where, in the nine months I served as an Acting Apprentice, the majority of my days were structured by our amazing program directors. While at Actors I had much less free time and performed much more grunt labor, but I was in an environment which fostered a safe creative home by cherishing the contributions of each of its members. It felt like four years of college rolled into one, and I emerged with a second family who has become my greatest support network since moving to New York.

It’s no wonder that I took the opportunity to go back. This past weekend was the closing weekend of the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, and I, along with eight other apprentices from my year and numerous apprentice/interns from years prior, descended upon the festival for a weekend of theatre and debauchery. We weren’t disappointed.

I won’t go into detail about each of the shows in the festival (although I will give a shout out to my favorite plays Phoenix and The Method Gun). What I will do is applaud the foundation upon which all the work was built. This, of course, includes the Humana Foundation, without whose financial support the festival wouldn’t happen, but it also includes the amazing staff who have made significant sacrifices over the past 34 years to preserve the vision of a theatre festival which produces all new work each and every year. I heard that this year Actors surpassed the 400 play mark. That’s 400 new plays which were given life through the efforts of a single theatre. That’s amazing.

A couple of the ensemble shows (Fissures and The Method Gun) were just featured on NPR as well. Check it out!