Actors Theatre of Louisville to Present the World Premiere of Will Eno's GNIT in March

Artistic Director Les Waters and Managing Director Jennifer Bielstein are have announced that Actors Theatre will present the world premiere of Will Eno's Gnit, directed by Waters, as part of the 37th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays. Performed in the Pamela Brown Auditorium,Gnit begins previews March 15 & 16, opens March 17, 2013 and runs through April 7, 2013. This announcement completes the lineup for the 2012-2013 Brown-Forman Series.

Watch closely as Peter Gnit, a funny-enough but so-so specimen of humanity, makes a lifetime of bad decisions, on the search for his True Self, which is disintegrating while he searches. A rollicking and very cautionary tale about, among other things, how the opposite of love is laziness. Gnit is a faithful, unfaithful, and willfully American misreading of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, a 19th century Norwegian play which is famous for all the wrong reasons, written by Will Eno, who has never been to Norway.

"Gnit is a play written specifically for the living. I hope you like it," says Eno. "The play and its protagonist Peter deal with the old questions, the ones we ask late at night, leaning against the sofa, eating yogurt in the dark. Not that it's philosophy, the play-it's the furious and cruel business of life in real time, as if there's any other time. If you see nothing familiar in Gnit, good for you, you'll have some laughs and you can go home and sleep soundly. Others may need to give things some more thought. I am excited to come to Louisville and Actors Theatre and I'm excited about the horses, grass and people, not in that order."

"Will is a major voice in contemporary American theatre and one of the funniest and most truthful of writers,"adds Waters, Actors Theatre's Artistic Director. "I've had the pleasure of working with Will twice before when I directed TRADEGY: a tragedy at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Middletown at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. I'm delighted to introduce this play and this playwright to local audiences."

Hailed by the New York Times as "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation," Eno has emerged as a vital force in American theatre. Eno is the recipient of a Residency 5 Fellowship at the Signature Theatre where his play Title and Deed premiered in May 2012.The Realistic Joneses had its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre in April 2012. His play Middletown was a winner of the Horton Foote Prize and was produced at the Vineyard Theatre in New York and Steppenwolf in Chicago. His play Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into many Romance languages and several Slavic ones. His work is published by Theatre Communications Group, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Inc. and Oberon Books, in London. Other work has also appeared in Harper's, The Believer, and The Quarterly. Eno lives in Brooklyn.

A standout event in the American theatre, the 37th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays will showcase 6 world premiere productions and an evening of ten-minute plays running February 27 – April 7, 2013. A full lineup for the Festival will be announced in November 2012.

2012-2013 Season Ticket Packages are on sale now, starting from as low as $118 and are available online at ActorsTheatre.org or by calling the Box Office at 502-584-1205.

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