Todd Zeigler - Page 3

While television and the cinema have always been welcoming media for screams and frights, the stage is not generally known as an accommodating venue for the horror genre. Local community troupe Wayward Actors Company will try out some time-tested material with the musical adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel in "CARRIE The Musical," opening June 6.

One of Kentuckiana's longest-running entertainment venues celebrates its 40th anniversary with its 2014-2015 season, featuring a calendar full of regional premieres, two returning audience favorites and new ground being broken - quite literally.

The touchstone of good drama - even good comedy - is putting rigidly defined characters together and letting them at each other. Louisville's Looking For Lilith Theatre Company takes this tactic in 'Body Awareness,' a new comedy by award-winning playwright Annie Baker that received its local premiere May 8 at the University of Louisville's Thrust Theatre.

On May 3, the Kentucky Derby will return with its perpetual sense of storied legacy combined with perennial freshness and excitement.

Actors Theatre of Louisville just recently completed its 38th showcasing of career playwrights on the rise in the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Now, the venerable regional theater is doing the same for a group of local teenagers, some of whom have written their first play ever.

Think "Alfred Hitchcock." Did you think "allusive puns, rapid-fire costume changes and broad comedy"? Catch Patrick Barlow's adaptation of the master of horror and suspense's 1935 motion picture thriller "The 39 Steps," and you just might.

2014-2015 season announcements from some of Louisville's most popular theater companies.

This year's final full-length offering, "Steel Hammer" from the world-renowned SITI Company and legendary director Anne Bogart, compares a man to his myth and explores all the dimensions one person's story can develop.

Dorothy Fortenberry's 'Partners' is a strikingly vivid snapshot of a generation that doesn't know what to do with itself.

At a time when the role of religion in every facet of life is mired in controversy and the battleground seems miles wide and inches deep, 'The Christians' play plants the audience squarely in the thick of the battle and leaves them pondering a lot, and maybe wanting a bit more.

The faces of famous Louisvillians adorning banners all over downtown speak to the influence the talented products of the River City have had on the wider world. On local stages - and, with increasing frequency, beyond the city limits - Brian Walker's words do the talking for him.

What is your name? What is your quest? What are you doing this weekend?

Bravo to Les Waters, the play's director and Actors Theatre's artistic head, who plunges in and finds the play's true essence, making it a moving, lingering, even haunting experience.

Two of the most anticipated weeks of theater each year in Louisville are when Finnigan Productions presents its annual lineup of 10-minute plays under the banner 'Finnigan's Festival of Funky Fresh Fun.'

The kids behind Kids Acting Against Cancer are growing up.

There's a business to art as much as there's an art to business. Just a few months shy of entering its 40th season, Clarksville's Derby Dinner Playhouse has proven to have a good grasp on both.

From the moment a beach ball hit me in the face to the double-curtain call standing ovation, Actors Theatre's current production of 'The Pirates of Penzance' was the most fun I've had at the theatre in a long time.

"Sex Again" tackles the universal topic from a different side: the mature side.

New Year? Not in the theatre world. An advance in the calendar only marks the halfway point for most Louisville theatre seasons. Many local companies are just getting heated up for the remainder of their 2013-2014 schedules.

In William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," a woman disguises herself as a man to make her way in the world. There's a note of irony here, then, that Savage Rose Classical Theatre Company opens its 2013-2014 "Season of Storms" with the play. In a Savage Rose production, the playwright's words are the focus, the story that is to be told as directly as possible in the style originally intended. Savage Rose aims to show its audience that "classical" means perpetually relevant and perpetually entertaining.