Todd Zeigler - Page 4

After wrapping three grand mainstage productions that have run over seven weeks, would you believe Kentucky Shakespeare's summer season in Central Park is only half-over? Only thing is, you've got just three weeks to catch the rest.

Improv fans far beyond Louisville have begun taking notice of Damaged Goods. The trio brings their distinct brand of short and long-form improv in their latest production, "Don't Get Got!", to The Bard's Town on Aug. 2.

The best productions of classic plays present them as if they are world premieres. They reveal new details, shine new light upon dramas whose lines you could recite like the names of your children. "Hamlet," the finale of Kentucky Shakespeare's trio of summer stagings in Central Park, is exactly this sort of production.

This space is normally reserved for the shows and stars of local stages. But chances are that if you also watch a lot of TV, you've been seeing one of those local faces a lot lately.

Kentucky Shakespeare makes a noble, if uneven, go at 'Henry V.'

The local group opens its fourth season Friday with a work that juxtaposes love's timeless ideals with contemporary realities in Mat Smart's 'The 13th of Paris,' which opened last Friday in the Martin Experimental Theater at The Kentucky Center for the Arts.

Kentucky Shakespeare's summer season closes on August 17 with Savage Rose Classical Theatre Company's critically acclaimed "King Lear," starring J. Barrett Cooper, the company's founder, as the titular king. It will be a swan song of sorts, for it will be Cooper's final performance with the company, and in Louisville - at least for the time being.

The creative process often mirrors the journey of life. It becomes about discovery and timing. For Michael Drury, producing artistic director of locally-based Pandora Productions, the timing and discovery of one particular show led to an entirely new way of seeing it.

A company, play and venue dedicated to the enlivening power of art will come together when Acting Against Cancer presents the classic modern rock musical "RENT" at the newly opened Tim Faulkner Gallery in the Portland neighborhood.

Matt Wallace has a midsummer night's dream. And it is big.

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.