Ameriville & Humana: Go Now!

When we count our blessings as Louisvillagers, we should always include Actor's Theater and the Humana Festival. And if you haven't yet seen Ameriville at this year's festival, run, don't walk. Seriously, there are only a couple more showings.

I can't say it any better than someone I overheard while leaving the play. She said, "After the first ten minutes, I thought, 'They surely can't keep this up for an hour and a half.' But they did!" Mostly music, with some spoken word and stand up comedy, Ameriville uses Hurricane Katrina to highlight the social and political and environmental challenges in this country. It's moving, it's funny, and it's super powerful. Four actor/playwrights adept at everything from flamenco dance to beatboxing give the audience so much raw energy that I yawned-- from sheer exhaustion, not bordom-- the whole drive home. This Katrina refugee was so impressed that she was willing to shelve her cynical nitpicking ("geez, I wish they'd stop talking about 'drowning in the waters of the Mississippi'-- the river didn't flood; the lake flooded.") to be entranced for the entire hour and a half. I'm still shaking my head thinking about how hard those four people worked.

Go. Seriously.

And if you haven't yet taken advantage of the Humana Festival this year, this weekend Actor's is offering an awesome opportunity: Come on Saturday before 10am and pay $40 and you can see ANY play-- and as MANY plays as you can-- that day with an "open seat" ticket. Real troopers could bank five plays on that day for less than $10 a play. And if you've NEVER been to a Humana Festival play, Actor's has extended their $10 ticket offering for any of their plays for any newcomers to the festival.

In my humble opinion, the money I pay each year to subscribe to Actor's is some of the very best local dough I spend.