Actors Theatre Of Louisville

Actors Theatre of Louisville is a performing arts theater located in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. It was founded in 1964, in part by local producer Richard Block and actor Ken Jenkins, and was designated the "State Theater of Kentucky" in 1974. It is run as a nonprofit organization. Actors Theatre shows national favorites and local plays. Many Pulitzer Prize winning plays have premiered at the theater, including works by Donald Margulies, Beth Henley, Jane Martin, and William F. Buckley. The theater has received the James N. Vaughan Memorial Award, the Margo Jones Award, and a Special Tony Award for local, nonprofit theaters. It hosts the Humana Festival of New American Plays every spring; this festival of new American plays started by Jon Jory in 1976 has been described by the "Los Angeles Times" as the Kentucky Derby of the American Theatre. The festival has been funded by the Humana Foundation since 1979. Over three hundred Humana Festival plays have been produced, with over three-fourths of them now published, thus substantially adding to the catalog of American dramatic literature. Actors Theatre presents nearly six hundred performances of about thirty productions during a year-round season composed of contemporary and classical drama. It has one of the largest per-capita subscription audiences in the country and an annual attendance of over two hundred thousand.