A collection of all eleven scripts from Actor's Theatre of Louisville's 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays.

“The marvel of Mr. Eno’s new version is how closely it tracks the original while also being, at every moment and unmistakably, a Will Eno play. After climbing the craggy peaks of Ibsen’s daunting play, Mr. Eno has brought down from its dizzying heights a surprising crowd-pleasing (if still strange) work.” — Charles Isherwood, New York Times “Gnit is classic Will Eno. By that I mean I was thrilled by it.” — Kris Vire, TimeOut Chicago “If ever a play made me want to be a better person, this is it.” — Bob Fischbach, Omaha World-Herald Peter Gnit, a funny enough, but so-so specimen of humanity, makes a lifetime of bad decisions on the search for his True Self. This is a rollicking yet 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 nineteenth-century Norwegian play), written by Will Eno, who has never been to Norway. Will Eno’s most recent plays include The Open House (Signature Theatre, New York, 2014; Obie Award, Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play) and The Realistic Joneses (Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, 2012; Broadway, 2014). His play Middletown received the Horton Foote Prize and Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Eno lives Brooklyn.

To understand light and optics better, young Isaac Newton inserted a long needle "between my eye and the bone, as near to the backside of my eye as I could." Why take such a risk? Lucas Hnath reimagines the contentious, plague-ravaged world Newton inhabited in ISAAC'S EYE, exploring the dreams and longings that drove the rural farm boy to become one of the greatest thinkers in modern science.

THE STORY: On a balmy night in Miami, soon-to-be mother Sula floats ashore on a car tire. Having survived the perilous journey to escape her native Haiti, Sula is determined to forge a better life in America for her unborn son. She finds safety in an apartment building dedicated to sheltering refugees, joining a diverse community of immigrants, each with their own unique dreams and dilemmas. But even though the life she has hoped for seems within reach, Sula knows she can’t outrun her demons forever. LITTLE CHILDREN DREAM OF GOD is a darkly lovely drama about learning to start a new life by facing the one you left behind.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, two average American families build a slapdash bomb shelter on their shared property line. With nuclear warfare looming, they wonder: Is it the end? The end of baseball…and table manners…and macramé? But as they fret about the fall of civilization, they start to worry that something more personal is at stake. A slyly hilarious, compassionate look at anxiety in America, WE’RE GONNA BE OKAY is about finding the courage to face who we are—and who we want to be.

The Theatre of Les Waters: More Like the Weather combines original writings from Les Waters with short essays by a wide range of his collaborators, creating a personal and multi-faceted portrait of an influential director, revered mentor, and inspirational theatre artist. The book begins with a critical introduction of Waters’s work, followed by essays written by a wide range of Waters's collaborators over the past four decades. These essays are framed by shorter pieces of writing by Waters himself: reflections, inspirations, observations, and personal anecdotes. At the heart of this book lies the notion that the director’s central position in theatrical production is defined by collaboration and that a study of directing should take into account how a director works with playwrights, designers, actors, stage managers, and dramaturgs to turn artistic vision into concrete reality on stage. An insightful resource for early career or student directors in theatre programs, The Theatre of Les Waters sheds light on the art of theatre directing by exploring the work of a major theatre artist whose accomplished career sits at the heart of American theatre in the 21st century. Drawing on aspects of memoir, case study, interview, miscellany, biography, and criticism, this is also an enlightening read for anyone with an interest in how theatre artists bring their creative vision to life.

The Humana Festival of New American Plays has been a leading home for extraordinary playwrights and their imaginations for more than four decades, making Actors Theatre of Louisville one of the nation’s preeminent powerhouses for new play development. For six weeks every spring, Louisville exerts a gravitational pull on producers and theatre lovers from around the country, who travel from far and wide for the adventure of seeing a diverse slate of fully-produced new plays. Many Humana Festival plays have gone on to garner awards and subsequent productions, making a sustained impact on the international dramatic repertoire. Humana Festival 2019: The Complete Plays brings together all five scripts from the 43rd annual cycle of world premieres, featuring a remarkable array of work by some of the most exciting voices in the American theatre. This anthology makes the Humana Festival plays available to an even wider audience, allowing readers to experience the collision of perspectives, styles and stories that makes the festival such an invigorating celebration of the art form. This compilation features the full-length plays Everybody Black by Dave Harris; The Thin Place by Lucas Hnath; The Corpse Washer, adapted for the stage by Ismail Khalidi and Naomi Wallace, from the novel of the same name by Sinan Antoon; How to Defend Yourself by Liliana Padilla; and We’ve Come to Believe, a collaboratively-written play by three writers—Kara Lee Corthron, Emily Feldman, and Matthew Paul Olmos.