@dramatistsguild @nancygall

A Guild playwright from Kentucky, a play set in Kentucky, a second production at a Kentucky theatre, and a regional event in Kentucky with our new Youth Ambassador participating—very exciting!

The Guild playwright is Walter Wells May of Lexington, who, in addition to writing plays, is a lawyer and an Equity actor. After seeing The Return of the Prodigal by St. John Hankin at the Shaw Festival in Ontario some years ago, May began wondering what it would be like to retell the ageless tale in modern day Eastern Kentucky.

His play is Gone Astray. May’s earliest drafts were written at Horse Cave Theatre’s Kentucky Voices new play development program, a program that led to full productions of seventeen plays from 1981 to 2001. Created and headed by the theatre’s founding artistic director Warren Hammack, Kentucky Voices was later led by Guild member Liz Bussey Fentress, first in Horse Cave and then in Louisville.

“I’ve known Walter’s play since it was a blank piece of paper,” Fentress says with a smile. “I read early drafts and attended at least two staged readings of Gone Astray.”

After seeing the hugely successful premiere of Gone Astray in Lexington in 2013, Fentress, who lives in Louisville, passed the script on to Juergen K. Tossmann, artistic director of Bunbury Theatre in Louisville. “It seems to me,” Fentress says, “that Kentucky theatres should do plays by Kentucky writers, and Bunbury has a history of doing new plays.”

Like May, Fentress is an Equity actor, and it is she who portrayed the mother in Gone Astray. May said the whole cast was “superb,” and he was in “complete sync” with director Steve Woodring. One reviewer called the play a “roller coaster ride of self-realization, lies, deceit, forgiveness, self-awareness and love” and offered “kudos to the cast and director for realizing the nuances of the script.”

The regional event was a reception co-hosted by Bunbury and the Guild before a matinee of Gone Astray. Guild members and prospective members heard brief presentations by Tossmann, May, and Woodring as they admired the beautiful set designed by Tom Tutino, who also has designed for Actors Theatre of Louisville.

The Youth Ambassador who was integral to the regional event is Jackson Wolford. A Louisville native and 2015 graduate of the University of Virginia, Wolford was involved in playwriting, directing and production management all four years of college. His playwriting credits at the university include Gnaw Bone and Parts and Pieces. Also, Live Arts! Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, produced his Remember the Alamo in 2014.

In addition to writing plays, Wolford is a composer, librettist, and lyricist. As a high school student in Louisville, Wolford saw full productions and publication of two of his works at the highly competitive New Voices festivals at Actors Theatre of Louisville: The Threepenny Space Opera (musical, 2010) and Gin and Tonic (play, 2008). A third play of his, A Piece of the Pie: A Ten-Minute Metaphysical Mystery was published by Actors in 2009.

Other Kentucky news: member Bill McCann has announced publication of what will be an annual reference, Kentucky Theatre Yearbook, 2016. McCann edited the book, which is available through Amazon. It includes a list of new plays developed in Kentucky during calendar years 2014 and 2015, two short plays, and several articles.

Keep up with Kentucky members and submit your own news by joining our Facebook page Dramatists Guild-Kentucky Region.

ngallclayton@dramatistsguild.com

Mia Seitz, Liz Bussey Fentress, Jeremy Sapp, Matt Orme, and Karl Seitz on the set of Gone Astray, photo credit Andrew McMurtrie 

Jackson Wolford, Youth Ambassador, and Gone Astray playwright Walter Wells May