Perspectives / Andrew Crocker
Andrew Crocker is currently director of foundation and government relations for Actors Theatre of Louisville. He served as festival coordinator from 1999-2002.

Even before I joined Actors Theatre of Louisville as the assistant manager of group and corporate sales in the Ticket Sales Office, I was very aware of the prestige of Actors Theatre and the Humana Festival. I had just graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington. Not only did we use Actors Theatre publications in some of my classes, but I also had a professor who came to I.U. from Actors Theatre where he was the director of the Apprentice and Intern Company.

During my first Humana Festival, I assisted with tourist packages for theatre-lovers from across the country. I remember how exciting everything was, experiencing it for the first time. You could feel the energy in the air over the special weekends. My boss at the time asked me, "If you could have any job in this theatre, what would it be?" My answer was, "his job" – meaning festival coordinator. One year later I was doing "his job." During my tenure as festival coordinator, I had the privilege of organizing Jon Jory’s final festival and Marc Masterson’s first festival, as well as the 25th Anniversary Festival. Each was unique and marvelous in its own way.

I could tell many amusing anecdotes from my years in the Festival Office, from wrecking my car on the Friday morning of big weekend to the numerous fender benders involving volunteer drivers and the fifteen-passenger courtesy vans (those vans are huge!), but I think the most important thing to point out is the ways the plays and the playwrights in the festival uplift and awe the audiences year after year. This is the reason the festival remains vital to the American theatre. I, for one, look forward to thirty more years.