Perspectives / William Mootz Known as the critic emeritus for the Louisville Courier-Journal, William Mootz was the performing arts critic from 1948 to 2004. Close friends and first acquaintances often confront me with a variation of the same question. Who, they demand, is the greatest actor you ever saw? What, they insist on knowing, is the best of all the plays you’ve reviewed? Thanks to a theatre-loving mother who allowed me to tag along when she took off her apron to go on theatrical adventures, I have some sixty-five years of memories through which to sift for answers to such inquiries. In my youth, I saw in their prime the likes of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Ethel Barrymore and John Gielgud. Then and there, the theatre became a place of wonder for me, and so it has remained ever since. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that there is no such thing as “best” or “greatest.” How do you rank Maggie Smith’s Rosalind opposite Jessica Tandy’s Blanche? Or the English National Theatre’s School for Scandal against the Moscow Art Theatre’s Seagull? But ask me what I remember as the most electrifying of all theatrical events that crowd my memory, and I have a ready answer. It was Actors Theatre’s premiere of Marsha Norman’s Getting Out on a chilly fall night in 1977. The evening was memorable for a number of reasons. At its end, a thunder-struck audience rose in a standing ovation to salute Norman, a children’s columnist who had grown to astonishing dramatic maturity as if before our very eyes. They cheered Susan Kingsley for her mesmerizing portrayal of a battered woman defying fate with her chin thrust forward. And, although many of us may not have been aware of it that night, we were applauding Jon Jory’s opening of the door on a new chapter in the history of American theatre. With the success of Getting Out, Jory was ready to go public with his plan to establish America’s theatrical hinterland as an arena for the nourishment of a new breed of American playwrights. In 1977, the goal every playwright aimed for was a New York production; if possible, a New York Broadway production. In the early years of Actors Theatre’s New Play Festivals, several plays achieved this goal. Close on the heels of Getting Out came Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart, with Kathy Bates, Kingsley and Lee Anne Fahey creating an unforgettable trio of sisters trying to ward off emotional collapse in a southern hamlet. And James McLure’s Lone Star, featuring Patrick Tovatt and Leo Burmester as hilariously confused brothers flailing around in Texas red-neck country. And John Pielmeier’s controversial Agnes of God, highlighted by ensemble-perfect performances from Adale O’Brien, Mia Dillon and Anne Pitoniak as women wrestling with mysteries of faith in a conflicted contemporary world. There was a time, however, when Broadway economics began to make the production of serious drama by new playwrights prohibitively expensive. Premieres of new work in American resident theatre, therefore, became even more important, and Jory continued to be a trailblazer. Season after season, his annual New Play Festival erupted with a varied repertory featuring some of the finest ensemble performances in Actors Theatre’s history. Among them were Murphy Guyer’s uproarious Eden Court, (in which Holly Hunter made a madcap local debut), Execution of Justice, Emily Mann’s brilliant documentary about hate crimes tearing at the fabric of American society, and Dinner With Friends, a funny and wistful examination of contemporary marriage that won a Pulitzer Prize for playwright Donald Margulies. Each Humana regular can hold forth on personal favorites. In my case, I think immediately of the group of women, led by Lynn Cohen and Beth Dixon, who made P.J. Barry’s The Octette Bridge Club so affectionate a salute to a fast disappearing way of American life. Or of Annette Helde and the actresses who played valiant nurses during the hell that was the Viet Nam War in Shirley Lauro’s A Piece of My Heart. Or Anne Pitoniak and Julie Boyd fighting over the sacredness of human life in Jane Martin’s Keely and Du. I cherish the memories of V Craig Heidenreich, William McNulty, and Fred Major slugging through a jungle of corporate futility in Richard Dresser’s Below the Belt. And of McNulty, Heidenreich and Bob Burrus bursting into fiery discourse during God’s Man in Texas, David Rambo’s fierce and funny examination of religious fundamentalism run amok. Occasionally, a solo performance rises in my memory above a crowded landscape: McNulty going berserk in a baseball locker room during Lee Blessing’s Oldtimers Game. John Turturro’s magnetic Louisville debut in John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. And, most memorable of all, Susan Kingsley’s eloquent pursuit of spiritual truth as she told about the birth of a pet calf in Ken Jenkins’ Rupert’s Birthday.