David Nowlan was a critic, and later managing editor, for The Irish Times in Dublin. He wrote the following for the Humana Festival’s 10th anniversary.

Time was when a European visiting America in search of theatre went to New York and, apart from rare forays to Washington, Los Angeles or Chicago, nowhere else. But times change, and in recent years one of the most significant developments in American theatre has been the burgeoning of regional companies and playhouses. New voices and new styles have emerged to change the shape and the content of dramatic art.

One of the most important components in this change has been Actors Theatre of Louisville where visitors from overseas as well as from the rest of America have been able to experience, in the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, a creative energy and distinctive style that are both truly indigenous and demonstrably cosmopolitan. The energy is palpable, evident in every corner of Actors’ theatres, its gracious lobby and its bustling subterranean bar where actors, audiences, authors, directors, stage crews, critics, agents and producers from around the globe proclaim by their clamour the vitality of live theatre, Louisville-style.

That style is difficult to define. Much of it is derived from the emotional intensity and immaculate ensemble playing of one of the finest acting and production companies in the world. Some of it must derive from the particular view of drama held by Actors’ driving force and producing director, Jon Jory, a view that many overseas visitors perceive as being somehow both heartland American and continental European. And there is also a strong female voice shaping some of it, not through the superb playing of Actors’ excellent actresses alone, but also through a succession of literary managers at Actors who seem to have winnowed from the thousands of scripts submitted each year a higher proportion of good plays by women than can be seen in the repertoire of any other major theatre in the world.

Plays from Actors’ festival have been seen not only in New York, not only in major cities all over America, but all around the world. More than a dozen of them have been staged in Ireland in the past decade, usually with notable success. Actors Theatre is thus not merely a Louisville institution, not only a national American phenomenon, but a significant contributor to the world’s theatre.