Ted Rosky has served on the Board of Directors for 10 years. He's currently the treasurer.

Ted Rosky became of a subscriber to Actors Theatre in 1978, when he first moved to Louisville. Retired from the financial services industry—he describes himself as "grandly and gloriously unemployed."

"Over the last 10 years, I have seen every Humana show," he said. "Some years I see every show twice. In recent years, we’ve been going opening night. I like to go back mid-run and see how the show has developed."

The production of new works is a contribution to the theatre community, as it is with any other art, said Ted, who has also been very involved with the Louisville Orchestra.

"The Humana Festival the largest showcase of new American works that are fully produced," Ted said. "There are new play festivals in a number of locations but most of them are readings or staged reading. This is the place where people can come and see what’s happening with new playwrights, what they're thinking and doing. When you experience a new work in any of the arts—be it the performing arts, visual arts, whatever—one comes across a number of pieces that probably won’t be played 50 or 100 years from now, but then sometimes it’s something that’s just absolutely fantastic.

"If the canon is to continue to be vibrant and grow, new works have to be supported. That’s just terribly important, in any of the art forms. So many playwrights, so many composers never get to hear their works because there’s no place to put them on. Supporting the playwright and composer is so important to our culture."

He notes that many of the Humana Festival plays seek to explore the human condition and particularly issues of our times, including drug addiction, race and sexual orientation.

"Exploring and accepting differences is part of living a fuller life, I think," says Ted. "Someone asked me what my favorite Humana show was. I couldn’t answer because there were so many for different reasons."

He speaks of the festival in terms of a prophet who is not honored in his own country. "The Humana Festival is a unique event worldwide and hardly anyone locally knows about it," he says. "Part of the solution lies with us. I think we could be doing more to invite people in and encourage them to come."

Finally, he lauds the apprentices and interns whose hard, unpaid work make the festival possible. "It’s an incredible endeavor," he says. "How they can mount that many shows simultaneously—but it couldn’t be done without the apprentices and interns. The sheer staffing levels required would be unaffordable without that very important group."

— Raven J. Railey