Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2009 Humana Festival of New American Plays will include works by writers from near and far, familiar and new.

Wendell Berry.

For Kentucky theater fans, there are two marquee names in the program. Leading the lineup for the 33rd edition of the fest, which attracts critics and theater professionals from around the world to Louisville, is Wild Blessings: A Celebration of Wendell Berry, which will play March 26-April 8. The show is adapted from the Henry County native’s writings by ATL artistic director Marc Masterson and ATL literary manager Adrien-Alice Hansel.

Naomi Wallace.

The festival also features a new work from Prospect native Naomi Wallace. Wallace, who now resides in England, has had four plays produced at the Humana Festival before, including the full length plays One Flea Spare in 1996 and The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek in 1998. Her new work is The Hard Weather Boating Party, March 14-April 4, for which she used research of Louisville’s Rubbertown neighborhood to write her play about three men conspiring to commit a crime against a powerful entity.

The other main-stage plays in the schedule will be:

■ Absalom by Zoe Kazan, March 10-April 11: Drama unfolds in the family of an aging literary giant when he releases his memoir.
■ Under Construction by Charles L. Mee, directed by Anne Bogart and performed by the Saratoga International Theatre Institute, March 17-April 5: A reunion of the artists who brought us bobrauschenbergamerica to tell a Norman Rockwell-inspired story of America.
■ Slasher by Allison Moore, March 6-April 5: An aspiring actor thinks it’s her big break when she’s cast as the “last girl” in a low-budget slasher flick, but her feminist mom is bent on killing the production.
■ Ameriville by Universes, a multidisciplinary ensemble, March 1-April 5: An examination of the state of the United States through the lens of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.

Also scheduled is Brink!, March 20-April 5, a comic anthology about rites of passage from six playwrights.
The Humana Festival will be March 1 to April 11 at Actors Theatre.