Copious Notes

Joanna Jerome is Julia and Aubin Munn is Laura in Crish Barth's "Hill Cattle," part of the Midway Festival of Plays. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Woodford County may be a bedroom community of Lexington, but this weekend it is a hotbed of local theater.

Continuing in Versailles is The Woodford Theatre’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest, which got high marks from the H-L’s own Candace Chaney. Over in Midway, the Thoroughbred Theatre is opening the inaugural Midway Festival of Plays, a lineup of seven 10-minute plays.

Dara Jade Tiller, shown backstage at Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2008, is in the Woodford Theatre's production of The Importance of Being Earnest. Photo by David Perry | Herald-Leader.

The 10-minute format has its roots in Kentucky at Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays, though we rarely get to see the format around here. In a nice little piece of synergy, Earnest features Dara Jade Tiller, a former Acting Apprentice at Actors Theatre who performed in the 2008 Humana Festival.

The whole Woodford theatrical weekend shows nice synergy in the area theater scene. Both productions are creations of Woodford Countians, but have drawn plenty of interest from the Lexington theater community and others.

So, if you’re looking for an excuse to take a little drive out through horse country this weekend, here it is.

Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C., will speak at ArtsPlace, 161 N. Mill St., at 4 p.m. Aug. 12. His appearance is part of the Kennedy Center’s Arts in Crisis: A Kennedy Center Initiative, which is looking at how the arts are responding the economic crisis in terms of fund raising, budgeting, marketing and board development.

Michael Kaiser.

“Each locality is dealing with its own unique and specific challenges, and there is no better way to understand each region than through in-person visits,” Kaiser said in a news release from LexArts, which is sponsoring the appearance along with Arts Kentucky and Actors Theatre of Louisville. “Communicating in person allows us to be more effective in advising organizations in need.”

Kaiser is visiting all 50 States as part of the initiative, in an effort to spark conversation and consult with arts leaders across the country. He will speak in Louisville Wednesday morning and then come to Lexington. The ArtsPlace visit will start with a meet-and-greet at 3:30. The event is free. To register, visit ArtsKy.org.

Lesley Beatty at home in Lexington. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Click the play button to hear part of our conversation with Leslie Beatty:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Click here for a slide show from Bad Dates.

Leslie Beatty always wanted to be an actor, and few things got in her way, except bacon.

“I took a theater class at UK when I was in college,” Beatty says. “I went in the class, and they told me to lay on the floor and be bacon. … I said, ‘I don’t know what you mean. I can’t be bacon.’ And I left and I never came back.”

The early experience with Method acting did little to derail Beatty’s career, which started modestly. When she was cast in her first play, Breaking the Code at Actors Guild of Lexington in 1990, her résumé read, “Shows auditioned for, 4. Times cast: none.”

That play launched a career that took Beatty all over the country, including stints in the prestigious American Repertory Theatre’s Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University and at David Mamet’s Atlantic Theatre Company.

Leslie Beatty in"Bad Dates."

This weekend, Beatty is back at Actors Guild in a sort of homecoming performance, starring in Bad Dates, Theresa Rebeck’s one-woman show with a self-explanatory title.

“As someone who’s experienced lots of dates, 50-50 good and bad, I can relate to a lot of it,” Beatty says over lunch at The Julep Cup restaurant. “I’m reading this one part of it, and when you get to a certain age, issues come up that didn’t come up when you were younger, health being one of them. Older people like to talk about their health.

“There’s this scene where she’s talking about a date where the guy started talking about his cholesterol, and I started laughing. And Walter May was just sitting there looking at me like, ‘What the heck?’ and tears were flowing down my face. He said, ‘This gives me hope.’”

Beatty says May, the play’s director, didn’t think the scene was that funny, until she read it and explained it.

“I said, ‘Imagine having to listen to this on a date. This is not what you want to talk about,’” Beatty says. “And I have been in this situation where people start talking about their health and their doctors, and I’m like, ‘You know, more information than I need.’”

Bad Dates is a 90-minute chronicle of the romantic travails of Hayley, a single mother and restaurant manager in New York who has no luck breaking back into the dating scene. It takes place in the bedroom of her apartment as she tries on shoes and dresses for her nights out with everyone from total non-starters to hot prospects that fizzle.

“If you were just looking around town for who to cast in this play, Leslie would be the one,” May says.

The actor and play actually came together by accident. Actors Guild’s original season included a March production of The Waiting Room, but that show was shelved as the theater tried to trim costs because of the economic downturn. Beatty was cast in the show that replaced The Waiting Room — Robert Hewitt’s one-woman play The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead. But rights issues emerged with that show. The theater finally turned to Rebeck’s Bad Dates, which has been a hit at theaters around the country.

The road from and back to Lexington

For Actors Guild, Bad Dates was a chance to present a distinguished alum.

“It’s been five years since I’ve done anything,” Beatty says. “So I equate it to an athlete who hasn’t run in five years suddenly deciding to do a marathon. It’s kind of crazy.”

Beatty’s initial foray out of Lexington was in 1992, when she joined the apprentice program at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where among others she got to share the stage with Tony and Oscar winner Mercedes Ruehl in Antony and Cleopatra.

That was a precursor to the Henry Clay High School grad’s career acting alongside a slew of marquee names. For instance, Beatty appeared in the second-ever production of actor and playwright Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile at American Repertory Theatre, or A.R.T., in Cambridge, Mass.

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Louisville arts groups have announced a new program that will offer $10 rush tickets to more than 70 performances during the balance of the 2008-09 arts season, including propductions by Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Louisville Orchestra, Louisville Ballet and the Broadway series.

The program is part of an effort to battle the faltering economy that is putting a pinch on arts groups and patrons alike. Last month, Louisville arts groups saw their city funding cut by 50 percent.

“As an arts community, we are very grateful for the enormous support and positive feedback we receive each year,” Stephen Klein, President of The Kentucky Center, said in a news release. “This is a way for us to give back, something especially important in light of the current economic crisis. Patrons will now have the opportunity to see award-winning live performances for the price of a movie ticket.”

Discounted performances at the Kentucky Center will include the Mark Morris and Alvin Ailey dance groups. Other groups will be offering shows such as productions in the Humana Festival of New American Plays and Leonard Bernstein celebration by the Louisville Orchestra.

The Arts Rush tickets will be available in person at the box office two hours prior to the selected performances.