Erin Keane

A series of readings of authors affiliated with Spalding University’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program begins Saturday. The university’s bi-annual Festival of Contemporary Writing is the state’s largest reading series and is an integral part of Spalding’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program residency, which the university hosts every spring and fall. This year’s festival runs through May 25.

(Disclosure: I am a 2004 graduate of Spalding's MFA program.)

After Actors Theatre of Louisville's Tony Speciale-directed contemporary staging and the Louisville Ballet's classical interpretation, Broadway in Louisville caps off a season of "Romeo and Juliet" with the touring production of "West Side Story." The musical opened Tuesday and runs through Sunday in Whitney Hall, with matinees and evening performances on Saturday and Sunday.

A century after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed enslaved people in Confederate territories and states, New Albany’s Carnegie Center for Art and History explores the history of emancipation celebrations on both sides of the Ohio River with a talk by historian Pen Bogert.

A new online Wayback Machine focused on historic images of the city has launched. 502Louisville is an ongoing exhibition of the history of Louisville through photographs. Each post includes at least one vintage photo and some historic information about the site. Some posts document buildings that no longer exist, while others show how city blocks have grown over time.

Hip hop dancers and Suzuki Method-trained violinists will share the stage Sunday at the Kentucky Center’s ArtsReach showcase. The annual show features community youth arts groups performing in the Kentucky Center’s Bomhard Theatre, including special guests River City Drum Corps, whose director, Ed White, has a long-standing relationship with ArtsReach.

Violin instructor Keith Cook teaches Suzuki Method through the Presbyterian Early Childhood Center, Meyzeek Community School and WESTEC, his own studio. His students are among several local groups performing Sunday.

Louisville playwright Brian Walker is having a busy week. The revival of his 2006 comedy "Great American Sex Play" opens Thursday at the Kentucky Center's MeX Theatre, and tonight, his new play "The Friend Factory" will receive a staged reading at Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville. 

Louisville Repertory Company closes its 20th season this week with a titillating revival. Louisville playwright Brian Walker’s “Great American Sex Play,” which premiered in 2006 with Walker’s own Finnigan Productions, opens in the Kentucky Center’s MeX Theatre Thursday. The new production features a refreshed, streamlined script and an all-new cast.

The Bard’s Town Theatre continues its season of notable newer work with Jonathan Marc Sherman’s 2007 “Things We Want,” a satisfying dark comedy about three emotionally-stunted adult brothers still living in their childhood home while attempting to figure out how to overcome their various fragilities before they kill themselves or each other. That sounds heavier than the play actually is—tonally, it’s a gallows humor-charged fight between the id and the super-ego with flashes of brilliance that resists taking its characters seriously enough to let them fall apart in any kind of realistic disintegration.