ArtCraft

For arts patrons who aren't fans of Christmas shows, this isn't exactly the most wonderful time of the year. The so-called "sweet weeks" between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day are packed with Christmassy fare, with Tiny Tim duking it out with the Sugar Plum Fairy and the entire populations of Bedford Falls and Santaland competing with holiday films and parties for family entertainment dollars and time.

Actors Theatre of Louisville opened its 37th production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" last night. Actors Theatre's show is the second longest-running production in the country (the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis has them beat by a year), and while small changes happen from year to year, Actors doesn't mess with what works—solid acting paired with lovely music, a liberal dose of humor and the cozy familiarity of a timeless redemption story well-told. 

This week on our audio diary series "The Big Break," Actors Theatre of Louisville apprentice Samantha Beach finishes her run of "A Christmas Story" with a fun souvenir—a recording of herself playing the teacher during a student matinee. Over at the Louisville Ballet, Claire Horrocks explains why the snowflake and the flower are the toughest roles she tackles in "The Nutcracker" and Brad Raymond spends his break from the Kentucky Opera learning music for the Kentucky Opera. (No rest for the talented.)

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded Louisville’s Council on Developmental Disabilities a Challenge America Fast-Track grant to help fund a group art exhibit, The Striped Show, in the spring.  The $10,000 grants, which receive an expedited application review, are intended to increase access to the arts for underserved communities. 

Many of the arts season’s holiday shows are tried-and-true classics, but one Louisville theater company prefers a less reverent approach. Pandora Productions' plays and musicals typically examine some facet of LGBT life, and holiday programming is no exception. But when artistic director Michael Drury went looking for gay-themed Christmas fare to produce, he came away disappointed.

Christmas shows might be the 800-pound gorillas stomping on the December arts scene, but this year Congregation Adath Jeshurun is getting in on the action with "Chanukah Chappens," a multi-genre Chanukah show at The Bard's Town. The evening's two performances (7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.) will feature storytelling, music, comedy, poetry and, of course, the lighting of the first candle on the menorah. 

“The Nutcracker,” a fantasy-fueled story of a young girl who dreams her toy prince to life and follows him through magical lands, debuted as a ballet in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century with choreography by the ballet master Petipa and music by Tchaikovsky. But it didn’t become an American holiday tradition until after World War II, when George Balanchine staged his version for the New York City Ballet and the ballet caught fire as a Christmastime production.

An annual holiday tradition starts back up this week at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Barbara Field’s stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” opens Thursday in the Pamela Brown Auditorium for its 37th run. 

The Louisville Orchestra will thank its donors with a special concert on December 5 at the Brown Theatre. The program is free for supporters of the season, but all are welcome to make a donation at the door in lieu of tickets. Led by music director Jorge Mester, the program will feature Gioachino Rossini's Overture to The Barber of Seville, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor and Wolfgang Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor.