We leave for Louisville in 20 days. Damn, I'm excited. The Humana Festival has been the genesis for a great number of things in my life, not least of them my taste in plays to a great extent. (You can blame Harold Clurman and the NYTR for the rest of that.)

Anyway, let's start taking a look at the Festival in detail. Today we'll talk about Gina Gionfriddo, whose new play Becky Shaw is in the Festival this year.

Gina's work has been seen at the Festival before, both as part of the anthology/intern show Trepidation Nation and in After Ashley, which was far and away the best play of the 2004 Festival. I know another of her plays very well, U.S. Drag and it's a absolute hoot. Gionfriddo's received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, an Obie and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and she's been known to write for Law & Order and Cold Case on the boob tube. (The cast of Becky Shaw includes Annie Parisse, who's on L&O.)

Here's a choice quotation from a conversation between Gionfriddo and Rapp that was published in The Brooklyn Rail last November.

I think there is definitely a class of theatergoer who wants to have coffee and dessert after the play and really doesn't want a play to go on too long or present anything that's gonna negatively impact dessert. But I personally--and I think you, too--bring the absolute opposite desire to the theater. I am being entertained really well by TV for free and by film for eleven bucks a pop. When I see a play, I want my world rocked, my perspective shifted. I get really mad when that doesn't happen.

And here's an exchange from a recent Courier-Journal interview.

Q. Why did you choose to write plays when writing scripts for television, film and other media generally pays better and reaches more people?

A. Two reasons: Writers have much less authorial control in film and TV. I mean, maybe a Clint Eastwood or a David Milch ("NYPD Blue") has the clout to write a TV series or a film without submitting to editorial notes from 12 different executives, but I sure don't have it! I control the words in my playwriting, and that is very important to me.

Also, the theater just accommodates my writing better. I like a kind of verbal combat that is electric on stage and doesn't translate so well to the screen because it's visually rather static.

That rings true from what I've read of her work. Her dialogue is really sharp and bouncy and her characters are full of energy and life. Her TV pedigree shows a bit too (or at least the skills that helped her to get TV work) as her plays are tight, without much room to breathe between the words or the scenes.

So, how bout a picture?