BRINGING THE LOVE 20 ANDRE KIMO STONE GUESS

In another lifetime, Brittany “BeeBee” Patillo might not have returned to the stage for Kentucky Shakespeare in 2021. In that alternate world, she would have competed for Miss Kentucky and, if she had won, would be preparing to compete for Miss America. I

Patillo didn’t compete in pageants growing up. “I was a child that was shy,” she says, but during her senior year of college, she was one of five young women chosen as Kentucky Derby

Princesses. That was just the beginning. At the official Derby

Ball, Patillo was crowned the 2019 Kentucky Derby Festival

Queen, and because of the pandemic, she remained queen in 2020.

“I learned that you get a scholarship for being a queen,”

Patillo says. “I knew that I wanted to go to grad school to study theater or maybe even directing, so I was really thinking about competing for Miss Kentucky.”

Then came the pivotal decision. Both pageantry and theater are time-consuming and full-focus commitments. Patillo would either perform with Kentucky Shakespeare or compete for

Miss Kentucky, not both.

Fortunately for audiences, Patillo isn’t just simply returning to the stage — she has a lead role as Viola de Lesseps in this summer’s Shakespeare in Love.

She wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I always knew, even at a young age, that I wanted to perform,”

Patillo says, so when Amy Attaway, Kentucky Shakespeare’s

Associate Artistic Director, asked her to audition for the 2021 summer season, the choice was clear.

“At the end of the day, I knew that pageantry isn’t where my heart is. Theater is,” says Patillo. “So that’s how the decision was made.”

Jon O'Brien and Brittany "BeeBee" Patillo in Shakespeare in Love. Photo by Bill Brymer.

As Viola de Lesseps, Patillo is playing William Shakespeare’s love interest, who would eventually become The Bard’s muse for Juliet in his legendary play, Romeo and Juliet. Playing Shakespeare himself is Jon O'Brien, who is returning for his eighth season.

“Working with BeeBee is awesome,” O’Brien says of Patillo. “This is the first time we’ve worked together. I think she’s an awesome scene partner.”

Like Patillo, O’Brien was born and raised in Louisville. He went to school in New York, attending the Juilliard School of Drama, and graduated in 2009. “Group 38!” O’Brien declares proudly.

“I needed a break from New York and wanted to live by actual trees,” O’Brien jokes. “I saw that [Kentucky Shakespeare] was auditioning, so I met with Matt Wallace and Amy Attaway, and the rest is history.”

 Jon O'Brien and Brittany "BeeBee" Patillo in Shakespeare in Love. Photo by Bill Brymer.

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Shakespeare in Love players perform one of the show's musical numbers. Photo by Bill Brymer.

When asked what it’s like to return to live performances, O’Brien says, “The theater is my church, especially when the audience is there and everyone can share in a single moment. There’s a sense of awe when you’re going through something on stage [as a performer] and you know the audience is going through that same emotional journey with you. That sense of community is something that can only happen with live performances.”

So far in his career, O’Brien has also booked significant work in television and film. His resume includes the recurring role of Motlow on AMC’s Turn: Washington’s Spies, Baron Drew on Chicago PD, and Hunter on The Good Wife.

“I was thinking about it the other day, actually,” O’Brien says, “The different sorts of performing arts... As a musician, you play a note and the audience is immediately taken to an [emotional] place. That’s the beauty of a live performance; something new is created right in front of you, something unique to that moment. With TV and film, they’re looking for one moment to capture on camera [forever]. And that’s why I love theater. It’s alive. It’s a living organism.”

But during the height of pandemic lockdowns, that living organism — the theater — went into hibernation.

“Of course, it was hard,” Patillo says, “because you don’t get to perform. You’re not on stage. We had just started the 2020 Spring Tour, but then everything shut down. It’s already hard enough to be a local full-time actress, so when that’s stripped away from you, now everyone’s in a panic. How am I going to pay this? How am I going to pay for that? So that’s very stressful and panicking.”

“But I’m an optimistic person,” she continues. “I read new plays, learned new monologues, and worked on self-tapes.”

For O’Brien, much of the lockdown was spent with his son, who was born right before the pandemic hit. Though O’Brien stood against the cliff of the unknown, one constant melody in his life had been another artistic endeavor.

“When I’m not on stage, I do woodworking,” O’Brien says. “I like it because I can go into the shop and work for a little bit and create something. I made several charcuterie boards for Christmas. That was fun.”

After a year away, the initial return to the stage was unexpectedly nerve wracking.

“I’m amazed at how nervous I was for the preview, our first performance back,” O’Brien recalls. “I had literal physical anxiety.”

Prior to performances, O’Brien usually makes playlists for every character he plays. At that point, he hadn’t made a playlist for his warm-up for the preview. But the moment he started listening to a playlist shared by Hannah, one of the backstage crew members, he was able to channel that anxiety into fuel for the show.

“All I needed was my music,” O’Brien says.

Now that the 2021 summer season is in full swing, it’s already clear what an impact Shakespeare in Love is having on the Greater Louisville community.

As a black actress and a lead in a predominantly white company, Patillo describes a beautiful moment of seeing little black girls in the audience and how important it is for them to see a black woman on center stage.

“I was talking with another castmate about impact and how excited we are to look into the audience,” Patillo says. “We adore Kentucky Shakespeare so much because you hear them say all the time that ‘Shakespeare is for everybody’ and they really are living true to those words by making sure everyone is being represented.”

O’Brien agrees, and encourages everyone in Louisville to come see the show. “Shakespeare in Love is a play where you can put everything aside to see a fun, beautiful story in front of you. Not every story has to pull out a thorn. Sometimes theater can just be a hug. Shakespeare in Love is a hug to our community. A vaccinated, safe hug.”

ACT LOUISVILLE PRODUCTIONS

As performing arts lovers, we know that something magical happens when the house lights go down and the curtain rises. The audience collectively takes a breath as the performers hit their marks, and for one heavy moment everyone in the theater wonders, “What will happen next?”

A similar moment occurred years ago for both Beth Hall and Randy Blevins when they performed on stage as classmates at Centre College. The two connected and had no idea that years later that connection would be the biggest, “What will happen next?” moment of their lives.

Hall and Blevins have been working together to promote Hall’s two performing arts schools, Actors Center for Training (ACT) and Dancers Center for Training (DCT), which have helped countless young people become working actors around the country. As they worked to provide support for young artists in Louisville, they realized there was something missing. More importantly, they realized there was something they could do to better meet the needs of these young performers.

“As an educator, I’m so inspired by the potential of young performers in our community,” says Hall. “We’re lucky to live in a city that provides opportunities to discover, experience and explore the arts. But, then what? What’s next?”

After years of planning and development, the answer to that question is ACT Louisville Productions (ALP), a brand new production company designed to help the region’s most promising young actors reach greater success as performers and artists.

A DELAYED LAUNCH This summer marks the launch of ALP’s two-year pilot program, ARTS at the AMPHITHEATER, which will present young performers with unique opportunities to study with and perform alongside professional actors. The first of these opportunities is coming up this month when ALP will stage its inaugural production, The Wizard of Oz, presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Tams-Witmark LLC.

“We had hoped to launch this effort in 2020,” says Hall. “Unfortunately, the pandemic forced the closure of all performance venues. We were, however, able to successfully hold in-person camps last year, while adhering to strict protocols to keep our students safe.”

“Our mission is to bring arts to the community,” says Blevins. “We want to build up the next generation of performers and theatregoers, to provide access and opportunities to work with the best professionals in the business. In order to do this, we’ve had to find new ways to reach and foster talent.”

Thanks to a blossoming relationship with community centers around Louisville, auditions were held at multiple locations, giving every child access to

ARTS at the AMPHITHEATER is a two-year pilot program that offers young performers opportunities to study alongside professional actors. Photo courtesy of ACT Louisville Productions.

− Beth Hall

Beth Hall

the opportunity to audition. Following the summer pilot program, ALP will seek to program at these community centers throughout the year.

ELEVATING YOUNG PERFORMERS ALP’s unique summer intensives will also be a new and innovative way to help students further their skills through mentorship with educators and professionals like Broadway performer Sara Gettelfinger, who joined the team as an instructor in 2019.

Gettelfinger, a native of Southern Indiana and a graduate of the Youth Performing Arts School, has performed in many Broadway and touring Broadway productions including Fosse, Suessical the Musical, Nine (opposite Antonio Banderas), Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (opposite John Lithgow), 101 Dalmatians as Cruella DeVille, Morticia in The Addams Family, and A Free Man of Color (opposite Jeffery Wright and Mos Def). She shares the vision of ALP: “I am incredibly grateful to have had such a wonderful career as a performer. The opportunity to pass on what I’ve learned and experienced to younger performers is an incredible gift. To share and teach the work and history of our art form not only preserves it for generations to come, but also elevates our young performers to new levels. I believe this is the most fulfilling and important accomplishment there is for an artist.”

Training via an intense camp environment or learning the craft as part of a large-scale performance under the direction of industry professionals is a huge win for the most passionate students of the arts. ALP wants children to succeed and become incredible communicators, thinkers, and performers.

“We want ACT Louisville Productions to become a springboard for passionate young performers to make their theatrical dreams come true. So many young artists — both on stage and behind the scenes — want to build their resumes and gain the experience needed to have a career in the arts,” adds Hall. “Many of these talented people have to travel out of town to get this training. Wouldn’t it be great if Louisville became the destination of choice for training?”

“And who knows,” says Blevins. “If this pilot program takes off, we could aspire to create and develop Broadway-bound new works. With all of the local arts support and talent in our community, why shouldn’t Louisville be a preBroadway destination like Chicago or Washington, D.C.?”

Beyond the talent and beyond the audiences, ALP will look to the Louisville community to invest in this program. “Sponsorship opportunities are now available,” says Blevins. “We would love to talk with the many generous organizations and individuals in our city to see how they might partner with us to realize this dream. People have been wondering for years when musical theatre would return to Iroquois Amphitheatre. It’s right now. And we couldn’t be more excited, because there’s no place like home.”

The Wizard of Oz will have performances July 30-Aug. 2. Tickets are on sale now starting at $20. Visit actlouisville.com to learn more about all of ALP’s programs.

by G. Douglas Dreisbach

he Fund for the Arts is a vital asset for the arts in Louisville. Its goal is to provide arts access and education, and foster diversity, as well as promote the city as a nationally recognized epicenter of the arts. During a roller coaster of a year — the arts and the community overall are just now starting to rebound from the challenges of the pandemic — Christen T Boone, who has navigated the Fund for the past seven years, announced her resignation. After a national search for a new President and CEO, the Fund for the Arts’ next chapter will be led by one of Louisville’s own, Andre Kimo Stone Guess. With an extensive background in the arts and entertainment world from consulting to management, he is ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work on many important issues around our community. Audience Magazine Publisher, G. Douglas Dreisbach, caught up with Guess to learn more about his background, his interest in the arts and the community, and what he is excited about for the future of Fund for the Arts. This is an excerpt from the full interview. To read it in its entirety, visit Audience502.com.

G. Douglas Dreisbach: Being a Louisville native, you can appreciate the importance of an organization like Fund for the Arts. What initially drew your interest to the position for President and CEO, and what are you looking forward to the most about the role?

Andre Kimo Stone Guess: I was born and raised here in Louisville, and my family goes back over 100 years in the Smoketown neighborhood, so I have deep roots in the community. I got accepted to Boston University in the six-year medical program right out of high school, I went to Male High School, and thought I wanted to be a physician early on but found out quickly I didn’t want to be a doctor. So, I ended up coming home and going to University of Louisville and got a degree in economics with a minor in actuarial math. I passed the first actuarial exam, got a job at Capital Holding and worked there for four years but realized that I didn’t really like the corporate world. I really wanted my life’s work to have an

− Andre Kimo Stone Guess

 From left to right: Mayor Fischer, Andre Kimo Stone Guess (new Fund for the Arts President & CEO), Christen Boone (outgoing Fund for the Arts President & CEO), James 'Ja' Hillebrand (Fund for the Arts Board Member & Chairman & CEO of Stock Yards Bank & Trust) Campbell Brown (Fund for the Arts Campaign Chair and Chairman of Brown-Forman). Photo courtesy of Fund for the Arts.

Fund for the Arts hosted a free concert on June 29 at Christy's Garden at Old Forester's Paristown Hall to celebrate our community's artists and donors, and meet incoming President & CEO Andre Kimo Stone Guess.

So, I transitioned into the nonprofit world, working for the Lincoln Foundation here in Louisville. I ended up going back to UofL to work on a Ph.D. in urban and public affairs and was writing my dissertation when I got a call from my dear friend, Wynton Marsalis, in New York. He asked me if I’d be interested in coming to help them prepare for moving into and building their new — what is now Jazz at Lincoln Center’s new home at Columbus Circle.

I was like, “Wow, this is the opportunity of a lifetime!” So, my wife and three young children, ages 7, 4, and 1 at the time, packed up and moved to New York. I did that for almost seven years and then started my own management and consulting firm, GuessWorks Inc., where I did a combination of managing the career of some Grammy Award-winning world-class artists, and also some really exciting consulting work with arts organizations all over the world.

In 2010, I was working on a consulting project in Pittsburgh and found out they had an opening for the CEO of the August Wilson Center for African American Culture and ended up getting offered that job. I did it for two years but did not renew my contract. Instead of moving back to New York or staying in Pittsburgh, we decided to move back to Louisville, where my wife and I were both from, and that was in 2012.

In 2019, we had decided that we wanted to move to New Orleans, and the reason we stayed in Louisville for as long as we did was to get our daughters, our two younger daughters, out of school. But then COVID happened, and then Breonna Taylor happened, and George Floyd happened, and so my wife and I kind of looked at each other like, “We can’t leave. We have to stay here, and we have to get involved.”

So, I went back to consulting full time. Things went well. We bought a condo on St. James Court, our empty nest forever home — our retirement home. Life was good. And then, a friend sent me a message on LinkedIn [that said], “I think this job is perfect for you,” and it was the posting for the Fund for the Arts job. The opportunity was like a calling... It was like the description was written for that little boy from Smoketown, coming back home to take on this role.

GDD: Wow, what a great story. How does the arts community in Louisville compare to some of the other places like New York or Pittsburgh?

AKSG: Louisville’s art footprint is disproportionate to the size of the city, disproportionately large. Louisville, for the longest time, had the largest per capita giving in the arts than any other city in the country. The arts community and the arts organizations, because of organizations like Fund for the Arts, historically have sort of banded together to move the arts forward. It hasn’t always been as inclusive as it could be, which is why they went through the work in 2017, and now of course, because of all the things that have gone on recently, there’s much more focus on it. But having said that, the one thing I do like about the scene in Louisville is that the community is small enough that you can take that art footprint, and while you’re expanding it, you can still steer it in a direction where a significant amount of that ecosystem can move in that direction, and the city saw value in developing a cultural plan that involves the entire ecosystem.

Now, we’ve got to do a better job of making sure that all aspects of the ecosystem are included in the plan, and that’s part of my charge in this, but we can move this and steer it in a direction that gets us to where we need to go, which is moving forward and taking everybody with us.

How we compare — I mean, you can’t compare any other city to the New Yorks and the L.A.s of the world because they have their own sort of micro-ecosystems of art, and there’s not necessarily a community- or a city-wide effort to promote it or even understand it, how it works together in a way to enhance all aspects of it.

A town like Pittsburgh has a very strong local arts scene, particularly an African American arts scene. Hence, they have the August Wilson Center for African American Culture on Liberty Avenue. Pittsburgh has a shared services model that a lot of the large foundations came together and sort of mandated, to a certain extent, that these organizations work together.

The Fund for the Arts staff celebrated their new leader and wished outgoing President & CEO Christen Boone well in her next chapter at the Summer Arts Celebration.

Top row (L-R): Christen Boone, Andre Kimo Stone Guess, Annie Nelson, Jake Bailey. Middle (L-R): Meghan Weidner, Mollie LaFavers, Katie Krutsick, Jordan Turpin, Courtney Glenny. Bottom (L-R): Maria Villares, August Anderson, Janie Martin

New President & CEO Andre Kimo Stone Guess welcomes guests to Fund for the Arts' Summer Arts Celebration event.

But one thing about Pittsburgh is that it has those large funders, funders who have assets under management of over $1 billion, so a lot of the voices, a lot of the direction, can come from those voices because they have so much money. I’m not saying that they are steering the policy, but when you have somebody you can go directly to for those kinds of things, it’s kind of hard to steer, unless you have them all deciding that this is what we want to do for the city.

GDD: Have you had a chance to look into the current programs at Fund for the Arts and to get an idea of what’s going on right now and what the next chapter is going to be like? Do you see the programs that are in place right now to be beneficial? Or do you want to change them?

AKSG: Right now, I am taking full inventory and am in a complete listening and learning mode. I am not a change-forchange’s-sake kind of person. I really want to live out the vision of the organization, which is to have art enrich the lives of every person in every neighborhood, every day. But I want to make sure that that “every” is “every.”

And so, the vision is there, in terms of what we need to do, just a matter of living that out and understanding. So, I am taking an inventory of what it is that we’re doing and understand the needs, the wants, the desires, and find out where the gaps are, from as wide a constituency as I can, and then coming from a consulting background, go in and figure out what the next steps are. It is really trying to distill it all down into key issues and then go back and say, “These are the issues that we’re dealing with. How do we deal with them?” So, I’m doing my own sort of mini-internal consulting project right now. Once we find those gaps, we can figure out how we are going to move the GDD: Why do you feel the arts are important to communities of every ecosystem, of every part of the city and world? What is it about the arts that you feel is important for people?

AKSG: Well, at its most irreducible essence, art is a reflection of the human condition. To me, all art is storytelling, and those stories that we tell ourselves and we tell others help us to make sense of the world around us. Also, art is one of the huge lever points that we can use to help heal and transform and bring about some level of equality with human beings.

Art has the ability to strip away all of the tribal differences of human beings and reduce us to our homo sapien DNA, where we are all human. But at the same time, as it strips us down, it also elevates us. It elevates us to our humanity of how we deal with each other. I used to say life on Mars is the end of racism, sexism, whatever, as we know it, because if we find that there’s another intelligent being in the world, all of a sudden, Russia and America become nonexistent, right? We become human beings that have to fight for our own survival. We’re all earthlings. And so, it has that power to bring us down to our humanity and deal with each other as human beings.

GDD: In closing, what can we look forward to in the coming years, and the excitement that you are going to bring to the Fund for the Arts?

AKSG: Well, the immediate — I can say that the world has a spotlight on Louisville right now, for reasons that we aren’t proud of. And quite frankly, the main reason I’m interested in this job is because the chasm that exists in my city, in my hometown, between the racial tension, the Ninth Street divide, and the segregation that we have. I feel like I have a responsibility to do everything I can to deal with that in my own community, to help promote healing in the community.

I’m looking at it concentrically. I need to deal with myself. I need to deal with my family. I need to deal with my community, and I need to deal with my city, and then the nation as a whole.

So, I think what it is that we have in the short term, and why I’m in this position, why I wanted it, is because I want that spotlight that’s here — I want it to capture things that shows the world that although we may have done some things and had a certain attitude about things, knowingly and unknowingly, that have to do with racial disparities and all kinds of the -isms that separate us, the tribalisms — that we are better than that.

We are going to be intentional about overcoming them. We’re going to heal. We’re going to transform this city. We’re going to give you something to see while that spotlight is here, and we’re going to use the arts to do that for all communities, because it’s not just about marketing. It’s about — everybody needs to be able to heal, because we’re suffering right now. If the city were being diagnosed, we probably would be diagnosed with at least some level of depression, and the arts are a great anti-depressant.

Audience is your connection to the performing arts and entertainment of Louisville. Below are some of the events we are looking forward to in the coming months and we hope you enjoy them all!

7/8-8/1: Henry V

9/12: Franco Escamilla

9/19: Jo Koy

11/9-14: Waitress

8-31

Shakespeare in the Park Henry V Runs nightly thru August 1 No Monday Performances Central Park in Old Louisville Free event! kyshakespeare.com 14

Waterfront Wednesday feat. Houndmouth, The Jesse Lees, Sam Filatreau Waterfront Park

16 & 17

Dark Star Orchestra Waterfront Park liveonthelawnlou.com

25

Waterfront Wednesday feat. Christone "Kingfish" Ingram, Brooks Ritter, Genevva Waterfront Park

27

Paul Thorn Band Rock/Blues Old Forester's Paristown Hall kentuckyperformingarts.org 28 & 29

Railbird Festival feat. Dave Matthews Band, Jason Isbell, My Morning Jacket, Leon Bridges, Billy Strings and more... Top Pick! Keeneland Racecourse, Lexington, KY railbirdfest.com

12

Franco Escamilla Payaso USA Tour Comedy Performance Fully in Spanish Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org 19

Jo Koy – Just Kidding Tour Comedy Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org

2

A Concert for Unity: Louisville Orchestra Whitney Hall louisvilleorchestra.org 8

Andrew Schulz: The INFAMOUS Tour Comedy Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org 9

Tommy Emmanuel with Jerry Douglas Guitarist – Songwriter Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org 16

Michael W. Smith: 35 Years of Friends Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org 23

Music of Prohibition: Louisville Orchestra, Pops Series Whitney Hall louisvilleorchestra.org 24

All Time Low Old Forester’s Paristown Hall kentuckyperformingarts.org 27

Caamp Old Forester’s Paristown Hall kentuckyperformingarts.org 29

Pink Martini featuring China Forbes Brown Theatre kentuckyperformingarts.org 30

Teddy Talks Schubert: Louisville Orchestra Classics Series Teddy Abrams, conductor Whitney Hall louisvilleorchestra.org

9 – 14

Waitress Broadway in Louisville Whitney Hall louisville.broadway.com 27

Holiday Pops: Louisville Orchestra Bob Bernhardt, conductor Whitney Hall louisvilleorchestra.org

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