The Storytelling Revolution Festival will replace the Louisville Fringe's annual Festival that ended in 2024. (Giselle Rhoden / LPM)Actors Theatre and the Louisville Fringe Festival enlisted more than a dozen Kentuckiana playwrights to showcase their work at the Storytelling Revolution Festival thi s April.Recently, the theater collaboration added five shows to the lineup, and organizers said the collection represents stories of the past, present and future written by Kentuckiana creatives.Actors Theatre and the Louisville Fringe Festival announced the Storytelling Revolution Festival in January. Theater leadership said the festival will showcase a diverse collection of works from puppet theater, to immersive workshops and dance theater. And with five newly-added productions, 19 shows will open at Actors Theatre’s Main Complex over the course of two weeks.Festival co-director and Actors artistic director Amelia Powell said the updated lineup will address “gaps in geography, style and different types of artistry.”In “The Sweet Life: The Ruth Hunt Story,” the play takes its audience to Mount Sterling, Kentucky in the 1920s, and tells the story of one woman’s candy kitchen.The production is a live radio play with foley, similar to Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast in 1938. Welles performed the H.G. Wells' book of the same name, while sound effects created in the studio played during the staged broadcast.The audience will watch actors create these sound effects live during “The Sweet Life.”“It might have, for example, a sheet of metal that, when you shake it, it sounds like thunder,” Powell said. “Or it would have a pair of tap shoes and a little wooden plank so that the person could make pretend steps.”Powell said she is excited to add nonfiction stories like Ruth Hunt’s to the lineup, and bring some “direct address” style works with “Peacekeepers.”The performance is based on "You Got To Be of the People: Peacekeepers at the Heart of Public Safety in Louisville," a book created by the Louisville Story Program and Cities United.The project highlights 12 community members who work towards violence prevention in Louisville. Some of the authors will share their individual stories during the show, and it will end with a QA.“Actors Theatre of Louisville is known for the more traditional play and people might not think about that form of nonfiction storytelling,” Powell said. “But it's such an important part of our field, to also inspire people and that you don't have to come up with a brand new fictional thing and invent characters. You can just tell your own story. And that is powerful.”The new shows also include a cabaret and musical theater mashup, a panel discussion with local artists, and a production in partnership with Kentucky School for the Blind.This will be the first time students from Kentucky School for the Blind will perform their plays for the public. Three students wrote their own plays under the New Voices program, a collaboration with the school and Actors Theatre.Producer and Actors’ learning and creative engagement manager Carly Riggs said these students have worked on their productions since January.“One was written by a 13-year-old. One was a 17-year-old, and the other was a 14-year-old,” Riggs said. “So it's also really neat to see their different personalities come out in these plays.”The plays tackle a variety of subjects and scenarios such as bullying, the Holocaust and a world with talking dogs and cats.These students worked with theater professionals who help students compose their own work. Then, they sent their scripts to the American Printing House for the Blind. From there, the printing house formatted the scripts in Braille.A Kentucky School for the Blind student showing a theater professional how a Braille embosser works(Carly Riggs / Provided)And on April 11, actors from the Braille Theatre will perform the student’s plays. Some of the actors will play multiple characters, Riggs said.“It's also really amazing to hear the difference that they have found in the characters with their voices, so that we can tell the difference of which character is playing what,” Riggs said. “So that's also going to be really fun for the playwrights to hear their plays being read, but also the audience to see kind of how that's done.”The performance schedule is available online. The festival opens on April 1 with “Wave after Wave” directed by Powell. ...read more read less