Two anticipated features of each year's Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theater of Louisville are a themed anthology showcasing ATL's vibrant young Acting Apprentice Company and three Ten-Minute Plays, in which selected apprentices display their talents.
Best of the Ten-Minutes was Alex Dremann's On the Porch One Crisp Spring Morning, a conversation between a mother (Katie Kreisler, the only non-apprentice in the three short plays; she was superb as long-suffering sister Sophia in Zoe Kazan's full-length, Absalom at the festival) and daughter (Nancy Noto), who in convoluted shape-shifting dialogue reveal that they're spies, double and even triple agents assigned to assassinate each other. (But do they?)
3:59 am: a drag race for two actors by Marco Ramirez is a stark mini-drama about two troubled young men (Daniel Reyes and Matthew Baldiga) who slide into an unexpected confrontation.
Michael Lew's slight Roanoke about reenactors at the Roanoke Colony Living Museum works hard for laughs but doesn't earn them.