Watch a Dracula Play in Louisville, Kentucky

Dracula Comes to Louisville

VIDEO DESCRIPTION

Watch a Dracula Play in Louisville, Kentucky

Check out the internationally acclaimed Tony Award winning Actors Theater of Louisville, Kentucky, and get a behind the scenes look at their production of Dracula.

VIDEO TAGS

Dracula Comes to Louisville Actors Theatre of Louisville Dracula play Louisville ky gotolouisville Intermezzo Louisville Louisville Kentucky tourist attractions theater in Louisville Kentucky where to eat in Louisville Kentucky where to go in Louisville KentuckyDracula Comes to Louisville

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Chaz: Welcome everyone to this edition of “Looking at Louisville.” I’m Chaz..
Stacey: And I’m Stacey.
Chaz: And we are here at the café. It’s a wonderful restaurant here on the edge of downtown Louisville. So tell us a little bit more.
Stacey: This is the east Broadway business district. It’s at the corners, top of Broadway downtown Louisville, the main street there and then Baxter avenue, kind of these whole corridor that a lot of—
Chaz: Kind of the edge of the highlands.
Stacey: It is. Got some cool places like this to eat, also we’re just right down the street from Glens and the Kolonade at the top of the Louisville Antique Mall on Broadway. Actually the café used to be in the Antique Mall which is on Goss avenue. I’ve been coming here for lunch for years and they added breakfast when they move to this location which we’ve just had a wonderful breakfast.
Chaz:   Yes, I had a wholly bread with scrambled eggs and fruit.
Stacey: And I had a strata, eggs and parmesan cheese, Swiss cheese, got roasted veggies and then mark had the mound plate.
Chaz:   The mound plate.
Stacey:  With that hash, right? Beef, and potatoes, it was quite nacho.
Chaz:   Yeah, it was. It was.
Stacey: And I recommend anytime you come here for breakfast, start with one of their cinnamon rolls. We did, like they come in even really quick, they’re really hot, really good. So I’m stocked in, what about you?
Chaz: Yeah, I’m pretty full. You know I’ve never been here before so I thank you for bringing me here and because this is one of those location.
Stacey:  Yeah, a funky space.
Chaz: Yeah. It’s raw, it’s earthy, the food is wonderful and it’s a great place to bring some by because it’s not that—this is its whole, it’s just very, very nice.
Stacey: Actually some of the touches like the funky chandeliers and the Broadway posters, they brought over from their Antique Mall days that they actually used to be able to purchase them. They were on this way and I like how they brought that flavor here too. Lunch was great, the chili and the tomato food, awesome.
Chaz: Well, we’re going to have to work this out because wait a little just walking across the street you’ll be able to go to Louisville Stoneware which has been around since 1854.
Stacey: It is, one of Louisville’s icons up there with the Louisville theatre, right? We can’t turn your own but you can make your own—
Chaz: You can make your own dishes. You can actually bring your kids in here and have a paint or you can do it yourself. Maybe you’ll get lucky.
Stacey: It’s a great holiday line. It just came out for fall. I got this beautiful pumpkin platter as a gift from someone and a gift from thanksgiving and there whole holiday line is beautiful as well.
Chaz:   Are you ready to work out this breakfast.
Stacey:   I am ready. Let’s go.
Chaz:   That’s good.
Stacey: After a great breakfast at the café we have literally just walked right across to Louisville Stoneware and we are with Stacy Shaffer. Thanks for having us here, flattered.
Stacy: Thanks for coming.
Stacey: Stacy, tell us a little bit about the background of Little Stoneware. How long it’s been round, why it’s such a Louisville icon.
Stacy: We have been in this facility since 1815. We are truly one of the only palm-painted hand crafted pottered companies still in the world, no machinery; everything is touched by hand from start to finish. We have about 22 hands that touched each piece and it’s from the clay, the earth, wind and fire that we saved from the fire going into the kiln and hand painted pieces from all of our local in-house artist.
Stacey: What is your most iconic piece?
Stacy: Before we always--
Stacey: Giving it a good race, Louisville symbol right?
Stacy: Right.
Stacey: And tell us about some of the holiday lines there that are going in thanksgiving, Halloween—
Stacy: Halloween, thanksgiving and then we also have our Christmas patterns that our made from in-house artist called David Mahoney, it’s a Hollywood feeling which is absolutely beautiful. It is one of our great sellers. We do the offered tours and we can go through and watch the artist themselves actually painting and see the facility from the beginning to the end of the process of how the pottery is made.
Stacey: We definitely want a shot but first I think we want to kind of get a look inside and see how it’s all done.
Stacy: Let’s go.
Chaz: Let’s take a look at them.
Stacey: First of all he gets all the fun assignments.
Chaz:   I’m Bob Chaz, a builder to lend.
Stacey: We are here with Colleen. Colleen, tell us what you do for Louisville Stoneware?
Colleen: I’m a 27-year-old veteran artist in the production area plant paint, design, custom designs, what you’ll need me to do?
Stacey: And tell us about the clay thing.
Colleen: The clay, this is the beginning. The clay is brought to us in truckloads from western Kentucky.
Stacey: They’re brought that way?
Colleen: Yes. And this is out rough clay. They put it through a process that turns it into the hub mill clay, all natural ingredients, green—green before it was cool.
Stacey: Right? Let’s go see the next step.
Colleen: Okay. These are all clay blocks. You saw the clay in the original form after it’s put to the process with water and it’s transformed into the clay body. We can press it into clay blocks that you see here. This is taking the moisture out of him which later goes in to two different types of clay which would be plug clay and then hands on clay that the artist around here used to form the different pieces.
Stacey: Basically, you get a big mound at this for the potter and then they can start to make it into sheet.
Colleen: Yes. This is the stronger clay for pushing into molds and then we also have hands on tight clay that they can draw to form the paste.
Stacey: And they actually take the tour, you can see some of this action, the giant thing about—
Colleen:  Yes.
Chaz: Well, right now we’re standing at the jigger. Now, this is where—how do they block the clay then they bring it into this area as you see there is a big bottled clay right over here and this is what they do. What does the jigger do?
Colleen: This is the jigger wheel where the artist will take the soft clay here that he’ll throw it into a mould or into a pattern shape like this here you’ll see. This is our plate bed, it’s normally sitting here, he’ll draw the clay on it, bring the wheel down to it. As it expands he uses his hands and water to form that shape which would determine to and leaving it to play.
Chaz:   So this is truly one play at a time.
Colleen:  Yes.
Chaz:   The old fashioned way.
Colleen:  Yes, it is, all hands.
Chaz:   All hands on that, that’s what he did, yes.
Stacey: And we’ve just come from jigger wheel that clay that you saw it’s now in the hands of an artist. This is Cindy; he’s been Louisville Stoneware for how logg?
Cindy Spencer: 25 years.
Stacey: Expert, professional here and they actually hand paint every piece here at pottery at Louisville Stoneware which makes it such a true Kentucky craft. I’m getting a few tips here because Chaz is going to go paint our own in just a second. Maybe a little just go paint some of these pieces, probably doing one of that.
Chaz: Well, we just finished painting as you see something that’s been right to go into the kiln but then they glaze it. Now, to me it looks like it wiped down all the color. Explain to me a little bit what the glazing does.
Colleen: The over glazed is the clear shiny part that you see on each piece in the showroom which makes is food safe, microwave safe, everything you know—it’s a bit shiny, beautiful sheen that you see on our pieces.
Chaz: So then we take this and we put it in a kiln which is right behind us for 24 hours and then it comes out?
Colleen:  Yes, this is fired at like that—
Chaz: Beautiful. I’m sorry I’m never have to give but you said this is—
Colleen: This is fired for 24 hours at 2300 degrees slowly brought up to 2300 degrees and then it’s slowly taken down. So it takes a 24-hour process to reach this final stage. These are the three steps you see and you could see the glaze is here quite different from the finished colors.
Chaz: Now, I’m here with Heather Pruet and she came to Louisville Stoneware today, she brought her family that she also bought an exchange thing here to give her a little bit history about Louisville. So why was it important that you bring her here to Louisville Stoneware?
Heather: Well, we’ve spending a year of this and we wanted her to see the best of Louisville. We were doing some research and things to do around town and we looked at Louisville Stoneware and it’s the oldest place here in Louisville so we gave her a chance to come down here and paint and experience all the great things.
Chaz:   And it’s something that you can do together as a family.
Heather: Absolutely! It’s our day off today so we all came down the five of us and have some of the—we have fun together.
Chaz:   Alright, thank you very much.
Heather: You’re welcome.
Chaz: Well, we’re getting too close up to our tour at your Louisville Stoneware and we get to make our own little creations here.
Stacey: That’s fun. I love it, I love this episode where you actually get to touch something here—
Chaz: Now this is going to take about seven days. Once we drop them off it goes to the kiln, it goes to the whole process, we’re getting it back in about seven days and anybody can come up the street and come here and do this and feel the job.
Stacey: These are going to be ornaments but you can actually do this all year. Come in and have come by yourself, you can come with a birthday parties here, there are lots of parties come and do this.
Chaz: Pretty interesting, I mean, it’s a great thing they’ve come and bring your kids and have them make plates and get that—
Stacey: Like keepsake.
Chaz:   Yeah, a great keepsake and it’s a lot of fun.
Stacey: And if you want to get your own piece you can come to Louisville Stoneware or online actually they’re shipped around the world or look into your piece, if you send us say, a suggestion.
Chaz: Now send emails to podcast@gotolouisville.com and of course we used it just like what you said, we will send you a Louisville Stoneware swag, how is that. So as always—
Stacey: You’re looking at Louisville.
Chaz:   See you real soon.