Alan Garner is an English novelist best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. Much of his work is rooted in the landscape and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect. Born in Congleton, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as "The Edge", where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and briefly at Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern Period building known as Toad Hall, his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned.

Instead he wrote several fantasy novels, The Owl Service and Red Shift. Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet, a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family, he published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold, Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales and A Bag of Moonshine. In his subsequent novels and Thursbitch, he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy, Boneland. Garner was born in the front room of his grandmother's house in Congleton, Cheshire, on 17 October 1934, he was raised in nearby Alderley Edge, a well-to-do village that had become a suburb of Manchester. His "rural working-class family", had been connected to Alderley Edge since at least the sixteenth century, could be traced back to the death of William Garner in 1592.

Garner has stated that his family had passed on "a genuine oral tradition" involving folk tales about The Edge, which included a description of a king and his army of knights who slept under it, guarded by a wizard. In the mid-nineteenth century Alan's great-great grandfather Robert had carved the face of a bearded wizard onto the face of a cliff next to a well, known locally at that time as the Wizard's Well. Robert Garner and his other relatives had all been craftsmen, according to Garner, each successive generation had tried to "improve on, or do something different from, the previous generation". Garner's grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was unlettered". Instead he taught his grandson. Garner remarked that as a result he was "aware of magic" as a child, he and his friends played there; the story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in his life, becoming, he explained, "deeply embedded in my psyche" and influencing his novels.

Garner faced several life-threatening childhood illnesses, which left him bed ridden for much of the time. He attended a local village school, where he found that, despite being praised for his intelligence, he was punished for speaking in his native Cheshire dialect. Garner won a place at Manchester Grammar School, where he received his secondary education. Rather than focusing his interest on creative writing, it was here, he used to go jogging along the highway, claimed that in doing so he was sometimes accompanied by the mathematician Alan Turing, who shared his fascination with the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Garner was conscripted into national service, serving for a time with the Royal Artillery while posted to Woolwich in Southeast London. At school, Garner had developed a keen interest in the work of Aeschylus and Homer, as well as the Ancient Greek language. Thus, he decided to pursue the study of Classics at Magdalen College, passing his entrance exams in January 1953.

He was the first member of his family to receive anything more than a basic education, he noted that this removed him from his "cultural background" and led to something of a schism with other members of his family, who "could not cope with me, I could not cope with" them. Looking back, he remarked, "I soon learned that it was not a good idea to come home excited over irregular verbs". In 1955, he joined the university theatrical society, playing the role of Mark Antony in a performance of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra where he co-starred alongside Dudley Moore and where Kenneth Baker was the stage manager. In August 1956, he decided that he wished to devote himself to novel writing, decided to abandon his university education without taking a degree, he felt that the academic rigour which he learned during his university studies has remained "a permanent strength through all my life". Aged 22, Garner was out cycling when he came across a hand-painted sign announcing that an agricultural cottage in Toad Hall – a Late Medieval building situated in Blackden, seven miles from Alderley Edge – was on sale for £510.

Although he could not afford it, he was lent the money by the local Oddfellow lodge, enabling him to purchase and move into the cottage in

The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, located in Louisville and branded as The Kentucky Center, is a major performing arts center in Kentucky. It one of three venues owned by Kentucky Performing Arts. Tenants include Broadway Across America, Kentucky Opera, Louisville Ballet, Louisville Orchestra, StageOne Family Theatre; the Kentucky Center hosts artworks by Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, John Chamberlain, Jean Dubuffet and others. The Kentucky Center was dedicated on November 19, 1983. Attendees included Diane Sawyer and Lily Tomlin. In 1984 the center hosted one of the U. S. presidential election debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. Other artists and celebrities to have used the Center's stages in the past include: Ray Charles, Jessye Norman, Tony Bennett, the Joffrey Ballet, Kathleen Battle, Jim Carrey, Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gregory Peck, James Taylor, President Bill Clinton, Elie Wiesel, Philip Glass, Marilyn Horne, Jerry Lewis, the Bolshoi Ballet, Wynton Marsalis, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, Bill Cosby, President George W. Bush, the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Leontine Price, Adam Lambert, William F. Buckley, Dan Howell, Phil Lester, Itzhak Perlman.

The Kentucky Center has three performance spaces: Robert S. Whitney Hall, with 2,406 seats, is the largest and named after the founding conductor of the Louisville Orchestra, Robert S. Whitney. Moritz von Bomhard Theatre, with 619 seats, is named for the founder of the Kentucky Opera, Moritz von Bomhard; the Moritz von Bomhard Theatre features a M1D Meyer Sound system for sound reinforcement. Boyd Martin Theatre, with 139 seats, is known as "The MeX," named for a film and theater critic who wrote for the Louisville Courier-Journal, Boyd Martin; the Kentucky Center is one of three venues owned by Kentucky Performing Arts: Brown Theatre, with 1,400 seats, is named for industrialist James Graham Brown, is located eight blocks away on Broadway, between Third and Fourth Streets. The Brown was completed in 1925, is modeled on the Music Box Theatre in New York City. Paristown Hall, which opened in July 2019, is located in the Paristown Pointe neighborhood east of downtown, it is a standing-only venue with a capacity of 2,000 featuring a patio, balcony area, bars.

Its stages are only a part of. For example, the Center has an education department, with programs for children and adults that travel into all corners of Kentucky. Programs include: ArtsReach: ArtsReach collaborates with community centers in Louisville, Ashland, Mt. Sterling, Lexington and Paducah to provide arts programs, with a strong emphasis on hands-on experiences. Governor's School for the Arts: Over 200 of Kentucky's most promising young artists come together for three weeks of interaction and artistic exploration each summer. Gheens Great Expectations Project: This partnership with the Gheens Foundation and the Fund for the Arts presents young classical musicians in concert and in community residencies. Kentucky Performing Arts administers programs that assist and teach teachers in bringing the arts into the classroom, such as: Arts Academies: The Kentucky Center provides one-week Arts Academies for Kentucky's public school teachers at six sites across the Commonwealth each summer. Kentucky Institute for Arts in Education: This two-week professional development seminar involves teachers in creative writing, drama and visual arts.

Arts Education Showcase: At a showcase held as part of the Kentucky Teaching and Learning Conference and members of the public can see prescreened artists and performers whose arts education programs are available for students. Kentucky Performing Arts provides access services that make the theater experience possible for patrons with disabilities. Kentucky Performing Arts provides consultancy services to many of the performing arts centers across Kentucky, including: Actors Theatre of Louisville Plaza Theatre Paramount Arts Center Alhambra Theatre RiverPark Center Hardin County Playhouse Singletary Center for the Arts at the University of Kentucky Four Rivers Arts Center Capitol Arts Center Jenny Wiley Theatre Lake Cumberland Center for the Arts List of attractions and events in the Louisville metropolitan area List of concert halls Performing arts in Louisville, Kentucky Theater in Kentucky The Kentucky Center official website

"Pilot" is the pilot episode and series premiere of the American television drama series Breaking Bad. It aired on AMC on January 20, 2008, was written and directed by series creator and showrunner Vince Gilligan. Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his pregnant wife Skyler and their teenage son Walter Jr. who has cerebral palsy. Walt supplements his low teaching salary by working part-time at a local car wash, where he ends up being humiliated in front of two of the students he teaches. On his 50th birthday, Walt returns home to a surprise party arranged by Skyler; the following day, he collapses at the car wash and is raced to the hospital, where he is told that he has developed inoperable lung cancer and has, at best, two years to live. Walt opts to keep this news from his family and from Skyler's sister Marie Schrader and her husband Hank, a DEA agent. After returning to work at the car wash, Walt lashes out at his boss and walks off the job.

Having earlier seen a news report showing a large amount of money recovered from one of Hank's drug busts, Walt takes up a previous offer to go on a ride-along as Hank and his partner Steven Gomez raid a known meth lab. As the DEA agents clear out the house, Walt observes his former student Jesse Pinkman sneaking out a back window. Walt tracks down Jesse's address and blackmails him into helping him produce crystal meth without revealing why. Walt turns over his life savings to allow Jesse to purchase a Fleetwood Bounder RV to use as a mobile lab. Walt steals supplies from the high school chemistry lab needed for the process. Walt and Jesse begin to cook. Walt's expertise in chemistry enables them to create crystal meth that Jesse claims is the purest he's seen. Jesse drives back into town to show a sample to Krazy-8 Molina, he realizes too late that Krazy-8 is a cousin of Emilio Koyama, his partner, busted on the earlier raid and now free on bail. Emilio believes Jesse abandoned him, but Jesse promises to prove his loyalty by driving them to the RV.

When they meet Walt, Emilio recognizes him from the raid and thinks that he is an informant, leading him and Krazy-8 to hold the two at gunpoint. Jesse tries to trips and falls and hits his head on a rock, knocking himself out. Walt barters for his life by offering to show them; as they watch Walt inside the RV, Emilio flicks away a cigarette outside, which causes a brush fire to ignite. Walt surprises Emilio and Krazy-8 by synthesizing deadly phosphine gas, flees the RV, holds the door shut which causes Emilio and Krazy-8 to pass out. Hearing sirens in the distance, Walt dons a gas mask and puts one on Jesse before pulling him into the RV's passenger seat, still filled with phosphine fumes. Walt frantically drives the RV away from the spreading brush fire; as shown in medias res at the start of the episode, Walt drives the RV into a ditch and stumbles out of the vehicle, discarding his gas mask. Believing that he is about to be captured by the police, Walt records a video message to his family before trying to shoot himself with a pistol, unaware the safety is still on.

As the sirens near, Walt is relieved to find they are only fire engines responding to the fire, hides his weapon. Jesse joins Walt as they watch the fire engines race by; the two have the RV extracted from the ditch by a Native American man with a front-end loader and drive back into town, making sure Emilio and Krazy-8 are secured in the RV before leaving it at Jesse's home. That night, Walt returns home and meets his wife's troubled queries with a new sexual vigor, which leaves her asking, "Walt, is that you?" Breaking Bad was created by the television writer Vince Gilligan, with the crux of the series being the protagonist's journey into an antagonist. He stated "Television is good at keeping its characters in a self-imposed stasis so that shows can go on for years or decades," he said. "When I realized this, the logical next step was to think, how can I do a show in which the fundamental drive is toward change?" He added. The concept of Walt as a meth dealer came to fruition when Gilligan was talking with fellow writer Thomas Schnauz, they joked regarding their unemployment that the solution was "putting a meth lab in the back of an RV and driving around the country cooking meth and making money."

The script was set in Riverside, but at the suggestion of Sony, Albuquerque was chosen for production due to the favorable financial conditions offered by the state of New Mexico, the setting was moved there too because otherwise "we'd always have to be avoiding the Sandia Mountains" in shots toward the East, according to Gilligan. Gilligan cast Bryan Cranston for the role of Walter White based on having worked with him in a sixth season episode of the science fiction television series The X-Files, where Gilligan worked as a writer. Cranston played an anti-Semite with a terminal illness who took series co-protagonist Fox Mulder hostage. Gilligan said the character had to be loathsome and sympathetic, that "Bryan alone was the only actor who could do that, who could pull off that trick, and it is a trick. I have no idea how he does it." AMC officials were wary of casting Cranston, due to his being known for his comedic role as Hal on the series Malcolm in the Middle. The executives offered the role to John Matthew Broderick, who both turned it down.

After seeing Cranston in the X-Files episode, the executives were convinced to cast him. Cranston gained ten pounds for the pilot to refle