Poster art for PTC’s production of “Alabama Story.” Salt Lake City artist Greg Newbold is a frequent illustrator for Pioneer.
The production team of Pioneer Theatre Company‘s 2015 world premiere staging of Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones will feature scenic designer James Noone, lighting designer Phillip Monat, costume designer Brenda L. Van der Wiel, sound designer Joshua C. Hight and stage manager JP Pollard.
PTC artistic director Karen Azenberg will direct the six-actor historical drama set “in the Deep South of the imagination” Jan. 7-24, 2015, in Salt Lake City, UT. Casting will be announced this fall following Utah and Manhattan auditions. Azenberg directed developmental readings of Alabama Story in PTC’s Play-By-Play New Play Reading Series (April 2014), the Southern Writers’ Project of Alabama Shakespeare Festival (May 2013) and Off-Broadway’s NewTACTics New Play Festival (July 2014).
Noone is currently represented on Broadway with his work on Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. His many Off-Broadway credits include Frankie and Johnny on the Clair de Lune, Full Gallop, Fully Committed, Three Tall Women and more. Monat‘s Broadway credits include the 2004 revival of Sly Fox and Sally Marr…and her escorts, and Off-Broadway’s Camping With Henry and Tom, Visiting Mr. Green and more. Van der Wiel is head of the Performing Arts Design Program in the Theatre Department at the University of Utah and has designed for PTC, Salt Lake Acting Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival and more. Hight is a resident sound designer at PTC whose recent work includes Deathtrap, Much Ado About Nothing and A Few Good Men. Pollard has stage managed at Barter Theatre, Gateway Playhouse and beyond.
Here’s how PTC bills the play: “A gentle children’s book with an apparent hidden message stirs the passions of a segregationist senator and a no-nonsense state librarian in 1959 Montgomery, just as the Civil Rights movement is flowering. Inspired by true events, Alabama Story puts political foes, star-crossed childhood friends, and one feisty children’s author on the same page to conjure a Deep South of the Imagination. This love letter to reading — a finalist in the 2014 National Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Festival — coincides with the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.”
Read a Q&A with playwright Kenneth Jones in the Blog section of Pioneer Theatre Company’s website.
Performances will play the Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre on the campus of the University of Utah at 300 South 1400 East in Salt Lake City, UT. Single tickets go on sale Oct. 1. Get subscription information here.
