Westport Country Playhouse to Host FLYIN' WEST Playreading, 3/9

Continuing its 2014-15 Script in Hand playreading series featuring women playwrights, Westport Country Playhouse will present Pearl Cleage's humorous and gripping "Flyin' West," on Monday, March 9, at 7 p.m. Director is Anne Keefe, Playhouse associate artist and curator of the playreading series. Tickets are $20 each.

"'Flyin' West' really has something for everyone," said Keefe. "It's a love story, an adventure, a thriller with a terrific villain, and it has a great ending. It's also an uplifting story of courageous women."

Following the end of the Civil War, many former slaves, anxious to leave the South and the increasing disappointments and dangers of Reconstruction, took advantage of The Homestead Act and went West to build new lives for themselves and their families. Many of these homesteaders were black women who overcame tremendous odds to work their own land and make a place for themselves in an often harsh and forbidding environment. Set in 1898, "Flyin' West" is the story of some of these African-American female pioneers who settled, together, in the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas.

Facing problems ranging from long, cold winters, to the possibility of violence, to continuing racial conflict, the women of "Flyin' West" include Miss Leah, the old woman whose memories of slavery and its aftermath comprise a living oral history; Sophie Washington, whose determination to protect her land and those she loves puts to rest forever the requirement that western archetypes be white and male; Fannie Dove, the gentle sister, trying to civilize the frontier with fine china and roses, who finds herself falling in love with their soft-spoken neighbor, Wil Parish; and Minnie Dove Charles, the headstrong baby sister whose mixed-race husband Frank introduces a danger into the household that tests their sisterhood in unexpected ways.

The cast includes Leon Addison Brown, who will play Wil Parish. He appeared in the Playhouse's 2002 production of "Master Harold...and the Boys." His Broadway credits include "The Trip to Bountiful" and "Prelude to a Kiss." Britney Coleman, playing Minnie Dove Charles, was in Playhouse productions of "Into the Woods" and "Sing for Your Shakespeare," and in New York's "Brush Up Your Shakespeare." Lynda Gravátt, as Miss Leah, performed at the Playhouse in "A Raisin in the Sun," and a Script in Hand playreading of "Intimate Apparel." She was on Broadway in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and "Doubt."

Rey Lucas, as Frank Charles, appeared on Broadway in "The Rainmaker." He was in Long Wharf Theatre's "Our Town," and Yale Repertory Theatre's "The Taming of the Shrew." Linda Powell, as Sophie Washington, was on Broadway in "On Golden Pond" and "The Trip to Bountiful. Her films include "American Gangster" and "Morning Glory." Nikki E. Walker, as Fannie Dove, appeared last fall in the Playhouse production of "Intimate Apparel." She was in Broadway's "An American Plan," and on television's "Orange Is the New Black."

Playwright Pearl Cleage is an Atlanta-based writer of a dozen plays, including "Flyin' West," "Blues for an Alabama Sky," and "Bourbon at the Border." Her novels include "What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day," an Oprah Book Club pick in 1998, and on The New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks; "I Wish I Had a Red Dress," on the Essence list of bestselling fiction for 2001; and "Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do," the choice of the "Good Morning America" Book Club in 2004.

Director Anne Keefe served as artistic director of Westport Country Playhouse with Joanne Woodward in 2008, and as associate artistic director from 2000-2006, also with Ms. Woodward. She co-directed with Ms. Woodward the Westport Country Playhouse production of "David Copperfield," and directed many Script in Hand playreadings.

Script in Hand sponsors are Marc and Michele Flaster; Script in Hand partners are Ann Sheffer and Bill Scheffler. Script in Hand corporate sponsor is People's United Bank Wealth Management. The series is supported, in part, by the White Barn Program of the Lucille Lortel Foundation.

For more information or tickets, call the box office at (203) 227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529, or visit Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, off Route 1, Westport. Tickets are available online 24/7 at www.westportplayhouse.org.