PTC to Present Kenneth Jones's ALABAMA STORY Premiere as Part of 2014-15 Season, Jan 9-24

By: Jul. 16, 2014
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Pioneer Theatre Company, Salt Lake City's major resident Equity theatre, will present the world premiere of Kenneth Jones' dramaAlabama Story January 9-24, 2015, as part of its eight-title 2014-15 season. PTC Artistic Director Karen Azenberg will direct.

In the fact-inspired 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.

New York City-based playwright Jones first learned of the true story, which made international headlines in the 1950s, when he read an obituary of librarian Emily Wheelock Reed in The New York Times.

This will be PTC's first world-premiere production since 2012, and it marks the first world premiere in Karen Azenberg's tenure as artistic director.

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 Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference-coincides with the 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Alabama Story was previously developed under the direction of Azenberg in two workshop settings: PTC's inaugural Play-By-Play New Play Reading Series (April 2014) and Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers' Project (May 2013), with additional development in TACT/The Actors Company Theatre's NewTACTics series in New York City (June 2014).

Kenneth Jones is a New York City-based playwright, lyricist, librettist and journalist. Alabama Story was a 2014 finalist in the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference. His musical Voice of the City(directed by Karen Azenberg) was seen in readings by Ohio's Human Race Theatre Company and Off-Broadway's York Theatre; his musical Naughty/Nicehas been seen presented in concerts in Manhattan, where it was a semi-finalist in the NAMT Festival of New Musicals. For 15 years he was a leading writer and editor for Playbill.com. He is a member of Dramatists Guild and the BMI Workshop. Learn more at www.ByKennethJones.com.

Karen Azenberg is now beginning her third season as artistic director of Pioneer Theatre Company, where she created the Play-By-Play New Play Reading Series in 2013-14 with managing director Chris Lino. She recently directed and choreographed PTC's Sweet Charity following her direction of A Few Good Men, Something's Afoot and the previous season's A Christmas Carol and The Odd Couple, among many more works at PTC, around the country and in New York City. Karen is on the board of the New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) and is past President of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Casting and full production team will be announced. Season subscriptions are now on sale. Single tickets go on sale in fall 2014.

Single tickets range $25-$64. Performances play 7:30 p.m. Monday-ThursdayEvenings, 8:00 p.m Friday & Saturday Evenings and 2:00 p.m. Saturday Matinees. The Rocky Horror Show has a two-day run 8 p.m. on October 24, 5 p.m. onOctober 25, and 8 p.m. on October 25, 2014. For season tickets contact Pioneer Theatre Company's Box Office at 801-581-6961 or visit online at www.pioneertheatre.org.

Alabama Story is part of a 2014-15 PTC season that includes: Rachel Sheinkin & William Finn's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; Richard Bean's One Man, Two Guvnors; a special concert version of Richard O'Brien's The Rocky Horror Show; Rick Elice's Peter and the Starcatcher; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Paul Rudnick's I Hate Hamlet; and Meredith Willson's The Music Man,plus readings of three new scripts in the second annual Play-By-Play New Reading Series.

Pioneer Theatre Company, Utah's premier professional theatre, performs at the 900-seat Roy W. and Elizabeth E. Simmons Pioneer Memorial Theatre, located on the University of Utah campus at 300 South and 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112-0660.



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