FENCES to Open at Alabama Shakespeare Festival This Fall

Alabama Shakespeare Festival will present the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning modern classic August Wilson's Fences October 29-November 15 on the Octagon Stage. Three Southern theatre companies-Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Theatrical Outfit, and Dominion Entertainment Group-join forces to bring Fences to two states for this one-of-a-kind revival.

Troy Maxson was a gifted Negro League baseball player with dreams of joining the majors, but now he barely makes ends meet as a sanitation worker in 1950s Pittsburgh. While he builds a fence around his home to keep his family together, his anguish over his own shattered dreams threatens to tear them apart.

In celebration of the talent in the South, Fences features an all-star Atlanta cast, led by E. Roger Mitchell as Troy Maxson and January LaVoy as Rose Maxson. Mitchell is no stranger to August Wilson's work, having previously earned acclaim for performances in Wilson's Jitney, Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf, and Two Trains Running. His film and television work includes The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Chaff), The Equalizer, Selma, American Made, Flight, The Tomorrow War, Till, A Jazzman's Blues, Outer Banks, The Walking Dead, Cobra Kai, and more. LaVoy has appeared on Broadway in ENRON and Off-Broadway in Mrs. Murray's Menagerie, Wings, Coraline, Measure for Measure, Two Trains Running, Home, Funnyhouse of a Negro, and Wakey, Wakey. She shares a Grammy nomination with Meryl Streep and the cast of the Charlotte's Web audio book, in which she plays Charlotte, and she portrayed Noelle Ortiz-Stubbs on One Life to Live from 2007-2011.

The cast also includes Thomas Boyce as Cory Maxson, Amari Cheatom as Lyons Maxson, Enoch King as Gabriel Maxson, and Geoffrey Williams as Jim Bono. Two young Montgomery actors, Zoe Cornwall and Chrisette Trone, round out the cast, alternating as Raynell Maxson.