2011 Southern Writers' Project takes On Faulkner, Sherlock Holmes

A drama based on a story by William Faulkner, a musical comedy with a score by a pop music legend and a holiday show with a twist on a Dickens' classic will be presented as concert readings as part of the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's Southern Writers' Project Festival of New Plays, May 13-15, 2011. The readings will be available to the public over the festival weekend.

Tickets for each concert reading are $10. Special packages that include a variety of meals, activities, hotel accommodations and interaction with the artists are also available. For information contact the ASF box office at 800.841.4273 or visit on line at www.asf.net. ASF is located at 1 Festival Drive in Montgomery's beautiful Blount Cultural Park.

"Each one of the plays picked for development during the festival are artistically rich and highly entertaining," said SWP director Nancy Rominger. "Twenty Seven, Doubletime and Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol are true candidates for a world premiere production at ASF and subsequent productions at other regional theatres."

Twenty Seven, based on William Faulkner's Old Man will be performed on May 13 at 3:30 p.m. Adapted by Edward Morgan, Twenty Seven tells the story of an inmate who is entrusted to pilot a small raft to search for victims during a massive Mississippi River flood. When he finds a young pregnant woman clinging perilously to a tree, he saves her. But man and nature conspire against the pair to make the following seven weeks a harrowing adventure on the Big Muddy.

Doubletime, a new musical by ASF's playwright in residence John Walch with music and lyrics by Nile Rodgers, follows the amusing trials of a young, talenTEd White playwright as he struggles to create a show about the life and times of one of Broadway's first African-American superstars, the late Leonard Harper. Plagued by self-doubt the writer is at his Wit's End until the tap dancing spirit of Harper comes along to direct and inspire the young writer. Double Time's concert reading will take place on May 14 at 1:30 p.m.

Rodgers has collaborated as a musician, songwriter and record producer for the likes of Madonna, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, the B 52s, David Bowie and Eric Clapton.

SWP concludes its concert readings with a new holiday play Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Christmas Carol on Sunday, May 15 at 10:30 a.m. After the legendary sleuth vanquishes his arch foe Moriarty, he sequesters himself from the world. With each passing holiday season he becomes an increasingly uncaring, brutish and emotionally miserly Scrooge. When confronted by the ghost of his former nemesis, Holmes is forced to solve the biggest case of his life-to find the heart he has lost and the meaning of Christmas.

Intensive rehearsals and development for each play takes place for the entire week preceding the concert readings. Actors, directors and dramaturges are specially selected to help explore and grow the story, structure and characters in each one of the plays.

Recent SWP plays that have gone on to world premiere productions at ASF and subsequent productions at other regional theatres across the country include Gee's Bend, Bear Country, The Nacirema Society and Rocket City.

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is among the largest Shakespeare theatres in the world. Designated as The State Theatre of Alabama, ASF has been located in Montgomery since 1985 when it moved from Anniston as a result of Mr. and Mrs. Wynton M. Blount's gift of a performing arts complex set in the 250-acre Wynton M. Blount Cultural Park. This program/project has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

SWP is endowed by an Anonymous donor. Alabama Shakespeare Festival is a participant in the New Generation Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre. Blood Divided is a recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays award.

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