ASF Announces Spring Provocative Premieres: NOBODY and THE FALL OF THE HOUSE

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, one of the country's leading theatres in the creation of new stage works, will produce the world premieres of Nobody and The Fall of the House this spring. Produced in a series called Provocative Premieres, Nobody will run March 12-28 and The Fall of the House will run April 9-25. Both plays have been developed through ASF's prestigious Southern Writers' Project new play development program. The Provocative Premieres are suggestive, stimulating and extreme, promising to take audiences to The Edge.

Tickets for Nobody and The Fall of the House range from $20-$36 per show and can be purchased at the ASF Box Office, by visiting on line at www.asf.net or by phone at 800.841.4273. ASF is located at 1 Festival Drive in Montgomery's Blount Cultural Park.

Richard Aellen's new musical play Nobody is based on an uncomfortable and important piece of history-the minstrel show-highlighted by the tempestuous lives of Bert Williams and George Walker, who broke racial barriers by portraying racial stereotypes. The two down-on-their-luck African American vaudevillians can't catch a break until they do the unthinkable - Don Blackface. But with fame and fortune come personal and social turmoil that threaten their relationships and their lives. The score for Nobody features a number of William's and Walker's turn of the century vaudeville tunes.

The Fall of the House, written by Robert Ford, is a darkly sophisticated work that involves a mystic whose supernatural life intertwines with famed writer Edgar Allan Poe and that of a young African American female architect in the twentieth century. Through movement in time and place over the course of 150 years, surprising personal connections and answers to tragic events are revealed.

Nobody will be directed by Tim Rhoze, who directed ASF's 2009 spectacular world premiere hit Bear Country. Musical Direction will be by Brett Rominger. The Fall of the House will be directed by ASF's associate director and director of the Southern Writers' Project, Nancy Rominger. Rominger directed the debut of Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder's The Furniture of Home at ASF last winter.

James Bowen (Bert Williams) and Sean Blake (George Walker) will be featured in Nobody. Bowen and Blake performed in workshop readings of the play at the Southern Writers' Project Festival of New Plays.

Jonathan C. Kaplan, Erika LaVonn, Margaret Robinson, Angela K. Thomas and Gerritt VanderMeer will be performing roles in both world premieres.

Other recent ASF world premieres include Gee's Bend (also by Wilder) and Mark Saltzman's Rocket City. Both plays have been published by Samuel French, Inc., one of the world's biggest play publishing houses.

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