ASF and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre Partner on Pearl Cleage World Premiere

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival and Atlanta's Tony Award-winning ALLIANCE THEATRE will partner to produce the world premiere of renowned playwright Pearl Cleage's comedy The Nacirema Society Requests the Honor of Your Presence at a Celebration of Their First One Hundred Years this fall.

The Nacirema Society Requests... will open ASF's Silver Anniversary season on September 24 and run through October 3, 2010. The play will then moves to the Alliance and run from October 20 to November 14, 2010.

The Nacirema Society Requests... is a joyous and irreverent romp through southern black debutante society during the 1960s. Every year since Emancipation, the Nacirema Society of Montgomery, Alabama introduces six elegant African-American debutants to a world of wealth, privilege and social responsibility. This year, at its 100th anniversary, with young love brewing, old flames simmering and national media attention on hand... what would dare to go awry?

The Nacirema Society Requests... was commissioned by ASF's producing artistic director Geoffrey Sherman and subsequently workshopped at ASF's Southern Writers' Project Festival of New Plays in 2009.

Cleage has created a significant body of novels and plays. Two of her best known plays include Flyin' West and Blues for an Alabama Sky, which received their world premieres at the Alliance. Her novel What Looks Crazy on an Ordinary Day was an Oprah Book Club selection and a New York Times best-seller.

Susan V. Booth, the artistic director of the ALLIANCE THEATRE, will direct the The Nacirema Society Requests....

ASF will announce its complete season as well as membership and ticket information at a later date.

Recent world premieres that began as commissions by ASF include Gee's Bend and The Furniture of Home by Elizabeth Gregory Wilder, Rocket City by Mark Saltzman and Bear Country by Michael Vigilant. The world premieres of Nobody by Richard Aellen and The Fall of the House by Robert Ford will take place at ASF this spring.

For more information on ASF productions, visit www.asf.net or phone 800.841.4273.

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