'Warriors Don't Cry' First Up For TWTP This Season

The bestselling memoir of Melba Patillo Beals, one of nine African American students chosen in 1957 to integrate Little Rock's Central High School, provides the basis for Warriors Don't Cry, the season-opening production of Tennessee Women's Theatre Project's 2009-10 season.

Adapted by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Eisa Davis, Warriors Don't Cry is based on Beals' account of her junior year at Little Rock Central, a year in which she endured telephone threats, shouting mobs, military escorts, rogue police, firebombing, acid-throwing attacks, economic blackmail and, ultimately, a price on her own head. With the help of her English teacher mother, the other members of the "Little Rock Nine" and her gun-toting, Shakespeare-quoting grandmother, Beals persevered.

Vilia Steele stars in Tennessee Women's Theatre Project's one-woman show, to be staged September 11-27 at the Z. Alexander Looby Theatre, 2301 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard in Nashville. Z. Alexander Looby, the man for whom the theatre and community center is named, was a Nashville lawyer who was instrumental in the city's civil rights struggle, making the setting even more appropriate and historic in its own right.

Tickets are $15; $12 for students and seniors. Thursday performances are $10 for all. For information, individual and group sales, visit www.twtp.org, or email tickets@twtp.org, or call (615) 681-7220.

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