Kenneth Jones News

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) announces its 2021 Winter Play Reading Series, presenting online readings of five new plays in progress written by some of the country's top playwrights.

Florida Studio Theatre has announced the lineup for its 2020-2021 FST Forums Series, seven online conversations with some of the country's top playwrights and musical theatre developers. Each month, FST audiences will have the opportunity to hear from these artists about the themes and questions highlighted in some of their latest work.

Florida Studio Theatre has announced that its Playwright Collective, a targeted coalition of artists dedicated to developing new work for FST's stages, is welcoming seven new members.

Groves Performing Arts Company and Barebones Theatre Productions are partnering to keep theatre alive in the time of pandemic with a unique outdoor staged reading of Alabama Story, the nationally recognized social justice drama written by Birmingham Groves High School alumnus Kenneth Jones (Class of 1982).

The Naples Players announce a live streaming, multi-act concert event entitled Broadway Live from Blackburn Hall set for Saturday, July 18 from 7-8:30 p.m. (EST). The event features several musical numbers from Broadway shows performed live on-stage at The Naples Players iconic 5th Avenue South location.

The Manhattan Association of Cabarets (MAC) is inviting all songwriters to submit their original songs for consideration for one of MAC's two songwriting awards: the Dottie Berman Award and the John Wallowitch Award. Submitters do not need to be MAC members.

Arizona Theatre Company (ATC) and Artistic Director Sean Daniels will partner with Florida Studio Theatre (FST) in developing a new play, Tampa, as part of The Playwrights Project, FST's newly launched artistic initiative featuring 32 of the nation's top playwrights, sketch comedy writers and musical theatre developers.

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) has announced the launch of The Playwrights Project, an artistic initiative employing 32 of the country's top playwrights, sketch comedy writers, and musical theatre developers. With funding from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), FST has hired these artists as full-time staff writers.

Alabama Shakespeare Festival presents Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones on the Octagon Stage March 5 through March 22, 2020. Directed by ASF Artistic Director Rick Dildine, this production brings home a play that was inspired by true events from 1959 Montgomery and was created on this very soil. Rich with all the complexities of human nature, this tale from Alabama history remains stunningly relevant to today's world.

Geva Theatre Center presents Slow Food, by Wendy MacLeod and directed by Skip Greer, in the Elaine P. Wilson Stage from January 14 through February 9.

Artistic Director Rick Dildine and Executive Director Todd Schmidt have announced the 2019-2020 Festival Season at Alabama Shakespeare Festival, which features 13 productions that explore stories of contemporary culture, heroic revolutionaries, societal transformation, and lyrical legends. Captivating, collaborative storytelling remains at the heart of ASF. In its 48th season, the theatre continues its mission of embracing community through transformative theatrical events.

Peninsula Players Theatre, America's oldest professional resident summer theater and Door County's theatrical icon, is proud to announce it has received a $20,000 award from The Shubert Foundation. The Shubert Foundation has awarded a record total of $30 million to 533 not-for-profit performing arts organizations across the United States since its inception. This marks the 38th consecutive year that the Foundation has increased its giving, including an additional $5,000 to Peninsula Players.

This, as the opening line of Alabama Story tells us, is a story about two rabbits. It's a story about 1959 Montgomery, where cotton is king, where conservative white men call all the shots, and where books that might be about integration are censored. It is a battle of wills between a segregationist senator and a cultivated state librarian regarding a children's book wherein one rabbit happens to be black and one happens to be white. It is a story of childhood friends Lily and Joshua who encounter one another later in life and reminisce over their shared memories while illuminating the dramatic differences in their human experience. It is based on a true story. It is reflective of many true stories.

Alabama Story continues The Rep's Mainstage season with a potent collision of art and politics. Running January 2-27, this new play by Kenneth Jones is directed by Paul Mason Barnes.

Centenary Stage Company's family holiday spectacular opens this weekend with everyone's favorite orphan in Annie the musical. Annie opens Friday November 23 and runs through December 9 at the Lackland Performing Arts Center at 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown, NJ. Based on the popular comic strip by Harold Gray, Annie has become a worldwide phenomenon and was the winner of seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The beloved book and score by Tony Award winners, Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, features some of the greatest musical theatre hits ever written, including 'Tomorrow.'

Playwright Matthew Ivan Bennett's ART & CLASS "aims to be a character study in standing up - one that shows the costs of standing up. It's a topic that's dead center in American life right now.'

Rivendell Theatre Ensemble (RTE), Chicago's only Equity theatre dedicated to producing new work with women at the core, presents the World Premiere of Scientific Method by Jenny Connell Davis, directed by Devon de Mayo, and featuring RTE Member Ashley Neal, with Glenn Obrero, Josh Odor, Courtney Williams and Carmen Roman. Scientific Method runs October 19 - December 2, 2018, at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, 5779 N. Ridge Avenue in Chicago.  The press opening is Tuesday October 30, 2018 at 7:00pm.

Plans are underway for Wyoming Theater Festival (WyoTF) to return for a 2019 summer season - and beyond - continuing its commitment to "New Plays in the New West," artistic director DannyLee Hodnett announced. Building on a tradition that began in 2015, the 2019 Wyoming Theater Festival will take place Aug. 8-18, 2019 in Sheridan, WY. Artists, titles and venues will be announced at a later date.

A gentle children's book with an apparent hidden message - a black rabbit marries a white rabbit! - stirs the passions of a segregationist State Senator and the no-nonsense State Librarian in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama, just as the civil rights movement is flowering. Another story of childhood friends - an African-American man and a white woman, reunited in adulthood in Montgomery that same year - provides private counterpoint to the public events of the play.