Alabama Shakespeare Festival Partners with Nile Rodgers on DOUBLE TIME 5/13-15

The Alabama Shakespeare Festival's playwright-in-residence John Walch is teaming with pop music legend Nile Rodgers on the development of a new musical, Double Time. Walch is the musical's librettist and Rodgers will supply the music and lyrics. Double Time will be part of ASF's Southern Writers' Project Festival of New Plays, May 13-15, 2011. The concert reading of Double Time will take place on Saturday, May 14.

The project was commissioned by ASF's producing artistic director Geoffrey Sherman.

Double Time follows the amusing trials of a young white playwright trying to create a new musical comedy about the life and times of Alabama native Leonard Harper, one of the first superstar African American Broadway performers. The writer, whose youth and cultural background create considerable artistic self-doubt, is encouraged by many around him. But no one is more helpful, literally, than the effervescent and ultra talented tap dancing spirit of the late Mr. Harper.

Walch's play In the Book Of will receive its world premiere at ASF during the 2011-12 season. Walch is the winner of several awards including the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, The Mark Klein Playwriting Award, three Austin Critics Table Awards and a James Michener Fellowship
Rodgers is one of the best known musicians, songwriters and record producers in all of popular music history. He has collaborated with the likes of Madonna, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, David Bowie and Eric Clapton. His group Chic had several major hits, including the song Good Times.

Rodgers produced the album Diana for Diana Ross and was responsible for writing classic tunes such as Upside Down and I'm Coming Out. He also produced Madonna's Album Like a Virgin, Duran Duran's Notorious and the B-52s multi platinum Cosmic Thing, which spawned the hits Love Shack and Roam.

For more information about ASF's Southern Writers' Project's concert readings and associated activities, contact the box office at 800.841.4273 or visit www.southernwritersproject.net. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is located at 1 Festival Drive in Montgomery's beautiful Blount Cultural Park.

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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