Ebony Road Players to Present Grand Rapids Premiere Of ALABAMA STORY This Week

Ebony Road Players, the only Black theater company in Grand Rapids, MI, is presenting the west Michigan premiere of Kenneth Jones' social justice drama Alabama Story - about interracial marriage, censorship and civil rights - as part of the company's annual recognition of Loving Day, the national June 12 observance of the Supreme Court striking down all laws against interracial marriage. The play runs June 8-11 at Grand Rapids Public Museum.

Hoping to find and produce a title that dovetailed with the landmark Loving v. Virginia Case, Edye Evans Hyde, executive director of Ebony Road Players, found Alabama Story when she went fishing on the internet, searching keyword sentences such as "plays about interracial marriage." She instantly landed on Alabama Story, which is published by Dramatists Play Service and has been produced in more than 40 cities around the country.

Alabama Story charts the true story of a white librarian who sought to protect a banned children's book called "The Rabbits' Wedding" in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama. A related plot echoing the librarian's story involves the reunion of childhood friends, Lily and Joshua, a white woman and a Black man who may well have been on a path to a powerful and then-forbidden relationship had the world not intervened.

The one-on-one conversations between Lily and Joshua intrigued Hyde, who invited playwright Jones (a Michigan native now living in New York City) to meet board members, donors and members of the Grand Rapids creative community in April in advance of the June run.

Ebony Road Players' mission is "to inspire, educate and engage the cultures of our community with high-quality theater productions focused on the Black experience."

Here's how Alabama Story is billed: "As the Civil Rights movement is flowering, a controversial children's book about a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit stirs the passions of a segregationist State Senator and a no-nonsense State Librarian in 1959 Montgomery, Alabama. A contrasting story of childhood friends - an African-American man and a woman of white privilege, reunited in adulthood - provides private counterpoint to the public events swirling in the state capital. Political foes, star-crossed lovers, and one feisty children's author inhabit the same page in a Deep South of the imagination that brims with humor, heartbreak and hope."

Todd Lewis directs a company that features Stephen Anthony Grey as Garth Williams and others; Gina Boscarino as Lily Whitfield; Noah King Bates as Joshua Moore; Greg Rogers as Senator E.W. Higgins; Miliana Johnson as Emily Wheelock Reed; Troy Arthur Harvey as Thomas Franklin. The production team includes Danell Haigh (stage manager), Sierra Hatfield (assistant stage manager), Val Fisher (costume designer), Kat Blakeslee (set designer), Catie Marlett Dreher (lighting designer), Chris Rice (lighting design assistant). Quianna Babb is Ebony Road Players' administrative and communications manager.

The weekend of performances also includes a Loving Day family event (welcoming interracial couples, multiracial families, mixed race and transracially adopted people, and those with similar lived experience) 11 AM-3 PM June 10 at Grand Rapids Children's Museum (11 Sheldon Avenue, NW) and a cast party an talkback 5:30-8 PM June 11 at Muse GR (727 Leonard St NW), following the matinee. Learn more at https://ebonyroad.org/.

Performances of Alabama Story run 7:30 PM June 8-10; 3 PM June 11 at Grand Rapids Public Museum, 272 Pearl St NW, Grand Rapids, MI, 49504. Get tickets at https://ebonyroad.org/.

Learn more about the national observance of Loving Day at https://lovingday.org/.

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