Kenneth Jones News

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.

The upcoming 29th annual The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival will present movies from around the world, opening with PAPA, a heart-warming movie about an adopted son searching for his biological parents, and featuring an all-star cast including Ann-Margret, Frankie Avalon, Mischa Barton, Daryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Vincent Pastore, David Proval, Eric Roberts and Paul Sorvino. 

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.

Southwest Theatre Productions (SWTP) has gained a reputation for bringing new, meaningful plays to the Austin stage. With its productions of CAGES, IF I FORGET and THE OTHER PLACE, producers Kat Sparks and Jan Phillips have shown their range in presenting thought-provoking material with excellent production values. ALABAMA STORY by Kenneth Jones is SWTP's best production to date and shows just how far the all female company has come.

Peninsula Players Theatre, America's oldest professional resident summer theater and Door County's theatrical icon, is proud to announce it has received a $15,000 award from The Shubert Foundation. The Shubert Foundation awarded a record total of $26.8 million to 533 not-for-profit performing arts organizations across the United States. The Shubert Foundation provides grants only to organizations that have established artistic and administrative track records, as well as a pattern of fiscal responsibility.  

The set is a decaying plantation. But instead of a delicate Southern belle, the leading 'lady' is a burly man in a towering platinum wig, dressed in pastel pink. Yes, you have entered the tilted world of 'Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte' at The Laboratory Theater.

ENSEMBLE THEATRE prepares to open its 39th consecutive Season! THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT. Our entire 2018- 2019 Season will take place in the heart of Coventry Village on the Coventry P.E.A.C.E. Campus !!!

Washington Stage Guild's production of Alabama Story is a timely story as it hints at issues of race and censorship, but it is slow moving and doesn't explore the issues presented as deeply as it could have.

Today's subjects, Bill Largess and Ann Norton, are living their theatre lives as the Artistic Director and Executive Director of one of the gems in our local theatre scene.

A true story of censorship and civil rights leaps from the pages of history and into its Washington, DC premiere in Washington Stage Guild's production of Kenneth Jones's new play,  Alabama Story, March 22-April 15 at the Undercroft Theatre at  Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, 900 Massachusetts Avenue, NW.  

A series of fresh new plays and musicals are coming to Birmingham in the Human Rights New Works Festival at Red Mountain Theatre Company. You will be treated to a intimate format of staged readings with some of Birminghams top actors and singers. Festival runs March 15-18

Pioneer Theatre Company's Artistic Director Karen Azenberg is to be applauded for surprisingly selecting and so skillfully directing '/i/.' And assisting in its development.