Ebony Road Players Presents: ALABAMA STORY by Kenneth Jones

As part of West Michigan’s Loving Day Celebration, Ebony Road Players is proud to present another moving stageplay, “Alabama Story” by Kenneth Jones. This year, we’ve partnered with the Grand Rapids Public Museum to bring this compelling story to life.

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 a 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. Inspired by true events.

Playwright Kenneth Jones characterized Alabama Story this way: “It’s a romance, a political thriller, a memory play, a workplace drama, a tearjerker, a comedy, a discussion about race, censorship, and political desperation, and a rumination on the power of books. Most important, it’s a play about how we behave when we face terrible circumstances — how character is revealed in times of transition, change, and crisis.”