Pull-Tight Players Opens Season with Alabama Story
Pull-Tight Players, Franklin’s community theatre now in its 57th season, is delighted to present its season opener, Alabama Story by Kenneth Jones, based on true events and brought to life through dazzling writing and invention. The play has been described as “a love letter to reading and librarians.”
In 1959, Garth Williams, also known as the illustrator of the Little House on the Prairie series, as well as Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web, published a children’s book, The Rabbits’ Wedding. The book depicts a black rabbit and a white rabbit who fall in love and get married in the forest, while their other animal friends lovingly help them celebrate. The character of Garth Williams in the play explains, “Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of art will know that the rabbits are a different color for visual contrast. My book was published in black and white!” However, it caught the eye of a segregationist Alabama State Senator, E.W. Higgins, who took his outrage not only to the brilliant and unflappable Alabama State Librarian, Emily Wheelock Reed, but to the state and country at large.
As a subplot to this main story, a reunion of childhood friends offers a private counterpoint to the public events unfolding in the state capital, culminating in a drama that is at once playful, serious, smart, funny, dark, and hopeful.
Director Cindy Davis Massey says, “I could not be more excited to bring this play to the stage. I will never direct a script this good again. It is right up there with To Kill a Mockingbird, which I directed in 1988, in terms of excellence of writing and construction.”
Alabama Story was a 2016 nominee for the Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association New Play Award and a finalist for the National Playwrights Conference of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center. By 2025, the play will have been produced in more than 70 cities. Pull-Tight is proud to offer its Nashville area premiere.
The show is directed by Cindy Davis Massey and stars Jennifer Bennett as Emily Wheelock Reed, Donald Seitz as Garth Williams, Annalee McConnell as Lily Whitfield, and newcomers to the Pull-Tight stage, Greg Allan Martin as Senator E.W. Higgins, Thomas Wehby as Thomas Franklin, and Jamil Parrish as Joshua Moore.
Our show sponsor is the Williamson County Public Library. Please drop by the Library at 1314 Columbia Avenue to see our display on the second floor.
Showtimes are:
August 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16 at 7:30 p.m.
August 3 and 10 at 2:30 p.m.
Tickets go on sale July 21, and can be purchased at www.pull-tight com.
