The Southern Writers Festival takes place at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery this weekend, featuring plays by three Southern playwrights – Mobile’s Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder, Greenville’s Audrey Cefaly and South Carolina’s Donnetta Lavinia Grays.
The day-long festival on Saturday features readings of three new plays, according to ASF. The morning session (11 a.m.-1 p.m.) includes Grays’ “Kudzu Calling” and Wilder’s “Zelda in the Backyard,” and the afternoon session (2:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.) features Cefaly’s “Trouble at the Vista View Mobile Home Estates.”
Here’s how ASF describes the plays:
“Kudzu Calling” (Commissioned by ASF)
From the playwright …
“Kudzu Calling” is an interweaving of poems and moments which seek to expand and complicate the Southern narrative. It is a celebration of Black Southern love. Black Southern queerness. Black Southern playfulness, culture and spirituality. It is, in short, my love letter to the place that made me.
The cast includes Martin Lewis, Kevin R. Free and Megan Lomax.
“Zelda in the Backyard”
Zelda likes to go, but she doesn’t like to stop.
When Libby inherits Zelda, a 1961 Rolls Royce that’s been wrecked, she sets off on a journey to reassemble the car and pieces of the past her father left behind. A little broken herself, Libby finds herself with a new understanding of marriage and family.
“Zelda in the Backyard” is a story of love and loss, and all the roads in between.
The one-woman show stars Nancy Bell.
“Trouble at the Vista View Mobile Home Estates”
Audrey Cefaly has adapted her award-winning and very popular one-act “Fin & Euba” into a full-length play entitled “Trouble at the Vista View Mobile Home Estates.” Audrey is an Alabama-native who has an incredible knack for writing in a Southern voice.
About the play …
Today is Euba’s birthday and her mother Bernie is planning a party. But Euba is NOT having it! Set in a small mill town in south Alabama, this all-female drama renders the highs and lows of motherhood, resilience and what we do for our children. This is the 4th installment in regionalist Audrey Cefaly’s Alabama Cycle (“The Gulf,” “Alabaster,” “Maytag Virgin”), an exploration of the unsung voices, stories and topographies of working class people in the gulf coast region.
The cast includes Greta Lambert, Cheryl Hall, Carolyn Messina, Maggie Lou Rader and Gillian Shelly Lawler.
Tickets are $20 for the morning session and $15 for the afternoon session. A full-day package includes all three readings and lunch for $50.
