Alabama Story

Saint Louis University Theatre & Dance presents Alabama Story, a play by Kenneth Jones inspired by true events, which explores themes of censorship and Civil Rights issues in a veritable love letter to readers.

Set in Montgomery, Alabama, as the Civil Rights movement brews, Alabama Story features a segregationist senator and a no-nonsense librarian who clash over the content of a children’s book about bunnies. The Rabbits’ Wedding, which was published in 1958, depicts a black rabbit marrying a white rabbit.

Meanwhile, a reunion of childhood friends – a Black man and a white woman – provides a private counterpoint to the public events swirling in the state capital.

Political foes, star-crossed lovers and one feisty children’s book author inhabit a Deep South of the imagination that brims with humor, heartbreak and hope.

Characterized by Jones as a political thriller, a memory play, a workplace drama, a romance, a history, a tearjerker and a comedy, Alabama Story has national relevance, inspiring new conversations about race, censorship and political will. Most importantly, it’s a play about how we behave when we face terrible circumstances and how character is revealed in times of transition, change and crisis.

“At a time when intolerance is on the upswing and empathy is under siege, Alabama Story is just the play we need,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote in 2019. See it for yourself at The Grandel from Oct. 5 to 7.