LAWRENCE — The second production of Spotlight Players’ new season at the Theatre at the Fort (8920 Otis Ave.) highlights an all-black cast to celebrate Black History Month. Opening on Feb. 19, and running for two weekends, Blues for an Alabama Sky takes place in Harlem, New York, in the summer of 1930. Written by Pearle Cleage and directed by Jim LaMonte, the story captures the harsh realities of the Great Depression following the creative euphoria of the Harlem Renaissance. Young Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., is feeding the hungry and preaching an activist gospel at Abyssinian Baptist Church. Black Nationalist visionary Marcus Garvey has been discredited and deported. Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger is opening a new family planning clinic on 126th Street, and the doctors at Harlem Hospital are scrambling to care for a population whose most deadly disease is poverty.
Invoking the image of African-American expatriate extraordinaire, Josephine Baker, as both muse and myth, Cleage’s characters struggle “to look beyond 126th Street” for the fulfillment of their dreams.
The talented cast includes Gabrielle Patterson, Phillip Armstrong, Alicia Collins, Ennis Adams, Jr., and Onis Dean. Show times are 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $15 adults, $12 seniors and students, and $10 for military personnel. Purchase tickets online at www.brownpapertickets.com or call 317-366-4795.