Since last fall, the Alliance Theatre has been mounting productions in different venues across the city while its space in the Woodruff Arts Center has received an extensive renovation. The theater returned to the Woodruff over the summer with “The One Acre Wood” for family audiences, but the Sept. 29 world premiere of “Nick’s Flamingo Grill” will feel like a homecoming in more ways than one.
“Because all the crew and staff travelled with each show, it just felt like a family road trip,” says Tinashe Kajese-Bolden, director of “Nick’s Flamingo Grill,” who acted in several Alliance productions over the past year. “I am definitely looking forward to the new space, and hopefully we will be bringing new audience members who saw shows closer to their homes.”
The company’s first grown-up show back at the 200-seat Hertz Stage pays tribute to a lesser-known period in local history. Playwright Phillip DePoy drew inspiration from Atlanta’s first integrated nightclub and collaborated with jazz pianist Tyrone Jackson for the show’s 10 musical performances. “Phillip DePoy wrote all the original lyrics with very specific melodies in mind,” Kajese-Bolden says. “He then collaborated with Tyrone Jackson and composed the music during several workshops. This is a play with music so the actors don’t break into song to move the story along.”
With a cast including Robin Bloodworth, Cordell Cole, Shakirah Demesier and Diany Rodriguez, “Nick’s Flamingo Grill” tells the story of two G.I.s turned jazz musicians who attempt to transport their racially mixed performance to 1950s Atlanta. “We meet them right after the end of WWII and journey through the early 1950s,” Kajese-Bolden says. “The makeup of this group is fascinating. A Jewish son of a cantor, a black son of a sharecropper and a fiery Cuban daughter of an immigrant, they all approach jazz from their unique experience, but somehow come together in perfect harmony.”
Winner of Suzi Bass Award for directing Synchronity Theatre’s “Eclipsed,” Kajese-Bolden finds that the play’s themes of racial tension in “the city too busy to hate” prove particularly timely. “Outside the club walls is an ever-present threat to this Camelot they are trying to create,” she says. “That alone makes this play so relevant: How do we fight for a dream in the face of being told ‘This is not your America?’”
As of this writing, Kajese-Bolden has seen little of the mainstage’s renovations, but expects audiences will be impressed when they return. “The Hertz will not have changed too significantly, but the way we are configuring the stage and the amazing design that Kristin Robinson is doing for ‘Nick’s’ will blow your mind. I don’t think it is like anything our audience has experienced.”
“Nick’s Flamingo Grill.” Sept. 29-Oct. 28. Alliance Theatre, Hertz Stage, 1280 Peachtree St. 404-733-5000. alliancetheatre.org
