Noted TV and stage director Sheldon Epps will be calling the shots this November 1 – 27, when the stage production of Blues For An Alabama Sky is performed at the Pasdena Playhouse, in Pasdena, CA. Epps has also served as the artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse since 1997.

Epps’ production of Blues For An Alabama Sky, written by playwright/novelist Pearl Cleage, will feature a talented cast that includes Robin Givens, Kadeem Hardison, Tessa Thompson, Kevin T. Carroll (Paid In Full, Being John Malkovich), and Robert Ray Manning, Jr. (Southland, Criminal Minds).

Check out the play’s synopsis:

BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY unfolds in the summer of 1930 in Harlem, NY, just as the harsh realities of the Great Depression have devastated an ebullient decade of the Harlem renaissance. Disease and poverty have overshadowed the creative euphoria that permeated and fueled a surge of African American artists, writers and luminaries. BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY introduces a rich cast of characters, scrambling to survive and make some sense of their overlapping personalities, politics and love lives: Angel (Givens) is a struggling blues singer and nightclub performer who cannot find a job. Her friend Guy (Carroll), a costume designer, is also out of work but dreams of being hired to design dresses for the famous African-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker. Their neighbor Delia (Thompson), a social worker, is trying to organize a family planning clinic in Harlem. Their friend Sam (Hardison), a doctor, works long hours delivering babies at the Harlem Hospital. And Leland (Manning), having recently moved to New York from Tuskegee sees in Angel a memory of lost love and a reminder of those “Alabama skies where the stars are so thick it’s bright as day.”

For more info on this production, click HERE.