Old Settler Cast Announced

Alexandria, March 19, 2008—Director Sh’riff Hasan announced the cast for City Park Players’ production of John Henry Redwood’s The Old Settler. The production is the second offering of the theatre’s 60th Anniversary Season and opens April 17.

The story involves two middle-age sisters living in a bustling, jazzy Harlem in 1943, during the waning days of the Harlem Renaissance. When a strapping young man fresh from the backwoods of South Carolina takes a room as a boarder in their apartment, old hurts and new tensions surface between the two sisters as romance brews between the older sister and the handsome newcomer. The play takes its name from a line in the play: “An Old Settler is what folks up here call a woman pushing forty who hasn’t been married and don’t have any prospects,” as the feisty younger sister explains to her sibling’s young beau.

Actor-director Sh’riff Hasan, a native of New Orleans, is a graduate of Tuskegee Institute and California Institute of the Arts and brings more than thirty years of experience in professional and community theatre to his work.

The Old Settler is an American Theatre Critics Award-winning work by John Henry Redwood, recipient of the 2001 Bryan Family Foundation Drama Award for Southern Literature. The play was adapted for television in 2001 and presented by PBS, starring Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad.

The Old Settler runs April 17–27, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m., at the Bringhurst Park Theatre, 1802 Sylvester Street, Alexandria, Louisiana.

Individual tickets are priced at $12 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students, and go on sale on April 1, 2008. Group sales tickets are also available. For tickets, reservations, or more information, contact the City Park Players box office at (318) 442-1800 or email cparkplayers@bellsouth.net.

Cast members include:

Sh’riff Hasan - Director
Karen Riley Simmons – Elizabeth Borny
Rosa Metoyer – Quilley McGrath
Sherman Deselles – Husband Witherspoon
Consondra Dorsey- Lou Bessie Preston
Faith Johnson - Lorraine
The City Park Players 60th Anniversary Season is made possible, in part, by grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, the Arts Council of Central Louisiana, and the Roy O. Martin Foundation. City Park Players’ production of The Old Settler is underwritten, in part, by CHRISTUS St. Frances Cabrini Hospital of Alexandria.

A premiere community theatre, City Park Players is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization committed to offering quality cultural activities and experiences to the entire Central Louisiana community through live theatre productions, programming, and education. Visit our Website at www.cityparkplayers.org.

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