The co-pro between Alabama Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre will launch in Montgomery Sept. 24-Oct. 3 followed by a reported Oct. 20-Nov. 14 run in Atlanta. (Alliance has not officially announced Atlanta dates or casting for the play, but confirmed to Playbill.com that this will be a co-production directed Alliance artistic director Susan V. Booth.) Commissioned by ASF, the play had a reading in ASF's 2009 Southern Writers Project Festival of New Plays.

Guy, who has appeared in Broadway's Chicago and Grease, and has directed and acted in Atlanta, is widely known for playing Whitley in TV's "A Different World." In the new play, she'll portray a New York Times writer visiting Alabama in the 1960s.

The play "takes the audience inside the glamorous Nacirema Society of Montgomery." According to earlier ASF notes, the play "explores generational conflict and familial love in the world of 1960s black debutante societies. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize and Selma prepares to launch a voter registration drive, two wealthy, black Montgomery families obsess over the upcoming celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Nacirema Society. Elder stateswomen Grace Dunbar and Catherine Green are determined that the party go off without a hitch. But old family secrets, a blackmailer, willful grandchildren and a nosy New York Times reporter threaten their plans."

Cleage is known for her play Blues for an Alabama Sky.

Single tickets for Nacirema in Montgomery go on sale April 1. Visit asf.net.