There are 5,218 people living in Aberdeen, Mississippi. This is the story of 17 of them. And. The men that caused all of the trouble. 2009’s Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo
Performance, this play was the critical darling of the season for its revelation in storytelling. The whole thing started when Viola Haygood, the Assistant Librarian at the Charles B. Evans
Memorial Library, fell in love for the umpteenth time. This one was new in town. He was tall. He was dark. He was handsome. And he smelled really good. It was the dark coincidence of his
arrival that caused the locals to comment. Someone was kidnapping Aberdeen’s young women. They were eating cheese nachos at Big Otis’s Saloon one night and gone the next. Not so much as a
by-your-leave. The town was getting nervous. They were locking the stately front entries of their antebellum homes and the aluminum screen doors of their double-wide trailers. For the first
time. Ever. They would have called in the FBI but they didn’t have to, as that particular organization was proud to boast a national office on Aberdeen’s Main Street that runs along the scenic
banks of the Tombigbee River. This was a town in an uproar. Dirty deeds being done dirt cheap. Women being snapped up and carted off to who knows where. FBI running up and down the streets like
they knew which way was up. Reporters descending like locusts. Lawyers locking and loading. It’s hard to believe that one person portrayed all of this on stage without costume or set pieces.
This is the book of a play-based on a book that was never written-that feels like a movie!
