Ice Cube’s 1998 film, “The Player’s Club,” is the last film known to a generation of strip club enthusiasts that has created a phenomenon of scene clips that still impact us today. In the year 2020, I am delighted to report that we have a new television series by Executive Producer/Showrunner Katori Hall on the horizon that will bring the Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (Outkast Reference) appeal we’ve all been waiting for. P-VALLEY premieres Sunday, July 12 at 9:00 PM ET/PT on Starz.
Hailing from the Black Southern capital of Memphis, Tennessee Olivier Award-winning playwright Katori Hall utilizes her play, Pussy Valley, to tell the story of a strip club found buried in the Mississippi Delta that is filled with a plethora of fluorescent characters. Although stereotypical messages of strippers exist, P-VALLEY reminds us that the meaning behind someone’s existence deserves recognition despite the path or choice one has chosen in life. In jest or seriousness, many women have stated they are one paycheck away from considering the pole as a unique form of employment.
Katori Hall shares insight on how the P-VALLEY series has blossomed into a butterfly, ready to fly away as an experience all Americans can identify with. As a Southern Black woman that loves a pleasant country drawl, I can’t wait to hear the slang I have grown to love over the years represented in an entertainment form.
ABOUT KATORI HALL
Katori Hall is an Olivier Award-winning playwright from Memphis, Tennessee. She is the showrunner and Executive Producer of P-VALLEY, the new Starz series based on her play Pussy Valley. Most recently for the stage, she wrote the book for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, the West End hit debuting on Broadway in Fall 2019.
Katori’s play The Mountaintop, premiering at Theatre503 in 2009, transferred to the West End and won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2010. The Mountaintop later opened on Broadway in October 2011 to critical acclaim. Katori’s other works include the award-winning Hurt Village, which is currently in development as a feature film, Hoodoo Love, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning, WHADDABLOODCLOT!!!, Our Lady of Kibeho, Purple is the Colour of Mourning, and The Blood Quilt.
In addition to her Laurence Olivier Award, Katori’s other awards include a Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Lark Play Development Center Playwrights of New York (PONY) Fellowship, two Lecompte du Nouy Prizes from Lincoln Center, Fellowship of Southern Writers Bryan Family Award in Drama, NYFA Fellowship, the Columbia University John Jay Award for Distinguished Professional Achievement, National Black Theatre’s August Wilson Playwriting Award, and the Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award.
Katori is an alumnus of the Sundance Episodic Lab’s inaugural class, as well as the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. She also participated in Ryan Murphy’s Half Foundation Directing Program and directed the award-winning short, ARKABUTLA.
SYNOPSIS
Down deep in the Mississippi Delta lies an oasis of grit and glitter in a rough patch of human existence where beauty can be hard to find. This southern-fried, hour-long drama tells the kaleidoscopic story of a little-strip-club-that-could and the big characters who come through its doors—the hopeful, the lost, the broken, the ballers, the beautiful, and the damned. Trap music meets film noir in this lyrical and atmospheric series that dares to ask what happens when small-town folk dream beyond the boundaries of the Piggly Wiggly and the pawnshop.
