The Athenian Players present “The Rocket Men”

In the first ever play commissioned by the Alabama Center for the Arts, Athens State University, and Calhoun Community College, acclaimed NYC playwright, Crystal Skillman, explores the German Rocket Team that was instrumental in the development of the US Space Program in the middle of the 20th Century that helped turn the small farming community of Huntsville, Alabama into “Rocket City, USA”

Set in a futuristic planetarium, the play moves through time traveling from the Rocket Team’s office on Redstone Arsenal in the 1950s,  to their homes in Huntsville during the 1960s, and back to their experiences in Peenemünde during World War II. The Rocket Men explores these men who were embarking on the “new frontier of unexplored space” as German immigrants that were also outsiders experiencing the South, specifically Huntsville, Alabama. Most importantly they ask us all to consider whose names are remembered in history, and why?