“The Miss Firecracker Contest” will be presented at 7 p.m. September 5 and 6 in Peters Theater on the William Jewell College campus in Liberty, Mo. Tickets are $5; for ticket information, call 816-415-7590, or visit www.jewell.edu

The Southern Gothic comedy from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Beth Henley is presented as a senior theatre performance by Phillip Meece and Maggie Rader.

“‘The Miss Firecracker Contest’ explores what it means to follow one’s own American Dream,” said Rader, who is a senior theatre major at William Jewell. The action is set in Brookhaven, Miss., in the summer of 1957. The leading character, Carnelle Scott, desires nothing more than to leave her hometown in a “crimson blaze of glory” by winning the annual Miss Firecracker Contest.

“The play examines the definition of the word ‘patriotic,’ and asks if we have progressed as a culture in the last 50 years,” Rader said. “Is it more important to take care of our loved ones or to cover up and never speak the unspeakable? What is beauty and what can it cost? What happens when the least of us is given a voice?”

William Jewell College is committed to bringing together talented students and gifted faculty mentors within a vibrant community sparked by a rigorous and intentional liberal arts curriculum. A full range of personal and professional development experiences are presented by the selective national liberal arts college’s location within a metroplex of 1.5 million.