WESTPORT — “Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing,” a play about the legendary Negro Leagues pitcher, is the Sept. 9 presentation in the Westport Country Playhouse’s “Script in Hand” play-reading series.

The play, co-written and directed by Trey Ellis of Westport, will be staged at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 9, at the playhouse, 25 Powers Court.

Tickets can be reserved in advance online by clicking here.

“Satchel Paige and the Kansas City Swing,” co-written by Ellis and Ricardo Khan, is set in 1947 when Paige was a dominant player in the Negro Leagues, but Jackie Robinson made history as the first Black player in baseball’s major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The play unfolds in Kansas City during a barnstorming tour by Paige, and with a jazz backdrop, portrays “one of the greatest baseball players of all time [and] paints a vivid picture of America on the brink of change, capturing the struggle for equality on and off the field,” according to the theater’s publicity for the play-reading.

Ellis is a two-time winner of Emmy and Peabody awards, American Book Award-winning novelist, NAACP Image Award-winning playwright, essayist and professor of professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. His screenplays include the Peabody Award-winning “The Tuskegee Airmen” for HBO and “Good Fences” for Showtime, which was shortlisted for the PEN Award for Best Teleplay.

He also has written the novels “Platitudes,” “Home Repairs” and “Right Here, Right Now,” as well as the memoir, “Bedtime Stories: Adventures in the Land of Single-Fatherhood.”

Khan is a director, writer, educator and Tony Award-winning artistic director.  He also co-wrote the NAACP Award-winning “Fly” with Ellis about the Tuskegee airmen of World War II, and also wrote “Freedom Rider” and “When Day Comes.” For questions, call the Westport Country Playhouse box office at 203-227-4177 or visit the theater’s website.