A never-before-seen play written by an Abilene High School graduate and tied to events that shaped world history is coming to central Kansas.

"We're not in 2019 anymore  - we are going back to 1989," said Mitch Aiello.

Aiello is the director for the world premiere of "Empires Fall" by Marlin Fitzwater and Robert Lawson. The play will be staged at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Great Plains Theatre, 215 N. Campbell St., Abilene. Fitzwater, a Kansas native, served as White House press secretary under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and is currently the only press secretary to serve two administrations.

The play focuses on the relationship between President George H.W. Bush and USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It takes place in the two years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in a time when both men were attempting to bring an end to the Cold War in a way that preserved the best interests of their countries while also protecting the world.

Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park opened on October 12, 2019 with a Grand Opening celebration.

Little Jerusalem provides a tremendous opportunity to connect people to the wonders of the prairie. It is a one-of-a-kind landscape in Kansas and the state's largest Niobrara Chalk formation.

These chalk badlands provide unique and important habitat for ferruginous hawks, cliff swallows, Say's phoebe and rock wrens, as well as many native amphibians and reptiles. Little Jerusalem is also home to the single largest population of Great Plains wild buckwheat, an endemic plant that is found in the chalk bluffs prairie of western Kansas and nowhere else in the world.