The 20th edition of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, themed “Last Call” and running September 25–28, will be its final season. It’s certainly not because the festival has run out of material; Tennessee Williams was so prolific that there is still no end to his output even though he’s been dead for 42 years. One of the Festival’s signatures was that it was still staging world premieres of his work.
Festival founder and curator David Kaplan, who’d planned the event’s close for two years, says this isn’t an ending as much as it is a transformation. The mission of celebrating Williams will continue in another form.
“I want people to know we’re thinking of the future,” Kaplan says. “I am not done with the artistic community of the festival; it’s just the four days in Provincetown. That’s done.”
“We are ending in style; not weeping, not slinking out the door,” he says. “There is nothing nostalgic about this season which is why I am including [Samuel] Becket because there’s nothing sentimental about an exit in Becket. It means something. You can read Williams through the Becket lens: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’ That could be Williams. Or Chekov.”
Pairing Williams with other artists has been a festival hallmark, providing creative portals through which to see or hear Williams anew. Kaplan has always aimed for “audiences making connections” among the festival’s productions. Past seasons memorably juxtaposed Williams’ work with his peers or his influences including Eugene O’Neill, William Shakespeare and Yukio Mishima.
“Last Call” may not be sentimental, but it recalls triumphs of past festivals which regularly brought national and international companies to Provincetown. Returning with productions this season are Beau Jest Moving Theater, Philadelphia based Die-Cast Ensemble and the Goat Exchange, the interdisciplinary performance company that audaciously staged Mae West’s “Sex” at the 2021 festival and Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 2022.
The Goat Exchange this season presents Williams’ play “Sweet Bird of Youth.” The festival program notes that the company’s approach to “Sweet Bird of Youth” is “equally iconoclastic, cutting to the core of Williams’ classic text about power and fame—in show biz and politics.”
“Clothes for a Summer Hotel,” a ghost play about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, staged in a fog, was the last of Williams’s plays to be performed on Broadway during his lifetime. This 2022 production comes courtesy of the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans and is directed by Augustin Correro.
“The Two Character Play,” about a pair of actors who are rehearsing a play and try to escape the illusion they’ve created for themselves, marks the return of renowned actor Irene Glezos, a Provincetown favorite since “Orpheus Descending” took the festival by storm in 2010 and 2011. This season’s show is produced by Playhouse Creatures with Glezos starring alongside Joseph Rodriguez.
Kaplan directs Williams’ “This Property is Condemned,” about a 13-year-old girl who walks precariously along a railroad track—and life—and will be staged on the front lawn of the Cabral House. The production features Alison Fraser, a two-time Tony Award nominee for “Romance/Romance” and “The Secret Garden,” who came to the festival for “Dirty Shorts” (2011) and “The Tennessee Williams Songbook” (2012). John F. Higgins plays her 14-year-old admirer and Jeff Glickman (“27 Wagons Full of Cotton” from TWFest 2010), provides a live blues score.
The Beau Jest Moving Theatre, now in its 40th year, brought to the festival the world premieres of Williams’s “The Remarkable Rooming-house of Mdme Le Monde” (2009), “American Gothic” (2010) and “Aimez Vous Ionesco” (2015). For “Last Call,” the company presents Williams’s “Life Boat Drill,” about a pair of 90-year-olds who grow increasingly entangled while following a safety drill on an ocean liner. It is paired with Becket’s “Come and Go,” in which three self-effacing women glide through the rituals of their lives. The text is performed by puppets designed and built by Libby Marcus who designed the puppets for Beau Jest’s production of “Ten Blocks on the Camino Real” (2012).
Director Brenna Geffers and her Philadelphia based Die-Cast Ensemble are responsible for memorable productions at the festival over the years including O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape” (TWFest 2016), Shakespeare’s “Pericles” (2017) and last year’s “Suddenly Last Summer” and “Green Eyes.” For this season, Geffers directs several short plays by Samuel Beckett—including “Cascando,” “Catastrophe,” “What Where” and “Ohio Impromptu”—along with live music interludes performed by Philadelphia’s Die-Cast.
Williams’s plays and stories will thrive as long as artists remain dedicated to showcasing, interpreting and embodying them and audiences are eager for that experience. “They still have something to say. We are not done,” says Kaplan. “That’s true for people coming here, too.” n
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