The first annual Tennessee Williams Festival kicks off in Provincetown one week from today.
Why should this tiny town at the tip of a New England cape be celebrating the playwright?
“Tennessee Williams spent the most productive years of his life in Provincetown. From 1940 until 1947, this small town at the outer edge of Massachusetts is where Williams found himself artistically, acted boldly on his sexuality, and fell unguardedly in love for the first, and perhaps only time. Writing at Provincetown, sometimes on a wharf in the bay, sometimes in a shack on the dunes, Williams crafted his masterpieces The Glass Menagerie and Streetcar Named Desire – along with jewel-like poetry, short stories, one-act and other full-length plays.”
During the inaugural event a new, unpublished one-act by Williams called The Parade or Approaching the End of a Summer will be performed. Provincetown fixture Ryan Landry will put on a likely cracked and irreverent parody play called Plexi-glass Menagerie, performed by members of The Gold Dust Orphans. Folks will hear Andre Previn's opera of A Streetcar Named Desire, performed by Capitol City Opera Company from Atlanta. And Yellowbird, a short film by none other than Mommie Dearest herself, Faye Dunaway, will be screened. No word on whether she'll be there to rant in person.
A gay time will be had by all.
