By Lynda Sturner****La La can both dread the end of summer and also think September is one of the best months of the year in Ptown. The sunsets are intense, the humidity is gone and the air and water temperatures are still warm. Nights are cool enough to sleep without air-conditioning and not cold enough to turn on the heat yet. The crowds have thinned out and even though the Cabaret scene is winding down, it picks right back up again for Woman’s Week, October 8-14.
Meanwhile, September is all about theatre and the two David’s: Drake and Kaplan. Ptown was once called the birthplace of modern America drama and they are putting Ptown back on the map again with Drake, Artistic Director at The Provincetown Theater and Kaplan, founder and curator of The Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.
One of La La’s favorite, The Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, runs from September 27 – 30 in venues all over town. Like the film festival in June, it’s an all-day, all-night marathon. You can see four shows a day and still go to cocktail hour and parties where you drink and talk about the plays with like-minded theatre lovers and geeks.
Tennessee Williams spent summers writing and falling in love in Ptown in the 1940’s. The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were written here.
In 2006, theatre director and Williams scholar, David Kaplan, founded TWTF in order to deepen the understanding of Williams. Now in its 13th year under his leadership, Kaplan brings to the Festival the daring, risky, bold and provocative spirit of Williams. He finds new undiscovered Williams treasures and just when you think there can’t be anymore, he unearths a new one. This year, it’s Talisman Roses. More about that later.
This is definitely not museum style theatre that does endless productions of his classic plays. It’s a living, breathing surprising, exploration of all Williams’ writings and like the playwright, is as eccentric as the devil. Kaplan brings in theatre companies from all over the world to share their vision of Williams. From Russia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Norway South Africa, Ghana and Turkey, these theatre artists bring their culture to Ptown and give us a uniquely new way of seeing this American playwright.
In addition, Kaplan chooses works by other playwrights who share a sensibility with Williams. This year’s plays include works by Federico Garcia Lorca, Samuel Beckett and Anton Chekhov.
The plays, Doña Rosita the Spinster by Federico Garcia Lorca, Company by Samuel Beckett and Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov, are all in keeping with his year’s theme, Wishful Thinking, which explores the drama of anticipation.
Kaplan says, “After the presidential election here and also where I was traveling in Turkey, South Africa and Ghana, there’s a feeling that we’re all waiting for something to happen and that the consequences were not immediately obvious. Uncle Vanya was first produced in 1899. The revolution is not there yet. They know in Russia that something’s about to happen and they talk about it, but it hangs in the air unresolved. There was a sense of suspension that in itself was dramatic.” This production, directed by Kate Mendeloff from Arb Arts in Ann Arbor Michigan, is being done at the Ptown Inn. The action takes place with the audience embedded with the actors.
Also, at the Ptown Inn is, Will Mr. Merriwether Return From Memphis? from The Pensacola Little Theatre, with banjo music composed and performed by director, Jeff Glickman. Full disclosure time. La La is dancing the cakewalk in this Tennessee Williams one act. She’s been rehearsing for the rehearsal, trying to remember Jane Fonda’s old exercise tapes where the cakewalk is featured. Anyway, the play is in keeping with the theme of this year’s festival, which explores the drama of anticipation. Does he return or doesn’t he? You have to find out by being there.
Talisman Roses, an unpublished one- act play, is at the Provincetown Theater, directed by actress/director Marsha Mason and featuring Tony and Emmy-winning actor Amanda Plummer. Kaplan says, “I knew about the play. It was on a list of plays in the archive that was kept from that period. When I read it, it became very clear to me that this was a fantasy about his sister Rose coming home from the state asylum cured. So that certainly was wishful thinking.”
Also, at the Provincetown Theater is Williams’ Some Problems for the Moose Lodge, directed by Rory Pelsue from The Collective NY, on a double bill with Williams’ fantasia about the poet Hart Crane called Steps Must Be Gentle. Poet Crane is enjoying life on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where he killed himself by jumping off a boat. So, he’s dead and happy until his mother shows up and tells him what to do.
With Lorca’s play, Doña Rosita The Spinster, a woman waits years in her rose garden for her fiancé to return while the world passes her by. Doña Rosita says, “I kept believing his lies. I tried to tear hope off my throat.” Directed by David Kaplan in collaboration with Atkins Middle School of Lubbock, Texas, in association with Texas Tech University’s School of Theatre and Dance. With songs and dances, the play turns the Wharf House at the Ptown Marina into Andalucía.
Samuel Beckett’s play, Company, is directed and adapted from his novella by Lane Savadove from Egopo Classic Theater in Philadelphia. A body lies in the dark listening to voices. Is the listener lying between life and death? Between sleeping and waking? Are the voices memories? Delusions? Dreams? It’s at Town Hall.
The Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams, directed by Dana Greenfield of Moon Lake Productions, features, Irene Glezos. Among her many
stage and movie credits includes, Maria Callas in Master Class, Gertrude in Jane Bowles’ The Summer House, Fairouz in The Heart of America (directed by Tony Kushner), Top Girls, Ron Elisha’s Two, Criminal Hearts and Four Dogs and a Bone. Her television appearances include “Law & Order,” “Sex and the City,” “Trial by Jury,” “Third Watch” and “Criminal Intent.” She created a solo show about the final days of Marilyn Monroe and was in Woody Allen’s Celebrity.
Glezos says, “I’m so excited to be coming back to the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival playing Serafina! Rose Tattoo is about loss and love … and in that order. It’s funny and passionate and alive. After Orpheus Descending and The Two Character Play, I feel like I won the lottery being part of a Williams play with a happy ending! Vengo, Amore!”
Along with The Rose Tattoo, are three short plays by Charlene Donaghy, Joseph Paprzycki and Eric Marlin.
Also, at the Festival is Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles created by Mark Russell at Fishermen Hall. According to the catalogue, Hanna-Barbera’s Saturday morning cartoon character speaks truth to power, reborn as a droll 1950’s Southern playwright in DC Comics’ new miniseries, presented as a staged reading with the stars of the Festival from the DIE-CAST Ensemble in Philadelphia, directed by Brenna Geffers. Also, from the same Die-Cast Ensemble is the first draft of Menagerie of Angels at the Wharf at the Provincetown Marina.
Williams 101, a 90-minute seminar on Tennessee Williams and the playwrights at this year’s Festival, will be at The Provincetown Monument. Kaplan says, “This is an unusually comic season and an unusually musical season. We have a live harp, we have some violins, we have some pianos. We have a lot of musical instruments. And there are a lot of happy endings. It’s an unusual collection of Williams. There’s a line from a Beckett novella, I can’t go on, I go on. Could be a Chekhov line, could be a Williams line, could be a Lorca line. His motto might sum up all the plays of this season.”
Facts: The plays have multiple performances at the same venues. For dates and times and to buy tickets click here.
The Rose Tattoo Fishermen Hall
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles Fishermen Hall
Uncle Vanya Provincetown Inn
Will Mr. Merriwether Return From Memphis? Provincetown Inn
Talisman Roses Provincetown Theater
Problems For The Moose Lodge and Steps Must Be Gentle Provincetown Theater
Company Town Hall
Donna Rosita The Spinster The Wharf at the Provincetown Marina
Menagerie of Angels The Wharf at the Provincetown Marina
This is La La’s Part 1 on the two Davids. Part 2 will be about David Drake, Artistic Director the Provincetown Theater.
Coming up in the weeks ahead, La La tells all about Woman’s Week, October 8-14, when the Cabaret scene is alive and well again in Ptown.
