Film, live music, video, and readings inspired by Tennessee Williams fill out the Festival’s four day roster, along with educational programming and parties to celebrate America’s great playwright.

Show Schedule:

The Glass Menagerie:

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Dane Eissler

The Glass Menagerie was written by Williams at the dawn of his career. The 2024 Festival’s production shares a new insight to the famous text by staging it on the same set and with the same cast as Something Cloudy, Something Clear, written at the twilight of Williams’ life.

The Glass Menagerie launched Williams into superstardom by exploring his tumultuous family life in Depression-era St. Louis. The play is no mirror. Williams created Tom, a version of himself, to tell the story of The Glass Menagerie and to be a character in it. Tom abandons his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura —as his father had done to them — for a new life. Tom’s guilt— along with his inability to confess his love for his work friend, Jim —follows him throughout his life and, in this repertory production, all the way to old age. The memory of love—his mother’s, his sister’s, his own — follows Tom throughout his life, too, undoing his attempt to escape and forget their love.

Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission

Date and Time:
9/25  Wednesday — 7 - 8:45 PM
9/26 Thursday  —  1 - 2:45 PM
9/27 Friday  —  11 AM - 12:45 PM
9/28 Saturday  —  1 - 2:45 PM
9/29 Sunday  — 1 - 2:45 PM

Location: Provincetown Town Hall

Suddenly Last Summer:

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Brenna Geffers with her Philadelphia-based Die-Cast Ensemble

Suddenly Last Summer is a memory play by Tennessee Williams in which memory recovers trauma. The festival’s production, directed by Brenna Geffers with her Philadelphia-based Die-Cast Ensemble, celebrates gathering the power of memories — and the consequent joy of releasing memories into the world.
 
This is a highly unusual approach to the text: memory-positive, in which recalling trauma is healing.

Running time: 75 minutes

Date and Time:
9/27 Friday  —  1 - 2:30 PM;  5 - 6:30 PM
9/28 Saturday  —  2:30 - 4 PM;  5 - 6:30 PM
9/29 Sunday  — 4 - 5:30 PM

Location: The Unitarian Universalist Meeting House

Something Cloudy, Something Clear:

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Dane Eissler

Something Cloudy, Something Clear, written by Williams in 1981, is set in Provincetown in 1940. Williams created a version of himself named August to tell the story of Williams’ first love affair—and to be a character in it. In the play, his beloved is a young dancer called Kip, just as he was in life.

Ghosts from later and earlier times in Williams’ life interrupt the action of Something Cloudy, Something Clear. Williams gave these disruptive phantoms their real names– his lover Frank Merlo and his high school girlfriend Hazel Scott. Tallulah Bankhead is called The Actress. Masked as August, Williams can address their ghosts with declarations of love he probably never dared to say to them while they were alive. Williams invented a ghostly friend for Kip named Clare, a twenty-year old girl who will die of diabetes soon after the summer ends. August, like Tennessee Williams, will survive to tell the tale.

The Festival demonstrates the continuity of Williams' classical and experimental texts by staging Something Cloudy, Something Clear on the same set and with the same cast asThe Glass Menagerie. In the Festival’s repertory casting the actress playing Laura in The Glass Menagerie becomes Clare in Something Cloudy, Something Clear; Jim, the Gentleman Caller, becomes Kip; Amanda becomes Tallulah Bankhead; and Tom’s absent father becomes Death.

Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes, with no intermission

Date and Time:
9/26 Thursday  —  4 - 5:30 PM
9/27 Friday  —  2 - 3:30 PM
9/28 Saturday  —  4 - 5:30 PM
9/29 Sunday  — 4 - 5:30 PM

Location: Provincetown Town Hall

Green Eyes:

By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Brenna Geffers with her Philadelphia-based Die-Cast Ensemble

Green Eyes is an erotic thriller by Tennessee Williams. A young couple in a hotel in New Orleans' French Quarter wake up from their honeymoon night. The bride is covered in bruises. The groom, a soldier on leave from a war in Southeast Asia, can’t remember what happened.  The festival’s 2024 production, directed by Brenna Geffers with her Philadelphia-based Die-Cast Ensemble, performs the text twice, teasing out the possibilities of a lost memory retrieved by an erotic fantasy that might be true, even if it never really happened.

Running time: 55 minutes

Date and Time:
9/26 Thursday  —  12 - 1 PM;  6 - 7 PM
9/28 Saturday  —  12 - 1 PM  
9/29 Sunday  — 12 - 1  PM;  2- 3 PM

Location: Boatslip Resort & Beach Club

Tennessee Rising:

The Dawn of Tennessee Williams

Written and Performed by Jacob Storms

The play explores the formative period from 1939 – 1945 during which an unknown writer named Tom blooms into the acclaimed playwright known as Tennessee, wherein his most iconic character emerges: himself. The audience becomes friend and confidant to young Williams as he experiences the unexpected highs and devastating lows of his early career.

This solo play comes to Provincetown after critically acclaimed engagements Off-Broadway and at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, where the play was nominated for an Off-West End (Offie) Award and dubbed an official shortlisted event for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence.

Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams is written and performed by Jacob Storms and originally directed for the stage by Alan Cumming.

Running time: 1 hour

Date and Time:
9/26 Thursday  —  12pm, 7pm
9/27 Friday  —  3pm
9/28 Saturday  — 3pm, 7pm
9/29 Sunday  — 3pm

Location: Grotta Bar

Flight:

Adapted from a short story by Tennessee Williams
Directed by Kari Margolis

A pent-up inventory clerk discovers a door to the roof of the tall building where he carries out his tedious work. Secretly a poet, he sneaks daily to the roof to watch the Mississippi River roll freely to the sea, inviting him to dream of escape.

The set-up is the same as in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie: a clerk, a secret poet, up on the roof, dreams of escape.  In Williams’ famous play, the secret poet escapes by joining the merchant marines. In Flight, adapted from Williams’ story, “Episodes in the Life of a Clerk,” the secret poet finds freedom by taking a long-awaited leap of faith.

Running time: 70 minutes

Date and Time:
9/26 Thursday  —  12 - 1 PM; 6 - 7 PM
9/27 Friday  —  12 - 1 PM; 4 - 5 PM
9/28 Saturday  —  2 - 3 PM
9/29 Sunday  — 1 - 2 PM

Location: Gifford House

In the Room Where He Waits:

In the Room Where He Waits is Timothy Despina Marshall’s critically acclaimed queer gothic film. Set during the pandemic, a Broadway-bound gay Australian actor (played by Daniel Monks), about to appear as Tom in The Glass Menagerie, secretly flies home to Brisbane for his father’s funeral. He rehearses by Zoom pretending to be in Los Angeles, lying to his director, his mother, but not the actress playing Laura or to himself. The hotel room he’s stuck in is haunted. The Festival is pleased to present a special screening of In the Room Where He Waits this September.

Fest Date: September 26 - 29, 2024

Locations:
Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
Boatslip Resort and Beach Club, 161 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
Grotta Bar, 186 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
Gifford House, 9 Carver Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
Unitarian Universalist Meeting House, 236 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657

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