Tennessee Williams’ descent into family, sex, death and decay is a haunting: family, trauma, relentlessly recurring patterns of destruction. It’s about the abuse we heap upon ourselves, and the pleasures we use to forget.
We want to play Williams’ music everywhere, because our ghosts follow us everywhere: riding the bus, sitting in a movie theater, or shopping at our favorite boutique. When you least expect it, they grab you by the throat, and in a moment you relive the worst summer of your life.
There is a vital need right now to create new, economically viable models of theater. Working class artists must reclaim a central role in the creation and presentation of their own work.
In that spirit, director Nick Westrate and an ensemble of four astonishing New York theater actors (Lucy Owen, Brad Koed, Mallory Portnoy and Will Rogers) set out to create a performance of the play like no other. By presenting Tennessee Williams’ complete, unabridged text, with just four performers - no props, no set- this production can exist anywhere. It strips bare to the bones the greatest piece of American drama.