UK Premiere of Tennessee Williams' ONE ARM, Adapted by Moises Kaufman, to Open at Southwark Playhouse

Alex Turner Productions today announce the UK première of Tennessee Williams' One Arm adapted for the stage by Moisés Kaufman. Josh Seymour's production opens at Southwark Playhouse on 12 June, with previews from 10 June, and runs until 4 July.

Exterior. New Orleans. Night. Close up: A beautiful young hustler solicits trade on the streets. He is Ollie Olsen, former light heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet.

After a devastating accident ends his boxing career Ollie believes his once-invincible body to be irreparably broken. When his eyes are opened to the market value of his tragic beauty, Ollie turns to selling his final asset in order to survive. Through his encounters with the lonely souls of 1940s America, Ollie discovers an unexpected chance for redemption.

In 1942 Tennessee Williams wrote One Arm, a short story with a striking central character who haunted his imagination for the rest of his life. Williams revisited Ollie's story 25 years later in a screenplay of the same title - a script too provocative for the studios of 60s Hollywood. Moisés Kaufman, creator of The Laramie Project, fuses these texts into a powerful theatrical work inspired by the movie that was never made, now receiving its UK première at Southwark Playhouse.

"Moisés Kaufman's fast, fierce, brutally beautiful stage adaptation of an unproduced screenplay by Tennessee Williams is more than a play: It's a time machine." New York Magazine

Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire and in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other plays includeSummer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, Baby Doll, The Glass Menagerie, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Two-Character Play. Tennessee Williams died in 1983.

Moisés Kaufman is a Tony and Emmy nominated director and award-winning playwright. His plays Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and The Laramie Project have been amongst the most performed plays in America over the last decade. The Laramie Project opened at The Denver Theater Center in March 2000, and moved to New York that May, and was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Unique Theatrical Experience. He also directed the film adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO (Emmy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Writer). Gross Indecency ran for over 600 performances in New York, for which he won the Lucille Lortell Award for Best Play and the Outer Critics' Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Play. He also directed it in Los Angeles (Mark Taper Forum), San Francisco (Theater on the Square), Toronto (Canadian Stage) and in the West End (Gielgud Theatre). As a director, his other work includes The Heiress, 33 Variations, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, I Am My Own Wife (Broadway), A Common Pursuit(Roundabout Theater) and This is How it Goes (Donmar Warehouse).

Josh Seymour directs. He recently completed a year as Resident Assistant Director at the Donmar Warehouse and is currently Associate Director on the West End transfer of My Night With Reg (Apollo Theatre). As a director, his work includes The Laramie Project (Curve Theatre) Sarah & Sarah (Waterloo East Theatre) and Four Dogs and a Bone (London Festival Fringe). At the Donmar, Seymour was Assistant Director on City of Angels,Privacy (both directed by Josie Rourke), Fathers and Sons(directed by Lyndsey Turner), My Night With Reg (directed by Rob Hastie) and Versailles (directed by Peter Gill). Other credits as Assistant Director include Candide (Menier Chocolate Factory), Our House (UK tour), Good Grief (Theatre Royal Bath & UK tour) and Sixty-Six Books (Bush Theatre). He was a finalist for the 2012 JMK Award.

As an Artist and Producer of award-winning interactive theatre company non zero one, Alex Turner has co-devised and produced productions at the Barbican, National Theatre, Bush Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, Science Museum and the Edinburgh Fringe. He joined Playful Productions in 2014 as a Production Assistant to work across productions including Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies, Blithe Spirit, Wicked, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Shrek The Musical and Dirty Dancing, and currently works on The Audience in the West End. He has previously worked for the Barbican Centre, Theatre Delicatessen, Royal Shakespeare Company, Frantic Assembly and Kate Morley PR. He is also a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, from where he graduated in 2009 with a First Class degree in Drama and Theatre.