Cherry Jones Named Guest of Honor at Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Fest's Gala

Celebrating its 10th Anniversary, the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, announced that multi-award winning stage and screen actor Cherry Jones will be the guest of honor of the Gala this year. In 2014, Jones was nominated for a Tony Award and won the Outer Critic's Circle award for her performance as Amanda Wingfield in the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. .

Executive Director Jef Hall Flavin said, "We're thrilled to honor Cherry Jones as part of our 10th Anniversary. She is one of our country's most accomplished actors. Acclaimed performances like hers as Amanda in bold new productions keep Tennessee Williams alive for today's Broadway audiences. And that is precisely our mission here in Provincetown: innovative performances that reveal Williams as a living, creative force in American Theater."

Guests at the gala will mingle with Ms. Jones, board members and Tennessee Williams fans during the social hour while browsing auction items. Once guests are seated, Festival Curator David Kaplan will reveal the exciting 2015 Festival lineup of productions from around the globe which will be performed in Provincetown from September 24 through September 27th.

Of this year's Festival program, Kaplan says, "Our 2015 theme, Tennessee Williams in Provincetown, celebrates ten seasons of landmark productions in Provincetown, including our new season's productions. We will revive several of our greatest hits and we're honoring some of our most memorable productions by performing them in new ways. As we have in each of our previous years, we're introducing new work that revises what our artists and audiences think about Tennessee Williams. Expect surprises as we roll out the spirit of Tennessee Williams into the world."

To round out the Gala, an in-depth interview with Cherry Jones will follow a brief auction of Provincetown art after a multi-course dinner.

Cherry Jones was nominated for a Tony and won the Outer Critic's Circle award for her performance as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. Ben Brantley, the New York Times theater critic, described her performance in Tennessee Williams' iconic play as, "one for the ages."

Jones was born in Paris, Tennessee, to a high school teacher mother and a flower shop owner father. She is a 1978 graduate of Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, where she made a name for herself at City Theatre, a prominent fixture of the Pittsburgh theater scene.

In 1995, when Jones accepted her first Tony Award, she thanked her then girlfriend, architect Mary O'Connor. When she accepted her Best Actress Tony in 2005 for her work in Doubt, she thanked "Laura Wingfield," the Glass Menagerie character being played in the Broadway revival by Jones's girlfriend, Sarah Paulson. The pair had attended the awards together and kissed right after Jones won.

Jones may be best known for her role as President Allison Taylor on the Fox series "24," for which she won an Emmy. However, most of her career has been in the theater on Broadway, including her Tony-winning lead performances in Lincoln Center's 1995 production of The Heiress and John Patrick Shanley's play Doubt, a role which earned her the 2005 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play.

Other Broadway credits include Nora Ephron's play Imaginary Friends (with Swoosie Kurtz); Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, the 2000 revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Our Country's Good, for which she earned her first Tony nomination in 1991.

She is considered to be one of the foremost actors in the United States. In recent years, Jones has ventured into feature films. Her screen credits include Cradle Will Rock, The Perfect Storm, Signs, Ocean's Twelve and The Village.

In addition to her Emmy-winning role on the Fox series "24," Jones starred in the NBC series "Awake" as Dr. Judith Evans.

Photo by Zachary Maxwell Stertz

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