Offering an evening of surprises that will delight the audience, Master Director Lee Breuer and members of his Mabou Mines troupe will stage scenes from The Glass Menagerie in ways never seen before as part of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival centennial celebration of America's great playwright.
Breuer, winner of 11 Obie awards, is co-artistic director of
Mabou Mines, the nation's leading avant-garde theater since the 1970s and renowned for his exciting visionary interpretations of the classics. Breuer also comes from his recent sold out success of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Comedie Francaise in Paris and will reveal stunning images from this unconventional production to this American audience.
Breuer, a multi-award winning writer, director, poet, playwright, adapter, lyricist and MacArthur Genius Award winner, will offer the audience a rare behind the scenes look at two facets of the creative process. The audience will get a vision of the Festival theme of Double Exposure: Past and Present as Breuer and his troupe talk about their kaleidoscopic vision of Williams' masterpiece The Glass Menagerie and then act it out on stage.
He will be joined by many of his famous
Mabou Mines performers --
Maude Mitchell, who played the lead in his world famous production of A Doll's House,
Greg Mehrten, who played King Lear's fool in drag, along with renowned choreographer Eamonn Farrell and international stilt performer
Jessica Weinstein.
Accompanied throughout by live music from composer Jay Ansill, they will stage scenes from The Glass Menagerie through a series of ‘what ifs' -- What if
Tennessee Williams' sister, Rose, could edit the play? What if Rose disagreed with her famous brother's version of the story? What if they were both drinking? What would we see onstage - if we didn't change a single line?
Basil Twist, America's leading puppeteer and scene designer, also joins with Breuer in presenting images from their Paris Streetcar, called "powerful, profound, grand and unique" by Le Figero. They used stunning Japanese imagery throughout -- screens and paper lanterns, tigers and gold, all of Williams' imagery rescued from the overly familiar film, made strange and beautiful again. William
Jay Smith, Williams' lifelong friend, said "
Lee Breuer, himself a poet, has given us a truly visual poem. In its Japanese metaphorical transformation, it evokes magnificently the mad, ante-bellum dream of Blanche DuBois."
The audience will get to see some unforgettable Streetcar images: Blanche lost in a sinister Mardi Gras parade on her way to visit her sister, Stella flying down an invisible staircase to forgive Stanley, Blanche's hallucinatory rape in which Stanley becomes one of the
Heath Ledger-like Jokers in a deck of shuffling cards.
"Titled Glass Guignol (pronounced gwee-NYO-L) in homage to Williams and the French Guignol tradition of taking realism to the breaking point of horror and hilarity," says Festival Cofounder and Curator
David Kaplan. "At the Provincetown
Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, we don't just honor
Tennessee Williams' history, we make it. Our audience will be witness to it with this brilliant director. We consider this a master class in what's possible for the future of theater."
The event takes place September 24, 2011, 7:30 pm. Tickets are $30, group rates and student discounts available. The Provincetown
Tennessee Williams Theater Festival: Double Exposure Past and Present takes place Thursday, September 22 through Sunday, September 25, 2011 at various venues in Provincetown, Massachusetts. For more information, visit
www.twptown.org.
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