The 20th Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival Set for September

The 20th Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival has revealed its September 2025 program. The 20th season will feature a daring new production of a classic play by Williams, a fresh take on a rarely produced late play by Williams, a new adaptation of a text by Williams, and several short plays by Williams' peer, Samuel Beckett. A highlight of the twentieth season will be a production of Williams' classic Sweet Bird of Youth, in which the glamorous Alexandra DeLago proclaims “There's no more valuable knowledge than knowing the right time to go.”

The Festival will be held September 25-28, 2025 in several locations in Provincetown, Massachusetts.  

The theme of this year's Festival will be “Last Call,” with live performances of plays by Williams that celebrate endings. It's not the last of the Festival, but it is the last of the four-day celebrations. The Festival will transform after 2025 and the mission of the Festival will continue in new ways, championing Tennessee Williams in other forms in Provincetown -- and around the world.  As Festival Curator David Kaplan puts it, “We've enjoyed our run:  productions of over a hundred different plays by Williams from Adam and Eve on a Ferry (2008) to Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis? (2018). From A to W, if not quite A to Z.”

Here is a listing of this year's performances:

• Sweet Bird of Youth / A Nasty Melodrama

The heroic defiance of the enemy time by a Hollywood diva and a small-town golden boy, produced by The Goat Exchange directed by Mitchell Polonsky. The Goat Exchange presented Mae West's Sex at the Festival in and around the Boatslip's swimming pool (2021), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in which a brick played Brick (2022).  Their approach to Sweet Bird of Youth is equally iconoclastic, cutting to the core of Williams' classic text about power and fame – in show biz and politics.

• Clothes for a Summer Hotel / A Fiery Séance

A ghost play about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, staged in a fog by The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans directed by Augustin Correro.  This 2022 production was hailed in New Orleans as “a physical and visual triumph.” BroadwayWorld.com  Clothes for a Summer Hotel was the last of Williams' plays to be performed on Broadway during his lifetime. Like Tennessee Williams, the author of The Great Gatsby lived long enough to confront the cost of popular success.

• The Two Character Play / An Abandoned Magic Act

Two actors rehearsing a play try to escape the illusion they've created for themselves. Produced by Playhouse Creatures with Irene Glezos and Joseph Rodriguez.  Irene Glezos is a festival favorite since Orpheus Descending (2010, 2011).

• This Property is Condemned / A Vanishing Act

A 13-year-old girl walks precariously along a railroad track—and life, staged on the front lawn of the Cabral House by Festival curator, David Kaplan.   The production features Alison Fraser (two-time Tony nominee for Romance/Romance and The Secret Garden) who came to the Festival for Dirty Shorts (2011) and returned for The Tennessee Williams Songbook (2012). John Higgins plays her adoring 14-year-old fan. Jeff Glickman (27 Wagons Full of Cotton (TWFest 2010), provides a live blues score.  

• Beckett Shorts/ A Catastrophic Cabaret

Life flares between expanses of darkness in short plays by Samuel Beckett - including Cascando, Catastrophe, and What Where – along with live music interludes performed by Philadelphia's Die-Cast directed by Brenna Geffers. Geffers directed O'Neill's The Hairy Ape (TWFest 2016), Shakespeare's Pericles (2017), Suddenly Last Summer and Green Eyes (2024).
 

• Songs Until We Meet Again /A Musical Lagniappe

In the tradition of Songs My Grandmother Taught Me (TWFest 2019) and Memory Songs (2024), George Maurer (Autumn Song TWFest 2012)  presents live music performed by the artists and staff of the Festival. Expect surprises.
 

• A Last Call Anthology / A Collection of Exits

A collection of Williams exits performed by Festival artists, technicians, and staff from this year and years past.

• A Wild Card

A wild card is [defined as]:

• A person or thing whose behavior or effect is difficult to predict.
• An unpredictable factor that can change the outcome of a situation. 

·      A card having its value decided by the wishes of the players.