Jeremy Lawrence Joins 92Y's Celebration Of Tennessee Williams 2/7

Acclaimed actor/writer Jeremy Lawrence has just been added to the performers taking part in the sold-out "A Celebration of Tennessee Williams" this Monday night, February 7th at the 92nd Street Y. www.92y.org. (212 315-0231) Jeremy joins Alec Baldwin, Zoe Caldwell, Michael Cristofer, Olympia Dukakis, Zoe Kazan, Tony Kushner, Jessica Lange, Marian Seldes and Angelica Torn in this evening of readings in honor of playwright Tennessee Williams whose centenary is celebrated in 2011. The evening is in collaboration with New Directions Publishing and the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.

The 92nd Street Y event is the first of many Tennessee Williams centenerary events featuring Jeremy Lawrence who is currently receiving critical praise in his multiple role appearance in What the Public Wants now at the Mint Theatre in NYC through March 13th. www.theminttheater.com (212 315-0231).

On March 26th and 27th Lawrence returns for his seventh season at the New Orleans Tennessee Williams Festival www.tenneseewilliams.net (504.581.1144 | 800.990.FEST) with a new piece, his fourth Williams solo show: Tom and Rose: My Sister Was Quicker at Everything Than I. On March 26th he will also participate in the special event "Happy Birthday, Mr. Williams."

Immediately following New Orleans, on March 31 Jeremy will perform the New York premiere of A Lonely Man's Habit, which is derived largely from material from Williams' Notebooks, at the cell, a twenty first century salon, www.thecelltheatre.org as part of the Solo @ the cell evenings. A Lonely Man's Habit will play March 30 & 31, April 1, 2 @ 8:00 and April 3 @ 3:00 and then go into repertory through April 16. Tickets are available through brown paper tickets www.brownpapertickets.com (800 838-3006).

Jeremy Lawrence then travels to Atlanta for a performance of his show Everyone Expects Me to Write Another "Streetcar" on April 18 as part of the Southern Writers Onstage series being organized by Pearl McHaney Associate Professor of English, Georgia State University pmchaney@gsu.edu with funding provided by the GSU Foundation and the Kenneth M. England Southern Literature.

Finally with Emmy award winning director Lewis Gould, Lawrence has created a multi-character Williams evening, Look at Me!
Mr. Lawrence, who aspires to do for Tennessee Williams what HAl Holbrook has done for Mark Twain, has played all the major Willliams Festivals as well as playing Tennessee in productions in New York and Los Angeles. His first one-man show Talking Tennessee, named 'Critics Choice' by the L.A. Times, led to his being cast as "the Writer" in Five by Tenn directed by Michael Kahn, first at the Kennedy Center and later at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Everyone Expects Me to Write Another "Streetcar" was produced by the TOSOS Theatre Company for a limited run at NYC's Abingdon Theatre in 2008. He has also toured in Tennessee Suite, an evening of two of the playwrights late one-acts directed by David Kaplan, most recently at the Absolut Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival. John Guare wrote: "Lawrence's uncanny and unsentimental depiction of Tennessee Williams as a playwright and man at the end of his life is thrillingly eerie, on target, and life affirming".

Jeremy Lawrence is an actor and a playwright. His Off-Broadway credits include his current show What the Public Wants at the Mint, So Help Me God! starring Kristin Johnston at the Lucille Lortel, and Five by Tenn at the Manhattan Theatre Club. His Berlin cabaret: Lavender Songs won Backstage's Bravo award. His first TV credit was delivering Ritchie's baby on Happy Days. More recently he was seen on Law and Order SVU. On film he has been directed by Brian De Palma, Ron Howard, and Stephen Herek (in the original Critters.)

His original plays have been produced at Buffalo's Studio Arena Theatre and Chicago's Northlight Theater and have received developmental productions at Sundance, The Old Globe in San Diego, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Mark Taper Forum and South Coast Repertory

His adaptation of cabaret songs and sketches from Berlin between the wars, CABARET VERBOTEN, has been produced around the country, in Sweden and in London. His English versions of the songs of this era have been recorded by Ute Lemper on her best selling CD, BERLIN CABARET SONGS.

Jeremy Lawrence said: "I never met Tennessee Williams. I saw him only once in a box at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven at a preview of Out Cry in 1973. I first became involved as an actor with Mr. Williams in a literary cabaret, Where I Live based on his essays presented by the Mark Taper Forum in 1983, the year of his death. Since then I have created four shows from the words and works of Tennessee: Talking Tennessee, Everyone Expects Me to Write Another Streetcar, A Lonely Man's Habit, and Look at Me. I am presently at work on the newest show Tom and Rose. In addition I have played in two late Williams' one acts, The Traveling Companion and The Chalky White Substance, played in an evening of his poetry Lament for the Moths, played "the Writer" in Five by Tenn and the playwright himself in readings of Mr. Williams and Miss Wood opposite Frances Sternhagen as well as reading Hart Crane opposite Marian Seldes as Crane's mother in Williams' Steps Must Be Gentle. I was part of both Tennessee Williams Festivals held in Key West, have appeared twice at the Tennessee Williams Tribute in Columbus, Mississippi, three times at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival and will be making my seventh appearance at the Tennessee Williams Literaty Festival in New Orleans this year. I am also proud of being part of the induction of Tennessee Williams to the Poet's Corner of St. John the Divine."