TACT Hosts Post-Show Discussions For 'Eccentricities'

 New Yorkers are getting a "Southern Treat" as the work of famed playwright Tennessee Williams is available on various stages around the city.  The most recent offering being The Actors Company Theatre's long-awaited production of Tennessee Williams' The Eccentricities of a Nightingale.  In honor of this production TACT will host several post-show discussions exploring the life, love and work of Williams.  These discussions will take place directly after the performances at the Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row on West 42nd Street and are free with a purchase of a ticket to the performance.  The Eccentricities of a Nightingale is directed by Jenn Thompson and opens May 5th, 2008.
 
Tennessee's Leading Lady: Elizabeth Ashley
Tony-award winning actress Elizabeth Ashley discusses her favorite Williams roles and recounts stories about her special friendship with the playwright.  Following the 2:00pm performance Saturday, May 10th.
 
Following Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, for which she won a third Tony nomination, celebrated actress Elizabeth Ashley struck up a close friendship with the playwright. Over time she would play and come to define three of his (and the theater's) finest female roles: Mrs. Venable in Suddenly, Last Summer (1995), Alexandra Del Lago in Sweet Bird of Youth (1998) and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie (2001). In addition, she also appeared in Williams' Eight by Tenn (a series of his one-act plays), Out Cry, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore and The Red Devil Battery Sign. In 2005, 31 years after playing Maggie, she was once again praised in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, this time as Big Mama. A veteran of theatre, film and television, Miss Ashley will return to Broadway this fall in Horton Foote's Dividing The Estate.
 
After The Fall: Williams later years.
Williams expert and acclaimed author Annette Saddik discusses The Eccentricities of a Nightingale and sheds light on Williams struggles at the end of his career.  Following the 2:00pm performance Saturday, May 17th.
 
Annette J. Saddik is an Associate Professor in the English Department at New York City College of Technology (CUNY), and also teaches in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her area of specialization is twentieth-century drama and performance, particularly the work of Tennessee Williams. She has edited and introduced a collection of Williams' previously unpublished later plays, The Traveling Companion and Other Plays, which has just been published by New Directions. She is also the author of Contemporary American Drama (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), which explores the performance of American identity on the stage since WW II, and The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams' Later Plays (Associated University Presses, 1999), and has published several essays on Williams as well as on David Mamet, Sam Shepard, and Antonin Artaud in Modern Drama, TDR: a journal of performance studies, Études Théâtrales, The South Atlantic Review, The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, The Undiscovered Country: The Later Plays of Tennessee Williams, and The Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia. Dr. Saddik also serves on the Editorial Board of Theatre Topics, and lectures widely on twentieth-century drama.

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