Jeremy Lawrence is Tennessee Williams in Solo Show

Accomplished actor and playwright Jeremy Lawrence returns to the 'role' of the older Tennessee Williams in the compelling, tour-de-force play EVERYONE EXPECTS ME TO WRITE ANOTHER STREET: An Evening With Tennessee Williams.  The words and works of Mr. Williams are arranged and performed by Jeremy Lawrence.  TOSOS II presents this limited engagement as part of the Ethyl Eichelberger Solo Show Project (Jamie Heinlien, Director) at the Dorothy Strelsin Theatre/Abington Theatre Arts Complex, 312 West 36th Street (bet 8th-9th Aves) on June 16, 17, 18 & 19 at 8 PM.  Tickets at $20 are available at (212) 330-7043.  The Box Office opens one hour prior to curtain on performance days.

Mr. Lawrence describes his play: "Tennessee talking and entertaining about the years when the "Streetcar named success" stopped running, but the writing continued. Drawing on various sources, through anecdote, memoir, poetry, and the plays themselves, Tennessee muses about the turn away from Broadway, his search for new styles of writing, the battle with the critics, homosexuality and the gay life style, his breakdown and of course his will to survive. "Make voyages! – Attempt them! -- there's nothing else..."

"EVERYONE EXPECTS ME TO WRITE ANOTHER STREETCAR" had its World Premiere as a benefit for the Abington Theatre in March, 2007.  It was subsequently performed at The 2007 and 2008  Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festivals; NYC's Cornelia Street Cafe; The 2007 O'Neill Cabaret Conference; the 2007 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, and at the Emelin Theatre.

JEREMY LAWRENCE has appeared on stage in New York, Los Angeles and in regional theatres across the country as well as at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.  He played 'The Writer' in "Five By Tenn" at the Kennedy Center and at the Manhattan Theatre Club.  On film he has been directed by Brian De Palma, Ron Howard, and Stephen Herek (the original CRITTERS). Television credits include delivering Ritchie's baby on Happy Days, threatening to burn an original copy of the Constitution on NIGHT COURT and himself on E.R., marrying Drew Carey to his gay boss on the DREW CAREY show and threatening to lobotomize the comic trio STELLA. He is seen on the internet in the series INHUMAN RESOURCES and in the film THE FOLD.  His plays have been produced and developed around the country. His cabaret of queer Berlin cabaret from Weimar to Hitler "Lavender Songs" produced by TOSOS II won a Bistro Award from Backstage this past year.

In 1974, Off-Off Broadway veteran Doric Wilson, cabaret star Billy Blackwell and director Peter dell Valle, started New York City's first professional gay theatre company. It was called The Other Side of Silence—TOSOS for short. In 2000, twenty-six years later, directors Mark Finley and Barry Childs and playwright Wilson resurrected the company as TOSOS II, dedicating it to "an honest and open exploration of the life experience and cultural sensibility of our community and to preserving and promoting our literary past in a determined effort to keep our theatrical heritage alive."

The TOSOS II Ethyl Eichelberger Solo Show Project is named for and dedicated to Ethyl Eichelberger (1945-1990) who was a key player in the manic East Village scene of the 1980s. Best remembered today for his high octane solo drag plays and performances, for nearly 20 years Ethyl wrote, produced, staged and starred in a series of 32 madcap and highly idiosyncratic poetic plays based in the lives of great women of history, literature and myth.  The project is under the directorship of Jamie Heinlein. Elizabeth Whitney's Wonder Woman, The Musical opened the Ethyl Eichelberger Solo Show Project, followed by Jeremy Lawrence's Lavender Songs, a survey of cabaret songs from  Berlin's Weimar Republic which won the 2007 Back Stage Magazine Bistro Award, and Jennifer Joy Pawlitschek's The Physics of Love, directed by Jonathan Warman.  "Everyone Expects Me to Write Another Streetcar" is the fourth presentation of the series. (For more info go to www.tosos2.org) 

To post a comment, you must register and login.