Shirley Knight to Lead Unperformed Tennessee Williams Play IN MASKS OUTRAGOUS AND AUSTERE at Culture Project this Spring

Shirley Knight, the Tony and Emmy Award winner (and two-time Academy Award nominee) will play Clarissa "Babe" Foxworth, heroine in the World Premiere of IN MASKS OUTRAGEOUS AND AUSTERE, the final full length play by Tennessee Williams, it was announced today by Producers Victor Syrmis, Carl Rumbaugh and Susan Batson, along with Culture Project (Allan Buchman, Artistic Director). Directed by David Schweizer,the play will begin performances on Thursday, April 5, 2012 with an Opening Night set for Monday, April 16, 2012 at Culture Project at 45 Bleecker (at Lafayette Street). The production is scheduled to play through May 26, 2012.

The play was written over the years 1979 until Williams's death in 1983, and was discovered some years later, having been protected from public scrutiny by Tennessee's friend, writer Gavin Lambert, who had collaborated with Williams on the dramaturgy of this work.

"We are thrilled to have Shirley Knight with us to bring In Masks Outrageous and Austere to life on the stage for the very first time," says director David Schweizer. "Her long, vivid and sensitive association with Tennessee and his work is well known of course. She collaborated with him actively and brilliantly when he was alive throughout his and her careers. What especially excites me is the fierce intelligence and bold virtuosity of her work, this towering role has finally been given the gift of the actress who can truly make it sing."

With In Masks Outrageous and Austere, Tennessee Williams continues to explore the passionate obsessions that made him famous in the early masterworks -the impenetrability of the human heart, the futility and hypocrisy of denying or displacing physical attraction, the power of love and its tyranny-while employing the dramaturgical freedom and aesthetic daring he discovered in his later plays. And all of this he does with the provocative wit and lyricism that was his hallmark.

"'Masks' is a sublimely haunting piece of theater and feels almost uncanny in its expressiveness as Tennessee's farewell piece," commented Schweizer. "There are utterly surprising, surreal theatrical gestures here, but also a deeply rooted, passionate sense of yearning that only he can evoke in the theater. I knew Tennessee when I was a young man and he was exactly the age that I am now, and I feel privileged to bring this astonishing work in all of its explosive theatricality, to the stage."

Additional cast and creative team will be announced shortly.

More information and tickets: (866) 811-4111 and http://www.cultureproject.org/