The Williams Project Presents CHAMPAGNE + SODOMY: The Art And Crime Of Oscar Wilde

This summer, The Williams Project launches a sumptuous and audacious theatrical experiment, Champagne + Sodomy: The Art and Crime of Oscar Wilde, with a two-week-only developmental workshop production.

In a decadent, unruly, and genre-bending immersive staging, this evening-length event brings together Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest with Moisés Kaufman's Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, a docu-play created from the transcripts of Wilde's sodomy trials. Performances run July 28 - August 5, 2023 at Base: Experimental Arts + Space, in Georgetown's Equinox Studios. Tickets are on sale now at TheWilliamsProject.org. 

This summer's workshop inaugurates a new model through which The Williams Project will build its work and share it with audiences. The company will no longer imitate traditional annual seasons. Instead, they will move to a project-based summer festival, in which the company's artists will work on each theatrical event more than once, in multiple new iterations over multiple years, inviting audiences to experience each step in an idea's developmental trajectory. Ultimately, The Williams Project aims to build a repertoire of projects in the company's distinctive style that can be remounted, presented, toured, and deepened through sustained investigation. A few years from now, in a single festival line-up, Seattle audiences might see the first iteration of an experiment with a new text, the first full production of a play they've workshopped over previous summers, and a remount of a staple of the company's repertoire before it transfers to another city—all performed in repertory. 

“The Williams Project wants to make theatre that is epic in scope, ideologically complex, emotionally fearless, and a feast of language” says Executive Director Ellen Abram. “At a time when most theatres are seeing audiences shrink, our most recent shows, James 

Baldwin's The Amen Corner and Lorraine Hansberry's The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, attracted some of our largest audiences to date, even though both are challenging works. Audiences have an appetite for 'a full meal'—ambitious art that takes risks. At the same time, we're seeing many of our peer organizations become more conservative in every way, in response to financial pressures. We've come to believe that the traditional producing model doesn't adequately support the kind of rigor and experimentation we're interested in. This summer is about leaning into a paradigm-shifting way of building our shows. We're betting we can engage audiences in the long-term project of creating something truly special. And we're betting on them preferring messy, intimate excellence over small, careful productions along the way.”

“Our goal is always to find the magic: not just to do good productions, but to make fully embodied, fully alive, fully revealed masterpieces. And we know that takes time and willingness to risk and fail,” says Purcell. “When Prince (my favorite musician) was at the height of his fame, playing sold-out arenas all over the world, he would also find time to do small club shows with just him and his piano. The arena spectacle and the piano in the club are both irrepressible and virtuosic artistic experiences: up close and personal, or part of a community of thousands, they feed each other. We're interested in creating a theatrical equivalent: a place for exceptional artists to develop work from the club to the arena, inviting audiences to experience that magic at different points and at different scales.” 

“This model isn't entirely new for The Williams Project. Both 2015's Orpheus Descending and 2017's Blues for Mister Charlie were developed iteratively, over multiple years starting with limited-run workshop productions. Audiences helped us discover the rough magic those shows contained. And anyone who saw 2018's Blood Wedding or 2021's Marisol knows how much more vital theatrical events feel when they are fully immersive experiences. This is the energy our company wants to pursue.” 

Champagne + Sodomy, this summer's theatrical event exploring the life and art of Oscar Wilde, will be the company's first project explicitly developed and presented within this new framework. The performance will juxtapose the effervescent, subversive high comedy of The Importance of Being Earnest with the political reality of Wilde's persecution by the state, taking audiences from sumptuous salons to reactionary courtrooms. Says Artistic Director Ryan Guzzo Purcell, “We want you to drink champagne. We want you to laugh uproariously. We want you to be drawn into the drama of an individual standing up to state power. Taken separately, both shows are exceptional theater. Taken together, they viscerally connect one of the most popular comedies of the 20th century with the fact that its author was sent to die in prison for how he fucked. Reactionary, anti-queer politics are on the rise, and we want to explore what makes so much of our culture so drawn to queer art while feeling so afraid of the queers that make it.” 

The Williams Project's cast and creative team is assembled from nationally-renowned performers and local favorites. Champagne + Sodomy will feature the work of returning Williams Project collaborators Grant Chapman (The Williams Project: Orpheus Descending, The Glass Menagerie, A Bright Room Called Day, Blues for Mister Charlie, “The Bar Plays”), Rebecca Gibel (The Williams Project: Orpheus Descending, Blood Wedding, Blues for Mister Charlie; Film: Best Picture Oscar-Winner CODA, Bridge and Tunnel opposite Ed Burns), and set and costume designer An-lin Dauber (The Williams Project: Blood Wedding, A Bright Room Called Day, “The Bar Plays,” Marisol, The Amen Corner, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window; Seattle Rep: The Tempest (upcoming Public Works), Metamorphoses). Making their Williams Project debut, the cast also includes Jomar Tagatac (American Conservatory Theater: Vietgone, Poor Yella Rednecks; Berkeley Rep: Wintertime; Cal Shakes: The War of the Roses, Everybody, As You Like It) and Seattle's own Nicholas Japaul Bernard (Seattle Rep: Teenage Dick, ArtsWest: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, ACT Theatre: Choir Boy, 5th

Avenue Theatre: Into the Woods, The Wiz, Beauty and the Beast) and Ricky Spaulding (ReBoot Theatre Company/Seattle Public Theatre: 110 in the Shade; Washington Ensemble Theatre: Arlington, Taproot: The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley; TV: Hulu's Shrill). Nick O'Leary (Dacha Theatre, Dixon Place, The Brick, The Flea) will create the workshop's video design, Tori Thompson (The Williams Project: Blues for Mister Charlie, ACT Theatre, Seattle Rep Public Works, Village Theatre, On the Boards) will stage manage, and Antonieta Carpio (Washington Ensemble Theatre, Seattle Public Theater, ArtsWest) will assistant stage manage. 

For tickets and more information, go to TheWilliamsProject.org. 

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