EDINBURGH 2023: Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams Q&A

BWW catches up with Jacob Storms to chat about bringing Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams to the 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Tell us a bit about Jacob Storms' Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Rising sheds light on the largely unexplored years of Tennessee Williams' early life and career, specifically 1939-1945, which are the extremely formative years during which Tom Williams becomes Tennessee Williams and experiences many things for the first time in his life like first-love, heartbreak, professional failure and his first professional success with his first Broadway play The Glass Menagerie. 

Why did you want to bring this show to Edinburgh?

Bringing Tennessee Rising to Edinburgh has been a dream for many years! I think it is the perfect place for my show especially because UK audiences seem to have an even bigger affinity for Williams and his work than America does at this point. Alan Cumming being from Scotland and my great grandmother having emigrated from Scotland to New York when she was twelve years old only makes it even more perfect in my mind. 

What is the history behind this production?

I became inspired to write Tennessee Rising after I was asked by Elizabeth Taylor's granddaughter to sing happy birthday to Elizabeth (for what would have been her 100th birthday) and host a screening of Williams' Cat On A Hot Tin Roof as a fundraiser for the arts magnet middle school I went to in Portland, Oregon called Da Vinci, which is where I became serious about acting. That was my first time seeing Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and on the big screen and in technicolor no less! The next day the fates led me to Tennessee's infamous memoir, which I devoured instantly. It was at that point that I realized I needed to write a show about him because I felt a kind of otherworldly connection to him. The brilliant playwright and actor Charles Busch then encouraged me to make the show after I had given up several times because it was such a daunting endeavor. I finally finished the show and performed it for the first time at the world's largest solo play festival, United Solo Fest, where I won the United Solo Award for Best One-Man Show out of 120 plays from six continents. I went on to be one of the first theatrical shows to play at Bill T. Jones' New York Lives Arts Theater and headlined at the 2018 St. Louis Tennessee Williams Festival. It was around this time I was introduced to Alan Cumming, who eventually came on board as director of the play. We worked together over a six month period in 2019 where he had me add dialogue and and rearrange some scenes while he gave me new blocking and polished my performance. We staged the show in New York and the new version was set to premiere at the 2020 New Orleans Tennessee Williams Festival but was canceled due to the shutdown that month. The new version finally premiered at the AMT Theater in New York where I did a limited Off-Broadway run in Spring 2023. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival will be the international premiere of Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams. 

Who would you like to come and see it?

Tennessee Rising is a real treat for fans of Williams and his work because it is during the six year period my play explores that he encounters many of the real life characters who will go on to inspire his major characters like Big Daddy, Maggie The Cat, Amanda & Laura, etc. I am happy to say that I have also had many people approach me after the show to tell me they knew nothing about Tennessee Williams before seeing my show but after watching became inspired to investigate his work, which was exactly my intention when I created the show.

What would you like audiences to take away from it?

I think Tennessee Rising is unique because it presents Williams in a way he has never been seen: as a young man, not yet successful, trying to make his way in the world as World War 2 rages in the background. Tennessee's experiences throughout this years influenced him for the rest of his life both politically and socially and it is exciting to be able to present some of Tennessee's feelings about that period which is in stark contrast to the propagandized version of World War 2 we are still sold to this day. My intention is to leave the audience with a better understanding of who Tennessee was as person before he became a kind of caricature of himself and ideally audiences will see some of themselves in Tennessee's struggles and successes as I did when I became inspired to write the show a decade ago. 

Photo credit: Ellen McDermott 

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