BECOMING BLANCHE
Experiments in Performing Tennessee’s Legendary Tragic Heroine
The experiment: three actresses of three different generations performing
Blanche DuBois at the same time, revealing the many layers of the
character and the way Blanche performs her past, her present, and
premonitions of her future. In this conversation and open rehearsal,
Beth Bartley, Janet Shea, and Aimée Hayes will perform and converse
about the experience and the gift of playing Blanche. Audience members
will have the opportunity to ask questions after the performance and
discussion. Directed by playwright Lisa D’Amour.
Beaubourg Theatre, $20 or VIP Pass, Thursday, March 26, 3 – 4:15 PM
TWO FOR TENNESSEE
Presented by Second Star New Orleans
Original One Act Plays Inspired by the Life and Legacy of Tennessee Williams
Brick by Jon Broder features two old friends meeting for that most
New Orleans of traditions: a long and booze-filled Friday lunch in the
200 block of Bourbon Street. Experiences and emotions are exposed,
one cocktail at a time, and everyone you know is watching. Wrists and
Flowers by James Bartelle is set in August of 2012, and Hurricane Isaac
is bearing down on New Orleans. Two women have offered shelter from
the storm to a couch-surfer on the run from her own memories. There is
thunder in the air and in the memories of the three women stuck together
for one fateful night.
Beaubourg Theatre, $15 or VIP Pass, Friday, March 27, 2:30 – 4:15 PM
BARLE AND BARBARA: TWO CAUTIONARY TALES BY
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Brenda Currin, an actress associated with writers Capote, Toole, Welty,
and Williams, tells Williams’ short story “Mother Yaws,” first published
in Esquire magazine in 1977. David Kaplan, curator and co-founder of
the Tennessee Williams Festival in Provincetown, reads Williams’ “Das
Wasser Ist Kalt,” first published in Antaeus magazine in 1982. It has been
reported that when Blanche was led away at the end of A Streetcar Named
Desire, Williams could be heard in the audience laughing. That same sense
of humor lights up these two comic gothic tales Williams wrote in the
‘70s, finding the fun in thwarted desire, sour marriage, public humiliation,
betrayal, aging, rejection, disease and death. Currin and Kaplan have been
amusing each other (and audiences) in New Orleans since Dr. Kenneth
Holditch invited their acclaimed fantasia and adaptation of the works of
Eudora Welty, Sister and Miss Lexie, to play at the Festival in 1989.
Sponsored by Helen and George Ingram.
Beaubourg Theatre, $15 or VIP Pass
Friday, March 27, 1 – 2 PM
Saturday, March 28, 4 – 5 PM
STAGED READING OF THE WINNING ONE-ACT PLAY
Twenty-Two by Erin Considine
The Festival is proud to showcase the winning play of this year’s One-
Act Play Contest in a dynamic staged reading of the script. The contest
winner, Erin Considine received a $1,500 cash prize. This reading is
presented by the University of New Orleans Department of Film and
Theatre under the direction of David W. Hoover. The Creative Writing
Workshop (MFA Program) at the University of New Orleans administers
and coordinates the competition and judging. This year’s judge is Peter
Hagan, president of the Dramatists Play Service.
Our one-act contest was sponsored by The Favrot-Van Horn Fund.
Beaubourg Theatre, $10 or Literary Discussion, Combo, or VIP Pass
Sunday, March 29, 11 – 12:15 PM
TENNESSEE X THREE
A STAGED READING PRESENTED BY THE NOLA PROJECT
Co-written with Dorothy Shapiro, “Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!” is an
early Williams work which was his first to receive a full production in
1936. It concerns an unknown author who plans to leave America for
Paris, where he believes he will find kindred spirits. In “The Case of the
Crushed Petunias,” Miss Dorothy Simple, proprietor of the Simple
Notions Shop in Primanproper, Massachusetts, has barricaded her house
and heart behind a double row of petunias. Today, however, she has
awakened to find every petunia crushed. When a Young Man arrives to
confess his crime, he comes on a mission to alert Miss Dorothy to the
“miraculous accident of being alive.” The third offering is “Why Do You
Smoke So Much, Lily?” where we find Mrs. Yorke and her daughter
in disagreement about how Lily spends her time (smoking and reading
too much), while Lily believes her mother only wants her to marry and
become part of high society. Once her mother leaves, we see it’s more than
smoking that Lily has a problem controlling.
Beaubourg Theatre, $20 or VIP Pass
Sunday, March 29, 1 – 2:15 PM
MARCH 25-29, 2020
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