Once in a Lifetime
Once in a Lifetime
by Tennessee Williams
directed by Dennis Gromelski, Patrick Falco, Jef Hall-Flavin and David Kaplan
Fusion Theatre Company
in association with the Provincetown TW Festival
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Once In A Lifetime
In this unpublished, never-before-seen Williams play, two conservative Midwestern families, on a momentous summer road trip to New Mexico, stop at a hotel. Coming to us from Albuquerque is Fusion Theatre Company, directed by Dennis Gromelski.
Join these bumbling travelers – in an actual hotel – together with three of our signature premieres from past Festivals: The Traveling Companion (dir. David Kaplan), Sunburst (dir. Patrick Falco), and Green Eyes, (dir. Jef Hall-Flavin).
The sold-out success of our 2009 production of The Hotel Plays prompted us to revisit the idea for our Centennial celebration, this time with four plays we have brought to life in Provincetown.
This is environmental theater at is very best.
You'll travel from room to room and behold four short “hotel plays” up-close and personal… a “once in a lifetime” journey.
Space is limited, so hurry and buy your tickets!
Sunburst
Featuring the inimitable stage veteran Beverly Bentley, and heartthrob Brian Patacca, Sunburst made its premiere at the 2007 Festival under the direction of Patrick Falco.
Miss Sails, “a lady of somewhat advanced years” who “is in retirement from a long career as an actress,” falls hostage to Luigi and Giuseppe, young men scheming to steal her priceless sunburst diamond. Miss Sails attempts to resist her captors by reciting quotations from Shakespeare.
Williams said there would be “no more Southern Belles” in his later work, and his late heroines are no longer defeated by life nor are they left to the mercy of a cruel world. Like Miss Sails, these characters find the strength to survive on their own terms and mirror Williams’ own struggle in his later years.
Green Eyes
The kinkiest play Tennessee Williams ever wrote. This erotic thriller made its premiere in 2008 here in Provincetown. Jaimi Paige reprises her dazzling performance this year with Matt Rein.
By the time Williams wrote Green Eyes, or No Sight Would Be Worth Seeing (1970), the sexual revolution was in full swing, America was experiencing its greatest turmoil since the Civil War, and Williams had hit bottom in his private life. In this short play, rough sex teeters on a thin edge with spiritual awakening. The sexual act, in and of itself, is important, and its voltage is passed from character to character. Other one-act plays by Williams explore questions of sex and power, but in Green Eyes Williams raised the stakes and the intensity, fusing anger, fear, and desire into a communion of complete emotional exposure.
The Traveling Companion
Jeremy Lawrence and Zachary Clause have performed this intimate drama in four states and two continents, including a crowd-pleasing performance in Dublin, Ireland.
It's an intense debate -- in a hotel room -- between a younger man (Beau, an inexperienced hustler full of sexual potency) and an older man (Vieux, a neurotic, insecure writer).
Even before the death of his longtime companion Frank Merlo in 1963, Tennessee Williams was rarely without an additional “assistant,” “secretary,” or “companion” of some kind, often more than one at a time. The play exposes Williams' feeling that there are always business-like transactions and emotional compromises to be made in every kind of love relationship.