The Parade
The Parade
by Tennessee Williams
directed by Grant Kretchik
Martha Reutlinger
New York, New York
As the summer approaches the end of the summer – have you noticed?
– The sunsets from the dunes become more spectacular than ever.
The Parade, Or Approaching The End Of A Summer
Don, an undiscovered writer, knows the object of his affection can't return his love. In The Parade, Williams traces the contours of lost love like a sunset caresses the dunes in August.
Before he was “discovered,” Tennessee Williams spent several weeks in Provincetown during the summer of 1940. Here, at age 29, he led a bohemian life, writing poetry and sharing rooms with a small group of friends at Captain Jack's Wharf.
It is here that Tennessee -- perhaps for the first time in his life -- fell hopelessly, painfully in love with a Canadian draft dodger, a dancer who called himself Kip Kiernan.
"Endings, approaches to ending,
I guess they have a sort of special, theatrical interest for me which makes me suspect that
I may write a good many bad or not so good plays but will probably
always manage to come up with a pretty good ending for them... "
We suggest you see Something Cloudy, Something Clear after you take in The Parade.
Tennessee Williams began writing The Parade here in 1940. It is an "in the moment" response to the very real sting of a lost love during, as Williams said, “That pivotal summer when I took sort of a crash course in growing up.”
The manuscript was revised in 1962, and the play was first performed here in 2006. Like a musical prelude to a symphony, The Parade is the theme, and Something Cloudy is the variation, 40 years in the making.
Take this rare opportunity to see these two special plays in succession, in the town where they actually happened: a truly meaningful double-exposure.
"I’m conscious of my whole life stretching behind me.
I feel the weight of every single day. A weight and a vagueness, too. A tremendous vagueness.
I think that I’ve been traveling through fog. But look how brilliant it is!"