Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
by Tennessee Williams
directed by Davis Robinson
Beau Jest Moving Theatre
Boston, MA
A fantasy play featuring virtuoso guitar music.
Masks, marionettes, and a mariachi band enliven Ten Blocks on the Camino Real in this fun extravaganza from Boston’s Beau Jest Moving Theatre.
Director Davis Robinson, having staged two Festival world premieres by Williams (The Remarkable Rooming-House of Madame LeMonde and American Gothic), returns with an exciting production -- the first ever to follow Williams’ stage directions.
Ten Blocks is a fantasy play, written in the 1940's at the peak of Tennessee's creative powers. The play was never produced, but was expanded for Broadway as the more convoluted and realistic Camino Real. This shorter, earlier version was meant to be an impressionistic melding of action, poetry, music, masks and dance that Tennessee believed captured the world we live in with a new kind of "plastic theater."
"I tried to convey something wild and moving,
like clouds changing shape in a gale, or the dissolving images of a dream."
- Tennessee Williams
Beau Jest Moving Theatre is one of New England's premiere theater companies, known for their imaginative productions and a joyous physical acting style.
Winners of the 1995 Boston Theater Critics Circle Award and the 2010 Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) Award, they have long been recognized for their creative approach to theater.
Whether taking a full year to create an original work, or interpreting an existing script, the company brings their trademark blend of physical imagery and innovative staging to every show.
Beau Jest is an artist-run organization with a 26 year history of exploration and investigation into the role of the actor as creator, and the uses of movement and text to spark theatrical immediacy.
"This sort of freedom is not chaos.
On the contrary, it is the result of painstaking design, and
in this play I have given more conscious thought and
attention to construction
than I have in any work before."
- Tennessee Williams
Ten Blocks On The Camino Real
by Tennessee Willliams
directed by Davis Robinson
produced by Beau Jest Moving Theatre
Cast
Larry Coen* - Gutman
Robert Deveau - Casanova
Lauren Hallal - The Gypsy
Jordan Harrison - The Guitarist/Baron/Quixote
Kathleen Lewis - Esmerelda
Ellen Powers - Street Sweeper/Sancho
Nick Ronan - Kilroy
Robin JaVonne Smith - Officer/Street Sweeper/Singer
Lisa Tucker* - Marguerite/Madrecita
Musicians
Santiago Cardenas - Guitar
Adam Schutzman - Musical Saw/Bass/Foley
Mark Fredericks - Percussionist
Creative Team
Davis Robinson - Director
Colin Dieck - Stage Manager
Fabian Aguiar - Costume Designer
Don Dinicola - Composer
Judy Gailen - Set Designer
Libby Marcus - Mask & Puppet Designer
Karen Perlow - Lighting Designer
* Member of Actor's Equity Association