Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
by Tennessee Williams
OPEN-AIR DRAMA
directed by David Kaplan
A big-hearted Williams one-act about love and heroism, staged with West African flair in a performance full of vibrant song and dance, perfectly suited to the outdoor marketplace.
NATIONAL THEATRE OF GHANA
Accra, Ghana
This one-act play from 1947, which eventually became Williams’ full-length drama Camino Real in 1953, still stands as a thrilling phantasmagoria about a big-hearted hero lost in a ruthless world. It’s the story of Kilroy, a boxer with a “heart as big as the head of a baby,” who falls in love with a Gypsy’s daughter – and remains faithful even after death.
Director David Kaplan created this production with Abibigromma, the national drama company of Ghana. The show has played outdoors in Ghanaian marketplaces, and arrives as part of a multi-city tour in summer 2017 to communities throughout the United States.
In Provincetown, the show performs at the “bas relief,” the green park behind Town Hall at the foot of Pilgrim Monument.
Ten Blocks on the Camino Real is thematically paired with DieCast’s production of Pericles.
About The Production
Ten Blocks on the Camino Real was written by Tennessee Williams in 1947 as a one-act play that relates in song, dialogue, and dance how the American hero Kilroy maintains his open heart in a grasping world, even after death.
This production played outdoors at marketplaces in Accra, Ghana in April 2016, and continues to tour throughout Ghana. Performed in English, this 75-minute production retains the words of Williams' text, yet it specific to Ghanaian culture. For example, the "player of the blue guitar Williams describes is now a traditional Ghanaian drummer. And in the last scene, Don Quixote and Sancho are identified instead as Okomfo Okokye and Osei-tutu, the founders of the line of Ashanti kings in Ghana. In becoming Sancho, Kilroy accepts the golden stool that denotes kingship and puts on African robes.
US Tour
This September, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real comes to Provincetown as part of a multi-city U.S. tour, hosted by the Festival in partnership with the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis, the University of Michigan in Detroit and Ann Arbor, the Georgetown University Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in Washington, D.C., and Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
2017 U.S. Tour – Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
Sept 7 – 11 Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis
Sept 12 – 18 University of Michigan Ann Arbor, with performances in Detroit
Sept 21 – 24 Provincetown TW Theater Festival
Sept 25 – 27 Georgetown Univ. Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, Washington D.C.
Sept 28 – 29 Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts
About The Creative Team
Since 1993, festival Curator David Kaplan has staged plays by Williams in Russia, Hong Kong, Uruguay, and throughout America, most recently the 2016 Rooming House Plays in St. Louis. He is the author of two sets of textbooks for theater students in college as well as the books Tennessee Williams in Provincetown and Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams on Stage.
Abibigromma was established in 1983 at the University of Ghana at Legon and became the resident troupe of the National Theatre of Ghana in 1991. The focus of Abibigromma is to develop a rich blend of music, dance, mime, movement, and dialogue with a strong social, spiritual, and folkloric base.
The mission statement of the National Theatre of Ghana puts it succinctly:
"Development is usually defined as both a process and a goal of bringing about a social change in order to improve the living standards of a people. It aims at a planned change by transfer of knowledge and skills through non-formal education. Since development as a process aims at bringing improvement not only in the physical and social conditions of the people, but also durable gains in the people's ability to control and sustain the improved conditions, theatre by its nature is a powerful, natural partner, an absolute essential in pushing developmental issues through. This is our Company's interest in the form."