The Angel in the Alcove
by Tennessee Williams
with "Airing Old Clothes"
created and performed by Runn Shayo
directed by Anthoullis Demosthenous
featuring Marios Mettis and Runn Shayo
DRAMA
A former boarding-house tenant recalls his strange company in this gritty elegy adapted from a Williams short story.
POREIA THEATRE GROUP
Cyprus
ALLERGEN WARNING: During the show, food is served to the audience that contains wheat, raisins, almonds, and confectioners sugar. Frankincense is used sparingly throughout the performance.
This theatrical take on a 1943 Williams short story is set in a rooming house on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. In the hallways, a young artist collides with eccentric tenants, a heroic widow, and a paranoid landlady. In his room, his sole friend is an angelic gray figure who appears in the alcove, but only when the light is just right.
This wistful, beautifully observed short story comes to life onstage thanks to the imagination of a director and author obsessed with Williams: Anthoullis Demosthenous, from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.
In his book Saint Tennessee Williams on Stage, Demosthenous reflects on Williams’ works as religious drama. His vision of the The Angel in the Alcove cloisters a narrator into a small, spare room questioning what keeps us trapped and what – or who --allows us to break free.
In his first visit to Provincetown, Demosthenous, along with Marios Mettis, will present this richly-textured take on Williams by remounting the 2014 Cyprus production in English.
The Angel in the Alcove is performed alongside Airing Old Clothes, a performance art piece created by Runn Shayo. Airing Old Clothes is inspired by some of Yukio Mishima's earliest writing: five haiku he wrote when he was sixteen. In these three-lined 17-syllable poems, Mishima seems to be imagining his grandmother's aristocratic early life, taking on as his own her power, pain, and sexuality. In movement prompted by the strokes Mishima used to write his poems with a brush, Shayo's choreography embodies and riffs on imagery the poems describe: discovering a stain of perfume on an old ball gown, distant thunder, fireflies.