Municipal Abattoir

by Tennessee Williams 

A THRILLER 

Performed in Provincetown, MA 

Performed by Ben Berry, David Drake, Ian Leahy  and Darlene Van Alstyne 

Directed by David Kaplan 

Produced by the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

Williams' play positions a government clerk on route  to the abattoir, summoned ordered there for asking a  question: did a squirrel — or was it a chipmunk? — run ning on a treadmill in a shop window ever get a break?  Or perhaps the clerk has been summoned to the abattoir  because he sent an appeal to the government when his  daughter was drafted into the Municipal Whorehouse. 

Appeals and questions are traitorous and ultimately stifled  in the world of Williams’ play, as they were around the  world when the idea of a municipal abattoir first occurred  to Williams in the 1930s. Germany, Russia, Japan, and  America required the discipline of citizens suppressing  themselves for the greater good as they prepared for  the inevitable second World War. After the narrator of  Williams’ The Glass Menagerie scribbles a poem on a  shoebox lid, he will be fired; he has interrupted the shoe  factory’s efficiency. 

Williams continued working on The Municipal Abattoir  through the 1960s, when self-denunciations and public  executions fueled the Cultural Revolution in Maoist China.