Amazing!
Sci-Fi Hotel Plays
Directed by Brenna Geffers
@ Harbor Hotel · 698 Commercial Street
A Sci-Fi Fantasy of texts by Tennessee Williams performed in hotel rooms. Welcome to the eerie boardinghouse of Williams’ The Strange Play. The boarders include a time-travelling sailor and a witch who collects tinfoil. The room where The Chalky White Substance performs is host to a young man in a desert after a nuclear war, waiting for his older "protector." In another room, the devotee of an unnamed Saint offers Chronicle of a Demise, an eye-witness account of an ascent to Heaven.
Audiences move on separate tracks from room to room, then gather together as the boarders harmonize and the Sci Fi Hotel plays conclude. Hotel rooms are familiar settings for plays by Tennessee Williams. Staging such plays in hotel rooms, offering portals to the alternate reality of each play, has been a Festival practice (and audience favorite) since 2009. The 2023 Hotel Plays are staged by Brenna Geffers and the Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble.