A Visit with the Killer Queens Creative Team!

The Vengeance of Nitocris & The Pronoun ‘I’

In Ancient Egypt a sister avenges the death of her brother, the Pharaoh. In a very Merrie Olde England, shape-shifting Mad Queen May renounces her newest pretty lover, an enormously vain poet who cannot begin a poem without the pronoun ‘I.” Just what Provincetown needed: two more killer queens! Adapted from Tennessee Williams’ first published work (“The Vengeance of Nitocris,” 1928), and Williams’ bawdy fantasy one-act (The Pronoun ‘I’) published in 2008. The ensemble is a mix of artists from Capetown South Africa and Cape Cod locals.

Q: One of these texts is from the beginning of TW's career, the other is near the end. What do you think they have in common?

A: Both these pieces reflect, yet refract, similar dramatic DNA. In the short story from the 1920s, a Queen/lover violently avenges the death of her brother/lover. In the playlet from the mid-1970s, a Queen/lover violently disposes of her narcissistic poet/lover. In the short story the queen is doomed to choose suicide rather than death at the hands of an angry mob, but by the late 70s Williams offers his queen not only reprieve and liberation from a similar angry mob but grants her rapacious relief in the arms of her new-found revolutionary lover as the play concludes. Both pieces illustrate how Williams would use tiny kernels of biographical truth, not to write autobiography, but to forge startlingly inventive myth and fantasy.

Q: What is the appeal of Ancient Egypt (or an Ancient Egyptian Queen) to a teenage boy in St. Louis? To us, now?

A:  A century ago, the world was swept up in “Tutmania” after the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Ancient Egypt was all the rage in fashion, architecture, and popular culture. Tom Williams was in his early adolescence during this period. The mysterious, ritualistic world of the Pharaohs with its secret rites, half-animal-half-human gods and goddesses was bound to make an impression on the fertile imagination of the young poet/playwright. It’s also during this time that Williams discovers Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra in his grandfather’s classical library – another Egyptian queen, who shows up in many guises in Williams’ later works like A Streetcar Named Desire and Sweet Bird of Youth. The appeal of Ancient Egypt to Williams, then, and to us now, is that Egypt is a magic-mirror-like prism through which to view ourselves and our own society, the land of the Pharaohs, strangely familiar to us, but at the same time highly romantic, mystical, mythic, and mysterious.

Q: How does The Pronoun 'I' connect to other texts from his late period?

A:  The Pronoun ‘I’ forms part of a very exciting and boldly adventurous period in Williams’ writing. During this period in the mid-1970s Williams undertakes an exploration in the dramaturgical possibilities of a highly stylized and fantastical “lyric theatre” – a form of spoken ballet or opera. Other short pieces from this period include A Cavalier for Milady in which the ghost of Vaslav Nijinsky appears to a highly sexed girl/woman in a luxurious Manhattan apartment and Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws, set in a dystopian purgatory-like future which calls for extensive danced sequences. Explorations in short form, like The Pronoun ‘I’, Cavalier for Milady and Now the Cats finally culminate in sensationally sensual and unconventional full-length “lyric” plays like THIS IS (An Entertainment) and In Masks Outrageous and Austere.

Q: What were your considerations staging a short story vs staging a surreal play?

A:  The main aim in presenting The Vengeance of Nitocris is focusing the audience’s attention on Williams’ rich prose and incredible prowess as a storyteller, therefore, distilling the movement, gesture, and visuals to the absolute essentials to encourage the audience to surrender to a primarily aural experience. Almost the opposite is true of The Pronoun ‘I’, which is a rich, ripe, baroque piece of ‘total’ theatre, where images, sounds, music, dance, poetic text, and gesture co-exist in abundance to create Williams’ vision of a ‘spoken ballet theatre.’