Tony Award Winner Shirley Knight to Lead Culture Project's IN MASKS OUTRAGEOUS AND AUSTERE

As BroadwayWorld previously reported, Shirley Knight, Tony and Emmy Award winner (and two-time Academy Award nominee) will play Clarissa "Babe" Foxworth, in the World Premiere of Tennessee Williams' In Masks Outrageous and Austere, the final full length play by the great American dramatist. Directed by David Schweizer, the play will begin performances on Thursday, April 5, 2012 with an Opening Night set for Monday, April 16, 2012 at Culture Project at 45 Bleecker (at Lafayette Street).  The production is scheduled to play through May 26, 2012. 

"We are thrilled to have Shirley Knight with us to bring In Masks Outrageous and Austere to life on the stage for the very first time," says director David Schweizer. "Her long, vivid and sensitive association with Tennessee and his work is well known of course. She collaborated with him actively and brilliantly when he was alive throughout his and her careers. What especially excites me is the fierce intelligence and bold virtuosity of her work, this towering role has finally been given the gift of the actress who can truly make it sing." 

With In Masks Outrageous and Austere, Tennessee Williams continues to explore the passionate obsessions that made him famous in the early masterworks -the impenetrability of the human heart, the futility and hypocrisy of denying or displacing physical attraction, the power of love and its tyranny-while employing the dramaturgical freedom and aesthetic daring he discovered in his later plays.  And all of this he does with the provocative wit and lyricism that was his hallmark.

The play was written over the years 1979 until his death in 1983, and was discovered some years later, having been protected from public scrutiny by Tennessee's friend, writer Gavin Lambert, who had collaborated with Williams on the dramaturgy of this work. 

"'Masks' is a sublimely haunting piece of theater and feels almost uncanny in its expressiveness as Tennessee's farewell piece," commented Schweizer.  "There are utterly surprising, surreal theatrical gestures here, but also a deeply rooted, passionate sense of yearning that only he can evoke in the theater.  I knew Tennessee when I was a young man and he was exactly the age that I am now, and I feel privileged to bring this astonishing work in all of its explosive theatricality, to the stage." 

Additional cast and creative team will be announced shortly. 

In Masks Outrageous and Austere will play the following schedule: Tuesday – Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm & 8pm and Sunday at 3pm.  

Tickets (0n sale now) are $75 for Tuesday-Friday performances and $85 for Saturday & Sunday performances. They may be obtained by calling (866) 811-4111 or by visiting www.cultureproject.org.