Science Fiction And Fantasy Scholars Announced For The 2023 Provincetown TENNESSEE WILLIAMS THEATER FESTIVAL 

The 18th Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival has announced the scholars of the 2023 Tennessee Williams Institute (TWI) including Lisa Yaszek, Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech.

As part of the ongoing project to recover "lost voices in science fiction," as Yaszek puts it, the 2023 TWI scholars' seminars will give context to the 2023 Festival performances from around the world of plays and short stories written by Tennessee Williams that feature spaceships, aliens, vampires, ghosts, and alternate worlds.

The TWI graduate seminar begins Wednesday, September 20, the day before the Festival, with an overview of the programming from David Kaplan, festival curator, along with festival artists. Over five days, TWI participants attend lectures and scholarly presentations which provide context to the productions they will see that day. Discussions led by a moderator follow performances. The last discussion, which is an overview of the season, concludes Sunday afternoon in time to take the ferry or plane to Boston. Those participants staying later or staying overnight on Sunday are welcome to attend the closing party on Sunday nights.

Seminar participants receive tickets to eight festival productions. The seminar attends performances as a group so that the discussion is about the same performance. Seminar participants are invited to the opening and closing parties. Seminar students are expected to prepare by reading the performance texts and related material assigned by Festival scholars and provided by the TWI education coordinator. The seminar is offered for credit through Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Independent scholars are enthusiastically invited to attend.

The cost to attend the Institute, including tickets and symposium, is $550 with a 10% reduction on tuition cost if enrolled by August 15.

2023 Tennessee Williams Institute scholars who will provide context on Science Fiction & Fantasy include

Lisa Yaszek is Regents' Professor of Science Fiction Studies at Georgia Tech, where she explores science fiction as a global language crossing centuries, continents, and cultures. Her most recent books include Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction; Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction; and The Future is Female! Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women series. Professor Yaszek's ideas about science fiction as a window to cultural history have been featured in venues including The Washington Post, Food and Wine Magazine, and USA Today, and she has been an expert commentator for CBS Sunday Morning, the BBC4, Turner Classic Movies, and the AMC miniseries James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction. A past president of the Science Fiction Research Association, Professor Yaszek currently serves as a juror for the Eugie Foster and Philip K. Dick Speculative Fiction Awards.

Greg S. Carr is Assistant Professor of Theatre at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, MO. His essays have appeared in the Routledge Companion to African American Theatre, Theatre Symposium Volume 21: Ritual, Religion and Theatre, and Theatre Symposium 26. At the 2022 Institute he hosted a conversation about Tennessee Williams & Race, providing context for the Festival's performances of Williams' short play The Peaceable Kingdom or Good Luck God and "peripheral" characters of Streetcar. At the 2023 Institute he'll be talking about Afro-Futurism.

Tom Mitchell is emeritus professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois and scholar-in-residence for the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. He has directed all of Tennessee Williams's early full-length plays including 21st century premieres of the surreal Stairs to the Roof. Mitchell has edited the previously unpublished stories "The Lost Girl" and "Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?" for the Tennessee Williams Annual Review. The latter was adapted for performance at the 2021 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. Most recently, he edited The Caterpillar Dogs: Early Stories by Tennessee Williams, published by New Directions in April 2023, and anticipates publication of a larger, critical collection of stories from the University of Iowa Press in 2024. For the 2023 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival he has adapted materials from the Williams Collections at the University of Texas to stage Williams' spaceship fantasy "The Men from the Polar Star."

Carrie Chapter will moderate TWI discussions. In recent years, she has been the Head Dramaturg for the National Music Theater Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and visiting dramaturg for its National Playwrights Conference. For seven years, Carrie was the Literary Manager and Dramaturg at Philadelphia Theatre Company, during which she served over 30 regional and world premieres as a production dramaturg. In addition, she also teaches a writing-intensive class for Theatre majors at Temple University. Carrie is a graduate of Washington College (B.A.) and Villanova University (M.A.), as well as a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA).

More information about the Tennessee Williams Institute programming, and other seminar scholars can be found at www.twptown.org/study-2023

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival was founded in 2006 in Provincetown-the birthplace of modern American theater-where Williams worked on many of his major plays during the 1940s. The Festival is the nation's largest performing arts festival dedicated to celebrating and expanding an understanding of the full breadth of the work of America's great playwright. Theater artists and patrons from around the United States and from dozens of countries have come together to produce and enjoy classic and innovative shows that celebrate Williams' enduring influence in the 21st century, hosted by venues around the seaside village.

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