The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival Announces 2022 Tennessee Williams Institute Programming

The 17th Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival has announced the scholars of the 2022 Tennessee Williams Institute (TWI).

The Tennessee Williams Institute (TWI), now in its 10th year, offers a graduate and doctoral level symposium at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival in collaboration with Texas Tech University.

Participants attend the Provincetown Festival productions and participate in discussions of the Festival's programming. The cost to attend the Institute, including tickets and symposium, is $550 with a 10% reduction on tuition cost if enrolled by August 15.

The primary focus of TWI is on live performance, which in 2022 includes Festival productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and a new adaptation of a short story by Williams titled One Arm. Lectures from TWI scholars and conversations with Festival artists from around the world, share new and expansive approaches to the plays of Tennessee Williams with those who will shape his reputation in the future: up-and-coming directors, teachers, critics, scholars, designers, dramaturgs, producers, playwrights, and actors.

The 2022 line-up, under the title Tutti Frutti Tennessee Williams, offers a unique overview of Williams work from the 1930s to the 1980s, from his crowd-pleasing Broadway hits to his radical writing -early and late -that continues to challenge audiences to savor, as Williams put it "the strange, the crazed, the queer." "Let's call that Frutti," says Festival curator David Kaplan.

TWI Scholars

This year's TWI scholars offer overviews of Williams work from differing perspectives.

Chris Jones

Chris Jones is the chief theatre critic for the Chicago Tribune. He has reviewed and commented on culture, the arts, politics, and entertainment for the Chicago Tribune for 15 years. Prior to joining the staff of the Tribune, Jones served for many years as the touring theater critic for Variety and Daily Variety, publishing several hundred theatre reviews with a particular emphasis on pre-Broadway tryouts. He has covered theatre in numerous cities throughout the United States, including as Variety's Broadway critic.

He serves on the editorial board for the Best Plays annual and has twice served on the drama committee of the Pulitzer Prizes. His arts criticism also has appeared often in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, American Theatre magazine and numerous other newspapers and magazines. For many years, he has chaired the American Theatre Critics Association committee that annually recommends a theater to receive the Tony Award for outstanding regional theatre.

Jones spent 10 years teaching at Northern Illinois University, where he served as both an associate professor and as assistant chair of the School of Theatre and Dance. He also served as associate dean of The Theatre School at DePaul University, where he continues to be an adjunct professor. His honors include the Gold Medallion from the American College Theatre Festival, for his work with young theatre critics.

A native of Manchester, UK, Jones earned a doctorate from the Ohio State University in 1989.

Margit Longbrake

Margit Longbrake, senior editor at The Historic New Orleans Collection, acquires and edits books and museum publications and since 2016 has served as managing editor of the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, where she has overseen the editing and first-time publication of a number of primary Williams texts unearthed from the archives. She is the editor of Afro-Creole Poetry in French from Louisiana's Radical Civil War-Era Newspapers: A Bilingual Edition, translated and introduced by Clint Bruce (THNOC, 2020), winner of the 2021 Lois Roth Award for Literary Translation and longlisted for the 2021 ALTA National Translation Award in Poetry. She worked for over a decade at the Modern Language Association, where she acquired and developed pedagogical anthologies and literary translations and served on the committee that generated the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook.

Gregory S. Carr

Greg Carr is an instructor of Speech and 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'll be hosting 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."

Tom Mitchell

Tom Mitchell is emeritus professor of Theatre at the University of Illinois and scholar-in-residence for the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis. Mitchell also chaired the Summer Theatre Program at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and served on the national committee of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. He has directed all of Tennessee Williams's early full-length plays including 21st century premieres of Candles to the Sun

and Stairs to the Roof. Mitchell edited the previously unpublished "Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?" for the Tennessee Williams Annual Review and adapted it for performance at the 2021 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. He is the author of Tennessee Williams Wrestles with Race in Three Unpublished Stories: "Goat Song," "Heavenly Grass," and "Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?" in the Tennessee Williams Annual Review, Issue 18, 2019. His edition "The Caterpillar Dogs: Early Stories by Tennessee Williams" is expected from New Directions in 2023.

Discussions will be moderated by Carrie Chapter. Carrie Chapter is a freelance dramaturg whose focus includes both new play and musical development. 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 to her freelance work, she also teaches a writing-intensive class for Theatre majors at Temple University. Carrie is a proud 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, including Williams 101 and Festival Internships can be found at www.twptown.org/study

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