Dates and Theme Announced for 2018 Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival is pleased to announce that its Annual Dinner will be held on Saturday, June 2, 2018. The gala will be held at Town Hall in Provincetown to support the organization's 13th annual Festival, to be held September 27-30, 2018.

The 2018 Festival is entitled "Tennessee Williams: While We're Waiting."

The drama of anticipation inspires this year's programming, says Festival Curator David Kaplan. "We are all, in America and around the world, waiting for something to happen," says Kaplan. "We don't know what it is, but we can feel something is coming. Does waiting unsettle us? Does it paralyze our will to act? Does it give us hope, or cause for despair?"

This year's line-up of plays will feature works by Williams and other much-loved writers from around the world, produced and performed by Festival artists and collaborators both new and established. The 2018 Festival program will be announced in full at the Annual Dinner on June 2.

The 2018 Annual Dinner will also continue its tradition of awarding the TENN Award to an individual, group, or organization that advances the spirit of Tennessee Williams through performance, public awareness, study, or publication. Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington D.C, was the first recipient of the TENN Award in 2017.

Guests of honor at past dinners have included award-winning stage and film actors Dana Delany (2017), Brian Dennehy (2016), Cherry Jones (2015), Zachary Quinto (2014), and Elizabeth Ashley (2013).

Further details about the Annual Dinner will be announced soon, at which point premium seats, general admission tickets, and table sponsorships will be available online and by phone at twptown.org or by calling 866-789-TENN.

About the 2018 Festival Theme

Tennessee Williams famously said that he began to write A Streetcar Named Desire with a vision he had of a woman sitting in the moonlight, waiting for someone who never arrived. That vision, says Kaplan, also haunts Williams' The Rose Tattoo, whose central role, Serafina, waits for her husband to return from work. Within the first lines of that play, the theme for this year's Festival becomes clear:

Assunta: Vengo, vengo. Buona sera. Buona sera. There is something wild in the air, no wind but everything's moving.

Serafina: I don't see nothing moving and neither do you.

Assunta: Nothing is moving so you can see it moving, but everything is moving, and I can hear the star-noises. Hear them? Hear the star-noises?

Here is a sense that "nothing is moving so you can see it moving," says Kaplan, but that it moves nonetheless, and that "the unseen turbulence of a person's feelings and thoughts is somehow aligned or in sync with the stars - a fate unknown but inevitable."

About the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

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 TW 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. Each year, theater artists from around the globe perform classic and innovative productions to celebrate Williams' enduring influence in the 21st century, hosted by venues throughout the seaside village. For more details, visit twptown.org and follow the Festival on Facebook.

This Festival is funded in part by the Provincetown Tourism Fund, and is presented by Sage Inn and Lounge.

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