The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company Of New Orleans Announces Season Six

The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans has endured several setbacks due to the pandemic, but this is a year of rebirth for the seven-year-old production company. After the abrupt March 2020 cancellation of In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, the company has been laying the groundwork for its return this spring with For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls by Christopher Durang, which will be presented in a triple-bill with Durang's Desire, Desire, Desire and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's Swamp Gothic. Performances will be held in a professional residency at LOYOLA UNIVERSITY NEW ORLEANS' Lower Depths Theatre. These three campy Tennessee-Williams-based comedies will open at the annual 2022 Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival beginning March 24th, and will be only one of the theatre company's two offerings at this year's festival.

Tennessee Williams' Moise and the World of Reason will receive its world premiere in a stage adaptation by playwright and University of New Orleans professor Justin Maxwell. The staged reading will be held on March 26, Williams' birthday, at the Hotel Monteleone (one of Williams' favorite historic French Quarter haunts) at 2pm. For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls is presented in partnership with the New Orleans Tourism and Cultural Fund. It is presented in part by a grant from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation.

In May, TWTC will partner with the Historic New Orleans Collection and Loyola University New Orleans Department of Theatre and Dance to stage The Six Blanches, an immersive exploration of the main character from A Streetcar Named Desire adapted to be a part of HNOC's exhibition celebrating the 75th anniversary of Streetcar. Six Blanches and a set of other characters will be staged throughout the exhibit in an intimate and exciting dive into the text, situated amid artifacts from the life of Tennessee Williams as well as the stage life of the play itself.

At the Marigny Opera House in August, TWTC will present Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams as a part of its main stage season. It is a devastating and sultry story of ships passing in the night, the icebergs they might strike, and the fires that catch. It delves into themes of spirituality, religion, carnal need, and southern repression. Summer and Smoke is presented in part by grants from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the New Orleans Theatre Association.

TWTC's final show of the main stage season will be Clothes for a Summer Hotel by Tennessee Williams, a ghost play that concerns the disembodied spirits of writers F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on their first meeting following their deaths. It shifts through time and space to explore how things grow, break down, heal, and fester between the hearts and souls of those who hold each other closely. This program is supported in part by a Community Arts Grant made possible by the City of New Orleans. It will run in September, 2022.

The season is collectively titled Southern Gothic as a nod to Tennessee Williams' unique style of modern playwriting, and also as a comment on the desire of those who live in the region to reach ever higher for something divine, even when beset upon by the constraints of repressive and oppressive societal forces.

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