Target Margin Theater Presents TMT 2010 LAB: The Unknown Williams

Following last season's acclaimed, sold-out, extended run of the rarely produced Tennessee Williams play, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, Target Margin Theater (David Herskovits, Artistic Director) continues its Williams exploration when it launches the 2010 season with a special three-week festival, "2010 LAB: The Unknown Willams," set for March 11-27, 2010, a co-production with The Bushwick Starr (207 Starr Street between Irving & Wyckoff in Brooklyn).

"The Unknown Williams" is a collection of unknown and rarely seen works that will offer new insights into one of America's greatest and most prolific playwrights. The 12 productions that make up the festival will expose the experiments from a career that spanned half a century and unearth the works Williams was not known for. The unknown Williams will surprise, scandalize, and titillate.

This festival of short-run fully-staged productions will involve over 100 directors, actors, designers and puppeteers. Lead artists include Sherrine Azab, WilLiam Burke, Travis Chamberlain, Kate Foster, Jake Hooker, Diana Konopka, Michael Levinton, Alisa Matlovsky, Andrew Simon, Shannon Sindelar, Kathleen Kennedy Tobin, and Donya K. Washington.

The 2010 LAB: Unknown Williams Festival Schedule:

WEEK 1

This is the Peacheable Kingdom
A place of love without fear; or a nursing home riot
Lead artist: WilLiam Burke

Thursday, March 11th at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 12th at 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 13th at 7:30 p.m.

The Case of the Crushed Petunias ‘A Lyrical Fantasy'
This stylized and flamboyant piece serves as a timeless adulthood fable with subtle notes of Hitchcock and "The Twilight Zone" in flavor
Lead Artist: Sherrine Azab

Why Do You Smoke So Much, Lily?
A haunting tale of unfulfilled dreams, parental pressure and personal inertia.
Lead Artist: Kate Foster

Escape
Three members of a chain-gang can only sit and wonder as a fourth makes a run for his freedom.
Lead Artist: Andrew Simon

Friday, March 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 13th at 9:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 14th at 7:30 p.m.
Monday, March 15th at 7:30 p.m.

WEEK 2

The Municipal Abattoir
On a city street somewhere, one man stops another to ask for directions. A short play about politics and punctuality.
Lead Artist: Diana Konopka

The Day On Which a Man Dies
Not a play about the death of a Great Painter: it is the death of painting, of art, and of greatness.
Lead Artist: Jake Hooker

Wednesday, March 17th at 7: 30 p.m.
Friday, March 19th, at 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 20th at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, March 21st at 7:30 p.m.

The Purification
Williams' only verse drama, a tale of passion, murder and blood atonement in territorial New Mexico, will be performed by puppets on a small stage
Lead Artist: Kathleen Kennedy Tobin

Thank You, Kind Spirit
At the end of Chartres Street, in the Vieux Carre of New Orleans, Mother Ducios presides over a spiritualist service.
Lead Artist: Alisa Matlovsky

Thursday, March 18th at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 19th at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 20th at 9:30 p.m.
Monday, March 22nd at 7:30 p.m.

WEEK 3

Now the Cats with Jewelled Claws
‘Ladies Who Lunch' in a café that's a refugee from a Toulouse Lautrec design with a James Dean-esque (gay) biker duo - what else could it be but a Williams play?
Lead Artist: Donya K. Washington

Thursday, March 25th at 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 26th at 9:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 27th at 7:30 p.m.

The Pronoun "I"
A mad Queen of England, a nearly nude narcissistic boy-beloved, a hot rugged revolutionary, and a great gilded assertion of the first person singular
Lead Artist: Michael Levinton

Green Eyes
The Test of this compact erotic thriller becomes an outlet for one woman's outrageous fantasy, testing the limits of sexual tolerance in a backhanded satire of heterosexual matrimony.
Lead Artist: Travis Chamberlain

The Remarkable Rooming-House of Mme. Le Monde
In this perverse and brutal work, comic horror plays out with some of Williams' most outrageous characters.
Lead Artist: Shannon Sindelar

Wednesday, March 24th at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, March 25th at 9:30 p.m.
Friday, March 26th at 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 27th at 9:30 p.m.

Tickets are $12 and may be purchase online at www.targetmargin.org or www.thebushwickstarr.org.

TMT's 2010 season is being created with the cooperation and support of the Estates of Elia Kazan and Tennessee Williams.

Target Margin Theater for more than 18 years has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. Target Margin Theater has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received an Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its recent epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim.

The Bushwick Starr is a non-profit performance venue and presenting organization dedicated to bringing a continuum of art and artists to the Bushwick community. Focusing on the presentation of new work in theater, dance, and music, The Bushwick Starr offers a professional and supportive space in which artists and audiences can interact within our growing Brooklyn neighborhood.

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