Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum to Host Tennessee Williams Festival Preview

Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum (PMPM) will host a special preview of the Tennessee Williams Festival on Wednesday, July 19 and August 9 from 5:00pm to 7:00pm. Attendees will have the opportunity to meet David Kaplan, Festival Curator, and Jef Hall-Flavin, Executive Director, the creative team behind the festival. The events are free and open to the public and refreshments will be available.

“We are proud to support the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival by hosting two pre-festival events at the PMPM,” said K. David Weidner, Ph.D, Executive Director of the PMPM. “These special events are another way the PMPM is connecting to the community where American theater was born and that makes Provincetown so unique.”

During the preview on July 19, there will be a video introduction to the 12th Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, “Tennessee Williams & Shakespeare” followed by a Q&A with David Kaplan about this year’s plays focusing on “Anthony and Cleopatra” by William Shakespeare. Jef Hall-Flavin will give the audience a brief history of the festival focusing on “The Gnädiges Fräulein” by Tennessee Williams. At the August 9th event, there will be a more theatrical performance to showcase the plays at the upcoming festival.

"Shakespeare and Williams mastered their craft while living in turbulent times,” said Festival Curator David Kaplan. "For Shakespeare, the death of his only son in the year the queen of England died; for Williams, the death of his long-time lover in the year the president died. In these periods of Williams’ and Shakespeare’s writing, water recurs as an image of instability. Both has twenty more years to live, and in that score of years their plays upended conventional ideas of what was farce and what was tragedy in a world for them turned as suddenly unstable as a ship in a storm."

This year the festival is presenting plays by Tennessee Williams and William Shakespeare, the two great poet playwrights of the English language. The four-day extravaganza, taking place September 21 to 24, presents shows and events all over Provincetown, performed by theater companies from around the world. Audiences will experience Williams and Shakespeare side by side, offering a new understanding of both masters. For more information about the 12th Annual Tennessee Williams Theater Festival visit www.twptown.org.