Georgetown University Theater and Performance Studies Program at the Davis Performing Arts Center, in partnership with the American Studies Program and Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, presents the Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival (Tenn Cent Fest) in spring 2011.  This ambitious, multifaceted celebration honors and explores the indelible legacy of one of America’s greatest artists.


FROM THE FESTIVAL ARTISTIC DIRECTOR...
 

The Tenn Cent Fest brings together work by leading professionals from around the world and across D.C., with the work of our extraordinary Georgetown students and faculty. In full-scale productions, workshops, readings, panels, screenings, and concerts, the Tenn Cent Fest offers fresh perspectives on Williams’ established classics, as well an opportunity to engage influential but rarely performed experimental and neglected works.

To celebrate Williams’ legacy is also to reckon with the complexity, beauty, and despair that made up his life, so powerfully and prolifically documented in his memoirs, letters, essays, notebooks, and so memorably and often nakedly poured into his artistic creations. The Tenn Cent Fest is filled not only with Williams’ fictional works (many of which are highly autobiographical), but with non-fiction works and adaptations which reveal Williams’ character and his unique place in American culture.

The opportunity to engage so deeply with the singular lyricism, tenderness, violence, excess, desire, laughter, and tragedy that characterize Williams’ work and life has inspired and transformed our students and our wider community. His work is still radical. It was not only ahead of its time, but is in many ways ahead of our time.

Our heartfelt thanks to our partners, in particular to the American Studies Program and to Arena Stage, as well as to the Tennessee Williams Estate and the University of the South for allowing us to explore so much of his work in so many ways, and to the dozens of students, staff, faculty, donors, scholars, and artists who have contributed their talents to make this Festival possible.

Whether you are an aficionado of Tennessee Williams or relatively new to his work, there is so much that we look forward to discovering with you throughout these remarkable Festival events. 

    Derek Goldman, Artistic Director