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Thursday, March 24th

• 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM

  Gaston Hall in Healy Building An Onstage Conversation with Edward Albee

  Award-winning playwright and American master Edward Albee shares his perspective on the work and influence of Tennessee Williams in an on-stage conversation with Susan Stamberg, special correspondent for National Public Radio. The conversation will be woven in with performances from leading actors from DC and beyond, curated by Mr. Albee himself.

• 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center Lobby Reception

  Join Edward Albee and other festival-goers for a reception after An Onstage Conversation with Edward Albee.

• 8:00 PM – 10:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre The Glass Menagerie

  In a tenement apartment in 1930's St. Louis, the Wingfield family struggles to hang on to their dreams for the future. Featuring Sarah Marshall as Amanda Wingfield, this innovative production of Williams' highly autobiographical masterpiece captures the fragility and stifled yearning of characters clinging to hope against the harsh realities of a rapidly changing world. The production and surrounding events offered as part of The Glass Menagerie Project are presented at Georgetown and then June 9-July 3 at the new Mead Center for American Theater as part of GU’s partnership with Arena Stage.

  By Tennessee Williams
  Directed by Prof. Derek Goldman
  Featuring Rachel Caywood (COL ’10), Prof. Sarah Marshall, Michael Mitchell (COL ’10), and Clark Young (COL ’09)

• 8:00 PM – 9:30 PM

  Walsh Black Box Theatre Excerpts from Venus

  Suzan-Lori Parks is no stranger to Tennessee Williams' work. Citing Williams as one of her many influences, Parks, in her memory play Venus, explores central themes also illuminated in The Glass Menagerie. The evening will feature excerpts from Black Theater Ensemble's forthcoming production of Venus (March 30-April 3) as well as discussion with cast, production team, and faculty members. This preview will examine the relationship between The Glass Menagerie and Venus and showcase how Williams’ legacy continues to impact contemporary theater.

  Presented by the Black Theatre Ensemble

Friday, March 25th

• 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre Williams Centennial Panel

  A panel discussion with Williams artists and scholars Annette Saddik, Jackson Bryer, Jef Hall-Flavin, David Herskovits, and Nick Moschovakis about the legacy of Tennessee Williams. This conversation will provide a critical framework for many of the productions, readings, and events throughout the weekend, including many of Williams' lesser-known treasures and more difficult and obscure works.

  Dr. Annette Saddik, an Associate Professor of English at the City University of New York, is the author of The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams’ Later Plays and Contemporary Drama.
  
  Jackson R. Bryer, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, is the editor of Conversations with Thornton Wilder and The Playwright’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Dramatists and the co-editor of Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill, of “The Theatre We Worked For”: The Letters of Eugene O’Neill to Kenneth Macgowan, of The Actor’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Stage Performers, and of The Art of the American Musical: Conversations with the Creators.
  Jef Hall-Flavin is the Director of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival and a theater director, administrator and educator.
  
  David Herskovits is the Founder and Artistic Director of Target Margin Theater and the director of The Really Big Once.
  
  Nich Moschovakis is a literary scholar and one of two co-editors who prepared the texts of Williams’ Collected Poems and Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays.

• 1:15 PM – 2:30 PM

  McNeir Auditorium in New North Building A Concert Named Desire

  Part of the expansive Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival, this program features arias and art songs for soprano and piano, based on and inspired by Williams’ texts, including highlights from André Previn‘s A Streetcar Named Desire and Lee Hoiby’s Summer and Smoke. The Georgetown University Music Program’s Friday Music Series features acclaimed artists in free concerts on Fridays at 1:15 p.m. in McNeir Auditorium in New North Building, on Georgetown’s main campus.

  Amy Cofield Williamson, soprano
  Charles Woodward, piano

• 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Readings

  • This Property Is Condemned
  directed by Alan Paul, Shakespeare Theatre
  
  • Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
  directed by Michael Dove, Forum Theatre
  
  • Lady of Larkspur Lotion
  Directed by Nick Olcott
  
  • Something by Tolstoi
  Adapted and Directed by Shirley Serotsky, Theater J

• 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM

  McNeir Auditorium in New North Building Tom to Tenn

  A concert reading of a new musical starring Helen Hayes Award-winning performer Rick Foucheux and Tim Tourbin that explores the transformation of a shy, diffident Thomas Lanier Williams into Tennessee Williams – genius, addict, icon and iconoclast.

  Book and Lyrics by Shelley Herman Gillon and Harriet McFaul Pilger
  Music by Paul D. Leavitt
  Directed by Peter Webb

• 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Bent to the Flame *

  Although Tennessee Williams never met the poet Hart Crane, his devotion to Crane and his poetry was one of the deepest of his life, and informed his play Suddenly, Last Summer. Set in 1945, following the opening of his first Broadway success, The Glass Menagerie, this provocative and intimate portrait offers a unique glimpse into the heart of the young Williams – the desires and demons that shaped him, and the muse who inspired yet nearly destroyed him. Winner of the award for “Outstanding Solo Show” at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival. “Tompos comes so close to Williams’ essence that it is nothing short of astounding.”

  Written and performed by Doug Tompos

• 7:45 PM – 10:15 PM

  Gaston Hall in Healy Building
  (Previously scheduled for Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre) Camino Real *

  In this phantasmagorical play, one that Williams often called his favorite, characters from literature and history inhabit a town on the edge of civilization where corruption and apathy have immobilized and nearly destroyed the human spirit.

  A staged reading with live music
  Directed by Prof. Derek Goldman
  Featuring a cast of top professional actors from DC and beyond, including Theodore Bikel, Kathleen Chalfant, Rick Foucheux, and Susan Lynskey

Saturday, March 26th

• 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens...

  Memorably featured in celebrated Williams interpreter Michael Kahn’s Five by Tenn at the Kennedy Center, this moving play follows the story of a New Orleans drag queen. Members of the original cast return to DC for this special presentation.

  Directed by Michael Kahn, Artistic Director of Shakespeare Theatre
  Featuring Cameron Folmar, Rick Hammerly, Derek Kahn Thompson, and Myk Watford with Drew Kopas

• 12:30 PM – 12:45 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre Orchestra Pit The Glass Menagerie Project: Service of My Desire

  In this intimate 15-minute solo performance descend into Williams' loft to share the struggle of a young artist spurned by love, re-imagining the summer of 1940 in a first person dialogue with the audience. This piece follows Tennessee's transient love affair with Kip Kiernan in Provincetown, MA and the crippling emptiness which was to fuel the artist's lifelong efforts to "find in motion what was lost in space."

  Adapted and performed by Georgetown University senior Jimmy Dailey

• 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Readings

  • Lady of Larkspur Lotion
  Directed by Nick Olcott
  
  • Something by Tolstoi
  Adapted and Directed by Shirley Serotsky, Theater J

• 2:00 PM – 2:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Room 035 Excerpt from Belle Reprieve

  Acclaimed gender-bending parody of A Streetcar Named Desire

  Directed by Prof. Natsu Onoda Power

• 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre The Glass Menagerie

  In a tenement apartment in 1930's St. Louis, the Wingfield family struggles to hang on to their dreams for the future. Featuring Sarah Marshall as Amanda Wingfield, this innovative production of Williams' highly autobiographical masterpiece captures the fragility and stifled yearning of characters clinging to hope against the harsh realities of a rapidly changing world. The production and surrounding events offered as part of The Glass Menagerie Project are presented at Georgetown and then June 9-July 3 at the new Mead Center for American Theater as part of GU’s partnership with Arena Stage.

  By Tennessee Williams
  Directed by Prof. Derek Goldman
  Featuring Rachel Caywood (COL ’10), Prof. Sarah Marshall, Michael Mitchell (COL ’10), and Clark Young (COL ’09)

• 3:00 PM – 4:15 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Bent to the Flame *

  Although Tennessee Williams never met the poet Hart Crane, his devotion to Crane and his poetry was one of the deepest of his life, and informed his play Suddenly, Last Summer. Set in 1945, following the opening of his first Broadway success, The Glass Menagerie, this provocative and intimate portrait offers a unique glimpse into the heart of the young Williams – the desires and demons that shaped him, and the muse who inspired yet nearly destroyed him. Winner of the award for “Outstanding Solo Show” at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival. “Tompos comes so close to Williams’ essence that it is nothing short of astounding.”

  Written and performed by Doug Tompos

• 4:45 PM – 6:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre The Glass Menagerie Project: The Menagerie Variations, Elegy for Rose, and For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls

  The Menagerie Variations is an ensemble piece developed from numerous versions of The Glass Menagerie that Williams grappled with in different forms (the screenplay of The Gentleman Caller; the play The Pretty Trap, with its happy ending; the short stories "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" and "If You Breathe It Breaks" – many of which have rarely been seen) and essays such as “The Catastrophe of Success.”
  
  Elegy for Rose is an ensemble-created/devised piece about Williams’ relationship to his sister Rose, the great love of his life, who was institutionalized and lobotomized, as explored from Rose’s perspective. The piece explores how Rose influenced a range of characters (Laura, Blanche, etc.), and how she resurfaces in different forms in so much of his work throughout his life.
  
  This parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, of Tennessee Williams’ classic The Glass Menagerie is one of Durang’s most popular one acts, a crackpot comedy of parent-child tensions that appeals to audiences unfamiliar with the play as well as those who have deep knowledge of it. The New York Times has called the spoof “exuberantly disrespectful” and asserts that “Mr. Durang remains one of our funniest playwrights.”

• 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM

  Riggs Library in Healy Building The Really Big Once *

  In 1948 director Elia Kazan started work on a strange new play by Tennessee Williams, and in 1953 Camino Real opened and quickly closed on Broadway. How did they create this astonishing work? How did Kazan's 1952 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and its traumatic aftermath affect the creative process? Was Camino indeed a flop, or was it actually an important success? Obie Award-Winning Target Margin Theater's company-created piece The Really Big Once is the story of these two giants and how they changed American culture. "Forsake the neatness of psychological realism for something messier, wilder, more true." (The Village Voice)

  Presented by Target Margin Theater
  Directed by David Herskovits

• 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Readings

  • This Property Is Condemned
  directed by Alan Paul, Shakespeare Theatre
  
  • Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
  directed by Michael Dove, Forum Theatre
   

• 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre An Evening in Paradise *

  Readings from
  
  • I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow
  Directed by Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre Artistic Director
  Featuring Obie Award winner and Tony Award nominee Kathleen Chalfant and Obie Award winner Derek Smith
  A man and a woman, both paralyzed by fear and desire, confront and avoid their loneliness in a ritual that they relive each day.
  
  • Adam and Eve on a Ferry
  Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin, Director of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
  A comic portrait of sexual liberation, centered around D.H. Lawrence as a charming bully with almost shamanistic powers of influence over a repressed, unhappy young woman.
  
  • Mister Paradise
  Directed by Joy Zinoman, founding Artistic Director of Studio Theatre
  Featuring Ted van Griethuysen
  A forgotten poet is confronted by a young girl who has discovered an out-of-print volume of his poems in an antique shop, and who tries to coax him back into the public arena.

• 8:30 PM – 9:45 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Devine Studio Theatre Bent to the Flame *

  Although Tennessee Williams never met the poet Hart Crane, his devotion to Crane and his poetry was one of the deepest of his life, and informed his play Suddenly, Last Summer. Set in 1945, following the opening of his first Broadway success, The Glass Menagerie, this provocative and intimate portrait offers a unique glimpse into the heart of the young Williams – the desires and demons that shaped him, and the muse who inspired yet nearly destroyed him. Winner of the award for “Outstanding Solo Show” at the 2007 New York International Fringe Festival. “Tompos comes so close to Williams’ essence that it is nothing short of astounding.”

  Written and performed by Doug Tompos

  Riggs Library in Healy Building The Really Big Once *

  In 1948 director Elia Kazan started work on a strange new play by Tennessee Williams, and in 1953 Camino Real opened and quickly closed on Broadway. How did they create this astonishing work? How did Kazan's 1952 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and its traumatic aftermath affect the creative process? Was Camino indeed a flop, or was it actually an important success? Obie Award-Winning Target Margin Theater's company-created piece The Really Big Once is the story of these two giants and how they changed American culture. "Forsake the neatness of psychological realism for something messier, wilder, more true." (The Village Voice)

  Presented by Target Margin Theater
  Directed by David Herskovits

Sunday, March 27th

• 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre
  (relocated from Riggs Library in Healy Building) Durang and Desire

  A special event in which award-winning playwright Christopher Durang reflects on his connections to Tennessee Williams’ work, and shares hilarious excerpts from his parody Desire, Desire, Desire.

• 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM

  McNeir Auditorium in New North Building Panel on Women in Williams

  A panel discussion about the role of women in the work of Williams with local D.C. actresses Sarah Marshall and Kim Schraf, moderated by Professor Maya E. Roth.

• 1:30 PM – 3:15 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre The Glass Menagerie Project: The Menagerie Variations, Elegy for Rose, and For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls

  The Menagerie Variations is an ensemble piece developed from numerous versions of The Glass Menagerie that Williams grappled with in different forms (the screenplay of The Gentleman Caller; the play The Pretty Trap, with its happy ending; the short stories "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" and "If You Breathe It Breaks" – many of which have rarely been seen) and essays such as “The Catastrophe of Success.”
  
  Elegy for Rose is an ensemble-created/devised piece about Williams’ relationship to his sister Rose, the great love of his life, who was institutionalized and lobotomized, as explored from Rose’s perspective. The piece explores how Rose influenced a range of characters (Laura, Blanche, etc.), and how she resurfaces in different forms in so much of his work throughout his life.
  
  This parody, For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls, of Tennessee Williams’ classic The Glass Menagerie is one of Durang’s most popular one acts, a crackpot comedy of parent-child tensions that appeals to audiences unfamiliar with the play as well as those who have deep knowledge of it. The New York Times has called the spoof “exuberantly disrespectful” and asserts that “Mr. Durang remains one of our funniest playwrights.”

• 2:30 PM – 3:45 PM

  Riggs Library in Healy Building The Really Big Once *

  In 1948 director Elia Kazan started work on a strange new play by Tennessee Williams, and in 1953 Camino Real opened and quickly closed on Broadway. How did they create this astonishing work? How did Kazan's 1952 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee and its traumatic aftermath affect the creative process? Was Camino indeed a flop, or was it actually an important success? Obie Award-Winning Target Margin Theater's company-created piece The Really Big Once is the story of these two giants and how they changed American culture. "Forsake the neatness of psychological realism for something messier, wilder, more true." (The Village Voice)

  Presented by Target Margin Theater
  Directed by David Herskovits

• 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre An Evening in Paradise *

  Readings from
  
  • I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow
  Directed by Michael Kahn, Shakespeare Theatre Artistic Director
  Featuring Obie Award winner and Tony Award nominee Kathleen Chalfant and Obie Award winner Derek Smith
  A man and a woman, both paralyzed by fear and desire, confront and avoid their loneliness in a ritual that they relive each day.
  
  • Adam and Eve on a Ferry
  Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin, Director of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
  A comic portrait of sexual liberation, centered around D.H. Lawrence as a charming bully with almost shamanistic powers of influence over a repressed, unhappy young woman.
  
  • Mister Paradise
  Directed by Joy Zinoman, founding Artistic Director of Studio Theatre
  Featuring Ted van Griethuysen
  A forgotten poet is confronted by a young girl who has discovered an out-of-print volume of his poems in an antique shop, and who tries to coax him back into the public arena.

• 5:00 PM – 5:30 PM

  Davis Performing Arts Center, Room 035 Excerpt from Belle Reprieve

  Acclaimed gender-bending parody of A Streetcar Named Desire

  Directed by Prof. Natsu Onoda Power

• 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM

  Gaston Hall in Healy Building
  (Previously scheduled for Davis Performing Arts Center, Gonda Theatre) John Waters' This Filthy World *

  The raucous one-man show from celebrated filmmaker and notorious “King of Trash” John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Hairspray), an admirer of Williams from an early age. With irreverence and hilarity, This Filthy World takes on such taboo topics as pedophilia, drug use, and gay marriage. This performance will be accompanied by an onstage discussion with Waters about Williams’ influence on him, as depicted in Waters’ book Role Models.

  Written and performed by John Waters