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Love and Tennessee

At the 3rd Annual Tennessee Williams Festival

Provincetown is known for its ability to inspire, whether it be great paintings, great poems, or even great loves. Some of this inspiration will soon be celebrated at the 3rd annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, taking place between September 25 and 28.

The festival will take place from Sept. 25 to 28.

At the festival, both the great American playwright Tennessee Williams and the inspiration he found in Provincetown will be lauded with a weekend of plays, readings, performances and discussions.

Williams is among the most famous artists who have found inspiration and love in Provincetown. During the 1940s, he found the town an ideal place to work and reputedly wrote portions of “The Glass Menagerie” while sitting at the bar of The Atlantic House, a nightspot that remains popular today. He also met Frank Merlo, a lover for many years, during his time in town.

Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson will give a coffee talk.

The 2008 Williams Festival will focus on the playwright’s vision of love as it is represented in plays such as “The Rose Tattoo,” “Camino Real,” and other works.

Many special events will occur over the weekend, including the world premiere of an erotic Williams’ play – “Green Eyes” – about a young couple’s post-honeymoon morning in a hotel in New Orleans’ French Quarter.

New works inspired by Williams will also be given play during the festival.

DanceLoop Theater, a Chicago-based dance company, will be in town to perform “Lorita!,” a dance interpretation of Williams’ short story “Happy August the Tenth.” And Gregg Barrios’ new play – “Rancho Pancho” – will be performed, presenting a vision of Williams and his Mexican partner Pancho Rodriguez.

A number of new short plays inspired by Williams’ vision of love will also be performed at the festival by the New Provincetown Players, including a work by Meryl Cohn.

Other weekend highlights include a staging of “The Eccentricities of a Nightingale,” the rarely-performed rethinking of the story of Alma Winemiller from “Summer and Smoke.” An opera performance based on the same play will also be staged, along with a concert of love songs from “Summer and Smoke” presented by The New England Conservatory of Music.

Many other special performances, talks and other events will take place during the 3rd Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. To find out more about the schedule of events, visit www.twptown.org.