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Tennessee Williams’s exploration of family, sex, death, and decay is a haunting: family, trauma, relentlessly recurring patterns of destruction. It’s about the abuse we heap upon ourselves, and the pleasures we use to forget. In that spirit, director Nick Westrate and an ensemble of four astonishing New York theater actors set out to create a performance of the play like no other. By presenting Tennessee Williams’s complete, unabridged text, with just four performers—no props, no set—this production can exist anywhere. It strips bare to the bones the greatest piece of American drama.
SF/Arts Curator Insight
A few years ago, New York director Nick Westrate and colleagues premiered a version of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” in a barn. Later, it toured to other nontraditional venues, and Westrate told American Theatre magazine that he wanted audiences to feel that wherever it was staged, “this is the only place it can exist.” With four actors, and no set or props, it arrives at American Conservatory Theater and ought to be riveting.
Jean Schiffman
Contributing Writer, Theater
American Conservatory Theater - ACT
Under the leadership of Tony Award-winning Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon and Executive Director Jennifer Bielstein, A.C.T.’s mission is to engage the spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area, activate stories that resonate, promote a diversity of voices and points of view, and empower theater makers and audiences to celebrate liveness.
Under the leadership of Tony Award-winning Artistic Director Pam MacKinnon and Executive Director Jennifer Bielstein, A.C.T.’s mission is to engage the spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area, activate stories that resonate, promote a diversity of voices and points of view, and empower theater makers and audiences to celebrate liveness.