David Kaplan’s Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams on Stage Releases

David Kaplan’s new book Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams on Stage makes it debut at the tenth annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival beginning today, September 24-September 27. Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams on Stage is a collection of essays written by David Kaplan in conjunction with the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, of which he is the curator and a co-founder. They are organized in two sections. The first section consists of ten essays written for each year of the Provincetown Festival, most were included in the Festival catalogue for the year indicated. Those essays focus on each year’s thematic selection of Williams plays—and other dance, music, and theater events—as well as some aspect of Williams’ plays not always obvious in the text but essential to understanding the plays in production. The second section includes seven occasional essays, written for productions of Williams plays associated with the Festival. All the essays relate, in one way or another, to the story of what happened to the playwright during the last twenty years of his life and how his reputation is evolving since his death.

Tenn Years: Tennessee Williams on Stage also includes many full-page, color productions photographs by photographers Josh Andrus, Ride Hamilton, Jane Paradise, Ralph Bassett, Antonis Achilleos  and production inspired art work from Provincetown’s woodcut master Bill Evaul.

David Kaplan is curator and co-founder of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, now in its tenth year. He is the author of the biography Tennessee Williams in Provincetown and editor of the centennial collection of essays, Tenn at One Hundred. He has written two series of college textbooks: Five Approaches to Acting and Shakespeare, Shamans, and Show Biz.

Kaplan has staged Tennessee Williams plays worldwide: Suddenly, Last Summer in Russia in Russian, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real in Uruguay in Spanish, and The Eccentricities of a Nightingale in Hong Kong in Cantonese. In 2008 he directed the world premieres of Williams’ The Day on Which a Man Dies in Chicago and The Dog Enchanted by the Divine View in Boston. At the New Orleans Tennessee Williams Festival he’s staged Williams’ The Traveling Companion, The Chalky White Substance, and The Hotel Plays.