RANCHO PANCHO, A love affair almost lost to time

Rancho Pancho is a two-act play about the tempestuous love affair between Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez, who inspired the character of Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Rancho Pancho follows their relationship from the summer of 1946 on Nantucket Island with their house guest, the novelist Carson McCullers, to the summer of 1947 in Provincetown with director Margo Jones and the aspiring actor Marlon Brando arriving at Williams and Rodriguez’s vacation cottage, affectionately named Rancho Pancho, and the tumultuous and final break up of Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez.

Rancho Pancho is literally a play about a love affair almost lost to time. Gregg Barrios writes in his “Afterword” to Rancho Pancho about the inspiration that started him researching the Williams and Rodriguez relationship, a quote from director Eli Kazan:

“If Tennessee was Blanche, Pancho was Stanley.”

Eli Kazan, from Eli Kazan, A Life (1988)

Once you’ve read Gregg Barrios’ “Afterword” to Rancho Pancho, you realize how lucky we are that Gregg Barrios is one part sleuth and one part playwright and rescued this literary relationship from the annals of time for us to enjoy.

Rancho Pancho also features a “Foreword” by David Kaplan, author of Tennessee Williams in Provincetown and curator of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. In a thought provoking essay, David Kaplan delves into the different types of  male relationships portrayed in Western literature, why Tennessee Williams skirted around open male relationships in his own work, and the importance of Rancho Pancho in its depiction of the domestic relationship of two men.

Hansen Publishing Group publishes the play RANCHO PANCHO by Gregg Barrios on June 1. Rancho Pancho is the first play to be published in the Hansen Drama Series.

Rancho Pancho by Gregg Barrios, ISBN 978-1-60182-331-1, price $11.95. Published as part of the Hansen Drama Series by Hansen Publishing Group.