Monday, June 7, 2010

Williams' Glass Menagerie Opens June 10th

Louisville's Shoestring Productions presents the immortal Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie for seven performances beginning June 10, 2010; performances are June 10, 16, 17, 20, 29, July 2 and 5 at 8:30p.m. at the Water Tower, Louisville, KY.

“This is a memory play” Tom Wingfield informs the audience at the beginning of our time with him, as he reconstructs for us a particularly painful sequence of events in his family life.

St. Louis: the late 1930’s. The Wingfield family lives in a shabby tenement, a far cry from Amanda’s (Megan Burnett) girlhood memory of her Blue Mountain mansion when Gentleman Callers flooded her home. Now she peddles ladies magazines over the phone to help make ends meet for her, her son and her daughter: Tom (Lee Look) who barely holds down a low-level job at a shoe warehouse, while writing poetry, going to the movies and, possibly, drinking too much like the absent father; and Laura (Laura Ellis), the terribly shy daughter, who spends most of her days tending to her collection of glass animals. What, indeed, as Amanda says, is “to become of us”? We’re about to find out when Tom defensively invites Jim O’Connor (Doug Sumey) to dinner with the family. How volatile will it be to introduce a gentleman caller into these lives in this small apartment?

“I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,” Tom also promises. The Glass Menagerie, like so many of Williams’ plays, draws on his family’s personalities and experiences. Memory, being mutable, is always a balance of truth and illusion; as is theatre…and here Williams explores truth and illusion refracted through light, memory, and reflections of glass.

This production of The Glass Menagerie, directed by Kathi E.B. Ellis, is produced in partnership with the Louisville Visual Art Association, in conjunction with their Ne10: Louisville exhibit, part of the National Glass Art Society conference in Louisville. The exhibit gallery will be open prior to each performance of The Glass Menagerie.

In addition to her work with Shoestring Productions Ms. Ellis is a member of 517 Playwrights and the Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Inc., the Kentucky Theatre Association, Lincoln Center and Chicago Directors' Labs and is an Associate Member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

For more information about the production go to http://web.me.com/harryjb/ShoeStringProductions/. Tickets are $15; $12 for seniors and students with valid id. For reservations at 502-741-8392 or shoestringproductionsky@gmail.com

Produced by special arrangement with Dramatist’s Play Service.

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