Vieux Carre by Tennessee Williams Directed by Lane Savadove December 5 – December 22, 2007 Wednesday - Sunday at 8 pm.; Sunday December 9 at 2 pm. Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St., Philadelphia Tickets: $28, $25 (Students/Seniors) www.egopo.org Box Office: 215.552.8773

EgoPo Productions launches its’ season-long Tennessee Williams Festival with the rarely produced masterpiece, VIEUX CARRE. The Festival includes two main stage shows and nine staged readings produced by EgoPo in collaboration with eight other Philadelphia theater companies.

Vieux Carre takes the audience on a haunting journey into the New Orleans French Quarter of the 1930’s. This eerie tale conjures the ghosts of Tennessee Williams’ past during the writer’s early years living at the infamous boarding house on 722 Toulouse Street in the Quarter – the setting for the play. Destitute, dying, and drug addicted, each of the occupants of the Vieux Carre try to drag the naïve writer into his or her own tragic web. Doug Greene plays the young Tennessee Williams while also morphing into the persona of the older Williams in seamless transitions between action and narration.

A meditation on loss and loneliness, VIEUX CARRE is also a love song to a New Orleans that will never be forgotten. This production incorporates an exciting collaboration between EgoPo and the Daniel T. Peterson jazz ensemble. Together they transform the play into a poetic fusion of narrative and music by underscoring a significant portion of the play as well as bringing the characters’ own songs to the forefront.

The main stage portion of the festival continues in March with one of Williams’ final plays, SOMETHING CLOUDY, SOMETHING CLEAR. In this play, Williams looks back over his lifetime, swimming towards the one blissful summer he first fell in love. The ghosts of old theater acquaintances, lovers, and enemies return as Williams attempts to come to terms with his seduction of a young male dancer.

With the generous support of the Jacob Burns Foundation, EgoPo hosts the inaugural BURNS CLASSIC READING SERIES. Held monthly at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, the reading series enables artists from all across the theater community to focus on a single playwright. The reading series begins Monday December 10th with THE MUTILATED, directed by Azuka Theatre Company. Directors and actors from EgoPo, Azuka, Lantern, Brat, Theatre Exile, the Wilma, Luna, Flashpoint and Black Starr Collaborative will present the full range of Williams’s oeuvre, from the realism of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (Theatre Exile) to the experimental expressionism of THE RED DEVIL BATTERY SIGN (Brat Productions). *Calendar attached.

Relevant Biographies

Tennessee Williams was one of the preeminent American playwrights of the twentieth century. Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, the name "Tennessee" was a name given to him by college friends because of his southern accent and his father's background in Tennessee. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE in 1948 and for CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF in 1955. THE GLASS MENAGERIE in 1945 and THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA in 1961 both received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play THE ROSE TATTOO received the Tony Award for best play.

The award-winning EgoPo Productions has been creating groundbreaking theater in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Europe, and Asia for 15 years. The New York Times labeled their work “blissful and terrifying”; The S.F. Chronicle called EgoPo “the most exciting company in the city.” In September 2005, while performing the Maids X 2 in The Philadelphia Fringe, EgoPo Productions’ theater was lost in Hurricane Katrina and most company members lost their homes. After 15 years of nationally acclaimed work, EgoPo left a destroyed theatre in New Orleans to become a part of the thriving Philadelphia theater community. In March 2007 EgoPo debuted as a Philadelphia-based theater company with SPRING AWAKENING. SPRING AWAKENING was nominated for a Barrymore Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Play.

Lane Savadove has been directing and teaching nationally and internationally for over 15 years. Savadove is a Drama League directing Fellow, a presidential Fellow, a Shubert Fellow, and was the first director to receive the prestigious Henry Luce Fellowship. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a B.A. in theater from Haverford College. In 1991, Savadove founded the award winning repertory company, EgoPo Productions, and continues as its Artistic Director. From 1995-96, he served as the Resident Director of the National Cultural Center of Indonesia. His work includes over 35 productions, 20 of them World Premiers. His awards include: “Best Show of 2000” by Backstage, “Pick of the Year” by The Village Voice, and 8 Louisiana Theater Festival Awards. His first production after relocating to Philadelphia following Hurricane Katrina, SPRING AWAKENING, garnered a Barrymore nomination for “Outstanding Ensemble in a Play”. Savadove has served on the faculties of NYU, Loyola University, Rutgers, Rider, and is now an Assistant Professor at Rowan University. Lane has been training the actors of EgoPo for 15 years and is considered one of the nation’s top teachers and developers of the Viewpoints technique.

Daniel Peterson has been featured as a woodwind player with Philadelphia jazz luminaries such as Odean Pope and Bobby Zankel and top notch visitors to the city such as Ravi Coltrane and Billy Harper. He composes for 3 ensembles and has worked as a presenter in developing The Collective Voices Festival. Most recently he completed major works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in collaboration with Toshi Makihara, Leah Stein at the Eastern State Penitentiary for "The Gate" and the debut of his grant awarded song cycle "5 Simple Worlds".

Director: Lane Savadove
Musical Director: Daniel T. Peterson
Set Design: Dan Soule
Lighting Design: Matt Sharp
Costumes: Annie Canzano
Cast: Andrew Borthwick-Leslie (Nightingale), Robert DaPonte (Sky), Nathan Edmondson (Tye), Doug Greene (The Writer), Megan Hoke (Jane), DaVine Randolph (Nursie), Kristen Schier (Mary Maude), Sarah Schol (Miss Carrie) and Leah Walton (Mrs. Wire).