Tennessee Williams and Japanese art in the Hamptons
Serendipity. That's what brings a lost drama by a famous American playwright and an obscure Japanese art form to the Hamptons.
"It's a coincidence," says Helen Harrison, director the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, "that we're presenting an unknown Tennessee Williams play with this Gutai exhibit."
The play, "The Day on Which a Man Dies," evolved out of mourning for Williams' friend, abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. While vacationing in the Hamptons in 1957, Williams began writing an experimental drama that he put aside upon completion. The manuscript surfaced three decades later, but waited another 17 years for its 2008 world premiere in Chicago. The director, David Kaplan, called Harrison when he heard about the Pollock-Krasner exhibit, suggesting an art-meets-drama collaboration. He's also presenting the play next month in the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.
JACKSON AND TENNESSEE The painter and the playwright had been friends since they summered together in Provincetown in the 1940s. In 1956, Pollock drove his car into a tree in East Hampton, killing himself and a female passenger. The incident profoundly affected Williams, not just because of his friend's death but because the playwright had done the same thing in Italy - with the intent of committing suicide. It's not known if Williams considered Pollock's death a suicide.
THE PLAY The premise is unlike anything written by the author of "The Glass Menagerie," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire." "The Day on Which a Man Dies" is subtitled "An Occidental Noh Play." Williams intermingled ancient Japanese Noh drama with performance art, inspired by a group of artists - the Gutai - who created and destroyed their works onstage. "We forget that even in his classic plays, Tennessee Williams is very detailed about what the audience sees," says director Kaplan. "In 'The Glass Menagerie,' symbolism takes the form of broken glass. Here, it's torn paper. Not that different, really."
THE EXHIBIT "Under Each Other's Spell: The Gutai and New York" focuses on two art worlds converging in the 1950s and '60s. The avant-garde Gutai influenced American artists who were experimenting with new means of expression. The Gutai believed in being true, spiritually, to the material from which art is made. Founder Jiro Yoshihara praised Pollock and French painter Georges Mathieu as "artists who grapple with the material in a way that is completely appropriate to it." The show draws on the collection of painter Paul Jenkins, a former Gutai artist in residence, and the Pollock-Krasner collection, including journals widow Lee Krasner found among Pollock's papers after his death. The Springs center was their home and studio.
WHAT "The Day on Which a Man Dies," by Tennessee Williams, and "Under Each Other's Spell: The Gutai and New York," art exhibit
WHEN | WHERE Williams play: tonight and tomorrow night at 8, Sunday at 2:30 p.m., Ross School Senior Thesis Lecture Hall, 18 Goodfriend Dr., East Hampton. Gutai exhibit: 1 to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, guided tours at noon by appointment, through Oct. 17, at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, 830 Springs-Fireplace Rd.
INFO Play: $25, $22.50 seniors and students, twptown.org, 800-789-
8366. Art show: $5 ($10 for tour), www.pkhouse.org, 631-324-4929
WHAT "Dames at Sea," a stage homage to Hollywood musicals of the '30s. The stock market has crashed, the country's in a financial tailspin and a small theater company has just lost its lease on opening night. A sweet young thing from Centreville USA arrives to remind everyone that the show MUST go on.
WHEN | WHERE Opening Tuesday night. Tuesday through Saturday nights at 8, Sundays at 7 p.m. through Sept. 6, at Bay Street Theatre, Long Wharf, Sag Harbor
INFO $65 to $75; baystreet.org, 631-725-9500
