Director's Statement for Tennessee Williams' Play
Spring Storm
Tennessee Williams’ Spring Storm paints a picture of a community where the prospects of a woman's life are dictated by her first sexual encounters. We are at risk of that today.
In the 2010s, the burgeoning conversations around consent and the MeToo movement reinforced a sense of emerging equality between the genders. However, just a few years later, the overturn of Roe v. Wade was a harsh reminder that suppressive attitudes towards womens’ autonomy are alive and well. We would be remiss to believe these attitudes are held only by a distant other unassociated with our progressive communities. It is only human to judge and feel shame. We must be mindful of the ways in which we limit each other’s autonomy.
In 1930s America, the time period in which Spring Storm is set, young women are ostracized for expressing sexual desire. In today’s America, efforts to repress female sexuality and autonomy are manifesting in another way: Limited access to abortion and birth control saddle women who choose to act on their sexual desires with non-terminable pregnancies. World wide, we are still unraveling the web of social limitations we have been caught in for centuries.
It was once radical for women to wear pants. Prior to that, the work of female artists could not be published or displayed. May we root out today’s equivalents. May we seek to dispel them just as Tennessee Williams did through his plays. We are still far from equal in treatment. It is our charge to change that.
This Reading of Spring Storm, Produced by Intuitive Artists, was put on at The Flea in downtown New York on November 18th, 2024.
About the Process
In the lead up to the 2024 election as the conversation around women’s rights over their bodies came to a pitch, the producer at Intuitive Artists, Oliver Klein, asked me to direct a reading of Tennessee Williams’ play Spring Storm. It is one of his lesser-known plays, having never had a full stage run, and was only put on once as a reading in the late 90’s. When he wrote the play, it was rejected by the men who read it, so it never saw the stage in his lifetime. Eighty-eight years ago Tennesee Williams was having the same conversation we are now. We brought it to the stage as a warning for our present day, masked in the language and style of a distant period.
To make the most of our limited budget, we put the show on as a reading with a cast of twelve playing a total of twenty-four characters, and set the scene with cast-sourced costumes for a touch of time-period decor.
It was performed to a sold-out audience at The Flea theater in downtown New York on November 18th, 2024.