Cody Sullivan
Photo: Joe Navas
by Steve Desroches
When news broke last year that after 20 years the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival was coming to a close, it was met with a pallor of gloom with a touch of despair. With housing being the hobgoblin of life in Provincetown, and a major factor in the suspension of the Festival, it felt like a major slash to the art colony’s death by a thousand cuts. But while grieving the loss of a major theatrical force, something new was being born. Like Williams’ 1941 autobiographical play Something Cloudy, Something Clear, which he wrote and set in Provincetown, about new love and heartbreak, the pain of loss and the excitement of the new are all part of the same weather pattern. When Williams arrived in Provincetown for the first of four summers in 1940, he wasn’t regarded as one of the world’s greatest playwrights. He was a skinny, underfed, struggling, yet passionate writer with a mind full of ideas ready to burst. And Provincetown presented Williams with a place to fully be himself, in the company of artists and creatives, freedom to explore his imagination, as well as kale soup and cod from his Portuguese neighbors to nourish his body. While Provincetown has changed in many ways since, and rapidly so since the founding of the Tennessee Williams Festival in 2005, it’s worth exploring the ways that it’s the same, or even improved. The culture that existed to support a young Williams is similar to that which has propelled playwrights Cody Sullivan and Jon Richardson to being the theatrical forces they are in today’s Provincetown.
The value of the art colony in Provincetown is that the town is a place where work is created rather than hosted. Without the art colony Provincetown would just be a gallery town showing work that was created, and more worrisome, conceived elsewhere. But for over 100 years, Provincetown, year-round, has been a creative incubator for all forms of art, including theater, especially since the founding of the Provincetown Players here in 1915. While paintings, photographs, music, drag, comedy, cabaret and the like are all produced in volumes in Provincetown, it’s been a challenge to keep original works of theater written and produced in Provincetown, with notable exceptions like Beverly Bentley’s Act IV theater company in the 1960s, Ryan Landry’s Gold Dust Orphans, Jim Dalglish’s Helltown Players, musician Zoe Lewis’ forays into musical theater, the O’Neill Festival of New Works run by Margaret Van Sant, Candace Perry and the 24 Hour Plays Festival, and Jody O’Neil’s theater coalition Sailor Beware, for example. But Richardson’s smash hit musical The Jack of Hearts Club and Sullivan controlling the zeitgeist with his creation Saltine followed by the weekly fly-by-the-seat of his pants Cody Plays, as well as Town Meeting, The Dune Inn, and most recently the breath taking Autocrat, Provincetown as a birthplace of theatrical works is alive and well.
“It’s been a literal dream,” says Richardson sitting on the couch of his Bradford Street home with his beagle Teddy. “The town has adopted it as its baby. This town is responsible for its success. The process of its development was here. People show up to support new works here.”
The Jack of Hearts Club took seven years to write, leading to its sold-out premier run last October. Over that time the play was presented as a concert reading five times with Richardson distilling 1,000 pages of dialogue down to 73. And each time the readings were sold-out. Since its inception, the town has had a crackling vibe about The Jack of Hearts Club very similar to the jolt of energy every time Sullivan presents a new work, like during the June run of Autocrat at the Provincetown Theater and the upcoming presentation of his latest work Clams Casino at The Commons. While summer might be when most people get to see the work, these are products of the so-called off-season, when the people who are only here to party, and nothing else, leave.
“My plays do better in the off-season,” says Sullivan sitting on the red brick patio of his apartment in the West End. “Audiences are more engaged then. Tourists don’t tend to be as interested, but the townies get it. Provincetown loves works in progress. People show up. In the off-season you see how many people are interested in supporting new work. Summer is just the showcase. It’s the off-season when things are happening.”
While two wildly different playwrights who present distinct views of Provincetown in their work, both express a mutual admiration for each other’s work. And both express similar views of living and working in Provincetown. Summer is exhausting and trying, a much harder time to write than any. And both have an aching love for the town. “It’s a mysterious thing,” says Sullivan. “I don’t love summer here. It’s too crowded. It’s overwhelming. It’s a distraction. But there really is something spiritual about this place. I’m reminded of that come fall. And I keep writing. I mean, what else would I do?”
Indeed it’s not just the town, but its institutions, too. The Provincetown Theater, the Gifford House, The Commons have all provided vital support to either Sullivan or Richardson. Randy Sell and Edward Gilligan have town approval to turn the old welding shop on the corner of Bradford and Nickerson streets into a theater and arts space and have already invited Sullivan in as a resident performer, though the plans are hung up in an intra-condo association dispute. But both agree that it’s the year-round community that is continually the shot of adrenaline to their theatrical offerings…for better or for worse.
“The other thing about Provincetown is people are not afraid to give you notes,” says Richardson. “I was pumping gas at Cumberland Farms and this guy came up to me and said ‘I really don’t like that the mother and daughter relationship resolves the way it does.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, thanks for your input.’”
Jon Richardson’s The Jack of Hearts Club is at the Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St., Thursday through Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. until September 6. Tickets ($65) are available at the box office and online at provincetowntheater.org. For more information call 508.487.7487. Clams Casino by Cody Sullivan is at The Commons, 46 Bradford St., Thursdays at 8 p.m. August 6 through September 3 (no performance Carnival Parade day August 20). Tickets ($35) are available at the door. For more information visit provincetowncommons.org or call 508.257.1748.
