GREEN EYES
[By Tennessee Williams]
PROVINCETOWN TW THEATER FESTIVAL
World Premiere
2008 (Premiere), 2011, 2014
Maybe the kinkiest play Tennessee Williams ever wrote, I premiered this erotic thriller in 2008, and Olympia Dukakis was so taken by the explosive play that she invited the cast to dinner.
Jaimi Paige reprised her dazzling performance in 2011 with Matthew Rein at the Minnesota Fringe Festival, the Ruskin Theatre Group in Los Angeles, and again in Provincetown at the Tennessee Williams Festival, this time in a hotel room, where the play is set. In 2014, the play was remounted in New Orleans to great acclaim.
Williams wrote Green Eyes in 1970, when the sexual revolution was in full swing and America was experiencing its greatest turmoil since the Civil War. In the play, a crude young couple honeymoon in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The hung-over, liberated bride wakes up naked with bite marks and bruises. How did she get them, and why is there a condom in the toilet? Did he bring home a stripper, or did she sleep with a green-eyed man in their wedding bed? The war-torn Claude, a troubled Vietnam soldier on leave, can only negotiate with violence and booze, and his bride’s story of pure lust ignites their uneasy truce into flames. A violent, 25-minute rollercoaster, rough sex teeters on a thin edge with a kind of spiritual awakening.
CREATIVE TEAM
Costumes | Clare Brauch
Sound | Katharine Horowitz
Direction & Design | Jef Hall-Flavin
2008 CAST
Girl | Jaimi Paige
Boy | Mike Rasmussen
Waiter | Latez Crawley
2011 CAST (Provincetown)
Girl | Jaimi Paige
Boy | Matthew Rein
Waiter | Latez Crawley
Couple | Lynda Sturner-Traum, Steve Levitt
2011 CAST (Minnesota)
Girl | Jaimi Paige
Boy | Matthew Rein
Waiter | Ezekial Ashamu
2014 CAST (New Orleans)
Girl | Jaimi Paige
Boy | Matthew Rein
Waiter | Kelvin Harrison Jr.
Couple | Jane Macdonald, Jules Paris Vetter
PHOTO GALLERY
[Sofia Piel, Agnes Magyar, Geoff Basett, Ride Hamilton]
Jaimi Paige in the 2008 world premiere of Green Eyes by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin. Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. Photo by Sofia Piel.
Matthew Rein and Jaimi Paige in the 2011 production of Green Eyes by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin. Ruskin Theatre, Los Angeles. Photo by Agnes Magyar
Jaimi Paige in the 2014 production of Green Eyes by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin. Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival at the Hermann-Grima House. Photo by Ride Hamilton.
Jaimi Paige in the 2008 world premiere of Green Eyes by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Jef Hall-Flavin. Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival. Photo by Sofia Piel.
WHAT PEOPLE SAID
[MINNESOTA FRINGE FESTIVAL]
Absolutely killer. Jaimi Paige is ravishingly disturbing to watch, and Matt Rein smolders as an emotionally and physically threatening ticking time bomb.
"Wow!" All the way around.
Do. Not. Miss. This. Show.
Mark Browning Milner
[THEATRICAL PUGILISM]
...one of the most harmonized theatrical productions I have ever seen in New Orleans.
Thank you. You gave us our
playwright back.
Jim Fitzmorris
[NEW ORLEANS TIMES-PICAYUNE]
“…emotions are more acute within the anonymous intimacy of a hotel room. The tension becomes almost unbearable as director Jef Hall-Flavin stretches out the silence. When Claude finally wakes his wife, that tension explodes.”
Theodore P. Mahne