The Work of Two Characters - CANCELLATION OF THE PERFORMANCE

The Work of the Two Characters
Tenneesee Williams
Wednesday 3 September at 21:00
Rena Vlahopoulou Theatre

Felice and Claire Devoto are actors and brothers. When they are abandoned by their troupe in a theatre in an unfamiliar city, all alone and confronted by the arriving audience, they decide to perform "The Work of Two Characters", a play by Felice that seems to include many elements from their personal lives.
Events, memories and traumas are brought to life on stage by the two brothers. Theatre is a fundamental condition of existence for them, the only means of self-definition they have. They play their lives, dramatize them to understand them, improvise on memory, create their own story and struggle to define their identity, try to face the harsh past through theatre, transform trauma into art and through art to redeem themselves.
The Play of Two Characters is a creation of Tennessee Williams' late period, during which, influenced by writers such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, he experimented with a new style of writing, and presented plays very different from those that had established him as one of the world's greatest playwrights.
Williams worked on it for years, creating three versions, each with remarkable differences between them. It was first staged in 1967 in London and Chicago as The Two-Character Play; the second version, entitled Outcry, was performed in New York in 1971 and 1973; the third, again entitled The Two-Character Play, was staged in 1975.
It was this latter version that the author chose to include in his 5th volume of his plays, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, and it is the one presented in the show. Williams believed that The Play of Two Characters was his masterpiece and stated "it is especially close to the marrow of my being, wherever it may be."