The Last Bohemia Fringe Festival

By Tracy Cunningham | February 18, 2024 |

The Last Bohemia Fringe Festival, a program of the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, presents a series of performances during the main Festival.

Below are the performances at our last Festival in March of 2024. Schedule for 2025 coming later this year!

PERFORMANCES

Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22

7:30 – 8:30 PM

THE SINKING OPULENCE SHOW
Back by popular demand! A Cabaret celebrating the sinking of the ship that we are all aboard! Overheard as the audience was leaving, “Tennessee would have loved this—it’s an explosion POW of camp.” Like the legendary tale of The Titanic band playing as the ill-fated ocean liner sank into history’s depths, Tsarina Hellfire, Stanley Roy, and their motley crew of maritime monsters will titillate your ears and tickle your imagination. It’s the last big hurrah until the inevitable glug-glug! An over-the-top romp of Storyville style live music, theater, burlesque, and a delightful devastation of all of your senses! Brought to you by the producers of New Orleans best night out, the widely successful Les Vampyres Cabaret.

The Friday night performance includes a talkback moderated by Fauxnique.

The Twilight Room, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, $35 cocktail table, $20 general admission, or VIP Pass. Cash bar.

Thursday, March 21 and Friday, March 22

9 – 10 PM

THIS IS THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, OR GOOD LUCK GOD BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
This funny and shocking one-act play, published in 1981, was inspired by a real-life news item from New York City’s borough of Queens, reporting on a four-day nursing strike in the spring of 1978. In Williams’s hysterical—in every sense of the word—farce, the children of some very cranky seniors are forced to take care of their parents. The Peaceable Kingdom of the title is a famous idyllic painting in which born enemies find peace and the lion lies down with the lamb. That doesn’t happen in the Queens nursing home, where the dying are not going gently or even politely. Even so, God appears. Or does God appear? This almost never seen production will be staged with puppets and live actors by the New Orleans Mudlark Public Theatre, directed by Pandora Gastelum.

The Friday night performance includes a talkback moderated by David Kaplan.

The Twilight Room, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, $35 cocktail table, $20 general admission, or VIP Pass. Cash bar.

Saturday, March 23

7 – 8:30 PM

TENNESSEE RISING: THE DAWN OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams, a solo play written and performed by Jacob Storms and originally directed for the stage by Alan Cumming, explores the formative period from 1939 – 1945 in which an unknown writer named Tom becomes the acclaimed playwright known as Tennessee, wherein his most iconic character emerges: himself.

Tennessee Rising had an acclaimed Off-Broadway Premiere and has been featured at the Rochester Fringe Festival, received the United Solo Award for Best One-Man Show at the 2017 United Solo Festival in New York, and wowed audiences in a 23 back-to-back performance run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023.
“In Storms’ brilliantly charismatic performance, it seems that we truly meet the writer himself: proud, beautiful, strong in his resistance to the rising tide of 1930’s fascism, and steely in his determination to write, and to keep writing at all costs.” —The Scotsman

Includes a talkback with Jacob Storms moderated by Augustin J Correro.

The Twilight Room, 2240 St. Claude Avenue, $35 cocktail table, $20 general admission, or VIP Pass. Cash bar.

Saturday, March 23
8:30 PM Doors | 10 PM Show
THE LAST BOHEMIA SOIREE, INCLUDING A PERFORMANCE OF NIGHTINGALE
A magical evening of music and performance hosted by Tony award winner John Cameron Mitchell in the ballroom of his splendid Bywater home, known as The Temple. Rub elbows with fellow festival goers and a who’s who of NOLA creatives set to a concert by San Francisco sarod master Kenny Annis. Then enjoy a seated performance of Vinsantos‘ Nightingale followed by a talkback moderated by John Cameron Mitchell.

Nightingale is a hauntingly nostalgic semi-biographical concept musical that revolves around the blurred life of Vinsantos, a multi-talented and enigmatic real life performer and Tennessee Williams’ Nightingale the callow youth turned callous tubercular painter.
Set in an eclectic Bohemian and Art Nouveau backdrop, the audience follows Vinsantos on a journey of self-discovery, exploring the challenges and triumphs of a unique and unconventional career in the arts. As the titular character, Vinsantos brings a distinctive flair to the show, blending elements of drama, comedy, and the surreal. The narrative delves into the complexities of identity, artistic expression, and the pursuit of failed dreams, offering viewers a front-row seat to the captivating world of Nightingale.
The humour noir is complemented by a rich and diverse score that propels the satirical and grotesque themes throughout the show. The compelling storytelling not only morphs Vinsantos and Nightingale into a twin flame but also bedims the fourth wall of the theater. Nightingale is an imperative theatrical spectacle for those seeking a fresh and original take on the mutilated characters of Tennessee Williams, anchored by the charismatic presence of Vinsantos. Get ready to be transported into a realm where creativity knows no bounds, and the night comes alive (or faces death) with the mesmerizing performance of Nightingale.
The Temple Ballroom, Preferred Seating $70, general seating $40. Cash bar.

Performer Bios

Kenny Annis is a San Francisco based bon vivant. Kenny is a member of the notorious punk band The Heathens, a music scholar, and the Executive Chef of the wildly successful Vegan Sky Cafe. He is a master of the sarod, the protegé of the great Ali Akbar Khan.

Pandora Andrea Gastelum is a puppeteer, dollmaker, designer, and performer. She owns and operates the Mudlark Public Theatre in New Orleans’ 9th Ward and is the Artistic Director of that space’s resident theatre company, the Mudlark Puppeteers.

Tsarina Hellfire is a chanteuse, comedian and cabaret force on New Orleans’ performance art scene. A regular at the Double Dealer in the Orpheum Theater, Frenchmen Street live music clubs, and Shrimp Boil Cabaret, Tsarina is one of the most visible local cabaret performers. Her long-running Les Vampyres Cabaret is arguably the best night out in New Orleans.

Stanley Roy is a singer-songwriter and comedic storyteller on the New Orleans’ cabaret scene. Both a performer and producer, Roy is responsible for many of the most popular regular performance clubs in New Orleans for tourists and locals.

Jacob Storms is best known for his recurring role (Serge) on Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs’ Amazon Original Series, Red Oaks. Storms is also writer/actor of the solo play Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams, originally directed for the stage by Alan Cumming, for which Jacob won the United Solo Award for Best One-Man Show. Most recently he performed a critically-acclaimed, twenty-three back-to-back performance run of Tennessee Rising at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with Assembly, for which Jacob was nominated for the Off-West End (Offie) Award and shortlisted for the Brighton Fringe Award for Excellence. Storms has also performed at Carnegie Hall, The Guggenheim Museum, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bill T. Jones’ New York Live Arts, BAM, Symphony Space, The St. Louis, New Orleans, and Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festivals, The Hollywood Bowl, L.A.’s Disney Concert Hall, PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival, Rochester Fringe Festival, and more. Jacob is also the youngest actor in the world to have ever performed Doug Wright’s Pulitzer Prize winning, forty-character solo play, I Am My Own Wife.

Vinsantos is a conceptual performance artist living and working in New Orleans and San Francisco. His original music, storytelling and cabaret work are informed by his visual art and dollmaking practice. Vinsantos formed his first band, the New Romantic ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ in 1986 and has been producing work and evolving musical styles ever since. He is known for a modern approach to the Weimar Cabaret of the 1920s. Blending original and classic songs, storytelling, comedy, costumes and visuals, a highly intimate relationship is built with the audience. Vinsantos has performed at art museums, dive bars, cabarets, drag shows, festivals and recently across the US on tour with goth legends Bauhaus and alternative post-punk icons Love and Rockets. A key figure in the legendary San Francisco Drag club Trannyshack and the creator of the New Orleans Drag Workshop, he is known as an innovator propelling forward new forms in these vibrant performance art enclaves. Vinsantos community engagement work was the subject of the full-length documentary Last Dance created by French filmmaker Coline Abert that premiered at the 2022 Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco. Currently Vinsantos is working on his first musical inspired by Tennessee Williams’ sinister character, Nightingale from the play Vieux Carre.

Talkback Moderators

Augustin J Correro is a Founding Co-Artistic Director of the Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans. The company has produced over 20 Williams plays, many of which Correro has directed. He has also directed and assistant directed Williams plays in New York, Virginia, Mississippi, and Massachusetts. He holds an MFA in Theatre Pedagogy from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BA in Theatre from Mississippi University for Women. He is a resident of New Orleans and a native of the Mississippi Delta. His book Tennessee Williams 101 was released in 2021, based on his TW Fest presentations.

Monique Jenkinson is an artist, choreographer, performer and writer. Her work dwells at the intersection of contemporary dance, cabaret and essay, and considers the performance of femininity as a powerful, vulnerable and subversive act. Her alter-ego Fauxnique made herstory as the first cis-woman ever, anywhere, crowned as a pageant-winning drag queen, and her original works have toured nationally and internationally in wide-ranging contexts from nightclubs to theaters to museums. Her memoir, Faux Queen is out now on Amble Press.

David Kaplan is the author of Tennessee Williams in Provincetown (2006) and Tenn Years (2015), a collection of essays about Williams in production. He is the editor of Tenn at One Hundred (2011) the centennial collection of essays about Williams’ reputation. He has staged Suddenly Last Summer in Russia (1993), The Eccentricities of a Nightingale in Hong Kong (2003), Ten Blocks on the Camino Real in Uruguay (2012) and Ghana (2016), and The Rose Tattoo in St. Louis (2021). He is curator/cofounder of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, whose 19th season will be September 26-29, 2024. See TWPtown.org

Thanks to our host for The Last Bohemia Soirée, John Cameron Mitchell!

John Cameron Mitchell directed, starred in and wrote, with Stephen Trask, the film Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), for which he won Best Director at the Sundance Festival and was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor. His Broadway production of Hedwig garnered him Tony Awards for his performance and for Best Revival. He won an Obie Award for Hedwig Off-Broadway as well as for starring in Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me. He directed Tennessee Williams’ Kingdom of Earth Off-Broadway with Cynthia Nixon and Peter Sarsgaard. He directed the films Shortbus (2006), Rabbit Hole (2010) and How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2018) both starring Nicole Kidman, who was nominated for Best Actress Oscar for the former. Recent TV roles include Hulu’s Shrill, HBO’s Girls and Vinyl, CBS’s The Good Fight, and Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle. He stars in, wrote (with Bryan Weller), and directed the musical podcast series Anthem: Homunculus featuring Cynthia Erivo, Glenn Close, Patti Lupone, Denis O’Hare, Laurie Anderson and Marion Cotillard, which is playing on Luminary podcast platform.