Kickstarter

Ten Blocks on the Camino Real is a poetic fantasy, written in the 1940s at the peak of Tennessee's creative powers. It is an impressionistic melding of action, poetry, music, masks, and dance that Tennessee believed captured the world we live in with a new kind of "plastic theater". The original Ten Block version was shelved for several years until it was expanded by Tennessee and Elia Kazan for Broadway and called simply Camino Real. The beauty and charm of the original remains largely unknown. Beau Jest has special permission from the estate to fully stage the original one-act in all its glory, with a live band, innovative movement, an original score, a creative design team, and a cast of nine actors working to find the heart at the center of this important missing link in Tennessee's canon. 

We are doing this Kickstarter campaign because we believe this is an important play. It deserves fresh attention to every image, song, dance, and idea that Tennessee first envisioned, and we need your help to make it possible. The Ten Block version has only been produced once in New York, and once on television in 1966. Our run in Boston is just the beginning; we have designed the show to tour and plan to bring it to Portland, Maine and other theaters and festivals around the country in the years ahead. Funds raised now will help pay for the musicians, actors, and designers needed to get it off the ground and retrieve the play from obscurity. If the show is a success, we hope the estate will release the performance rights of Ten Blocks to other companies as well.  If you love Tennessee Williams' experimental work, your contribution will help us bring to life what Tennessee called "the shimmer of the mystery" of this piece. We think it deserves to be seen.

 See other Beau Jest productions at www.beaujest.com

- Tennessee Williams on Ten Blocks on the Camino Real