Literature Live! Will Present 'A Streetcar Named Desire' at Bay Street Theater

Bay Street Theater’s much-anticipated 2024 Literature Live! presentation will be Tennessee Williams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” which has been called “one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century.”

This is the 16th anniversary of the Literature Live! performance series and the show opens on November 14 with public performances running Thursday through Sunday, through December 1. School day performances begin November 12. Bay Street’s own co-founder and first executive director Stephen Hamilton has been tapped to direct the compelling drama. This is the 16th anniversary of the popular Literature Live! performance series.

“A Streetcar Named Desire” is a powerful exploration of desire and mental fragility, following Blanche DuBois as she confronts her troubled past while residing with her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law, Stanley, in New Orleans. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1948 and has become a timeless classic, hailed for its profound impact on American theater.

As part of Literature Live! programming, free performances are available to school groups. Teachers and administrators may register their school groups by contacting Allen O’Reilly, Bay Street’s director of education and community outreach, at allen@baystreet.org or by calling 631-725-0818. Free admission is available to all school students, teachers and administrators who can reserve weekday performances at times that work for them on a first-come, first-serve basis. Literature Live! is an annual BOCES-approved arts-in-education program where teachers are provided curriculum guides in advance to help with content and additional aspects of learning. A talkback and Q&A session with various members of the cast and crew team members and the audience will follow each performance.

Now in its 16th year, Literature Live! was started by Tracy Mitchell, Bay Street Theater’s executive director.

“This program came about when seeing how little of the performing arts were being incorporated into my own daughter’s curriculum,” said Mitchell. “I was shocked because my own exposure to theater had been so life-changing, and I can’t imagine if I hadn’t had that, what experiences I would have missed out on in my own life.”

To date, Bay Street has served over 80 schools and more than 43,000 students, including those with special needs, homeschoolers and students from as far away as New Jersey and New York City in person, and numerous others across the country with digital access during COVID-19.

Tickets for the public start at $39.99 and are available at baystreet.org or 631-725-9500, open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and until 30 minutes before performances. Bay Street Theater is on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor.