By: Lilly Charles
In the highly competitive theatrical landscape of New York, staging Tennessee Williams requires boldness. It takes a unique vision to revisit his early drafts with fresh eyes, reframing the American canon not as a shrine to male genius but as fertile ground for contemporary female artistry. With Outraged Hearts, The Fire Weeds Theatre Company, under the bold co-leadership of Jaclyn Bethany and Lin Gathright, offers just that.
Opening May 15 at the Houghton Hall Arts Community, Outraged Hearts pairs two rarely produced early one-acts by Williams: Interior: Panic, a precursor to A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Pretty Trap, the comedic embryo of The Glass Menagerie. Performed in repertory by a single cast, the works are staged with intimate, immersive techniques that put women front and center—not as muses or casualties of a male imagination, but as whole, complex beings with agency and emotional depth.
Photo Courtesy: Craig Mulcahy / The Fire Weeds Theatre Company
“These are the ghosts of Blanche and Amanda before the world knew them,” says Bethany, who also directs and stars in the production. Raised in Mississippi, Bethany found her way to theater through Williams himself and has long felt a kinship with his female characters. That affinity shapes her staging, which draws on her cinematic eye and sense of atmosphere to create a memory-laced world where poetic longing and brutal truth intertwine.
For Bethany, this isn’t just a tribute to Williams. It’s an excavation—a quest to explore what was there before Broadway polish: a raw, rebellious kernel of truth. “In these early versions, you can sense Williams groping toward understanding his sister Rose,” she explains. “These women—Laura, Blanche, Amanda—they’re all pieces of her, and of him. But here, we aim to give them back to themselves. We let them live without the weight of legacy.”
Bethany and Gathright founded The Fire Weeds with a mission to reinterpret classics through a female-driven lens. It’s a mission born not only of passion but of a desire to challenge norms. “Too often, the theater canon feels like a boy’s club,” says Gathright, who plays both Amanda and Blanche in Outraged Hearts. “We want to crack it open. Take these towering roles and say, ‘What happens if we don’t just honor them, but make them our own?'”
That boldness is matched by empathy. Gathright, who grew up in New Orleans with deep Mississippi roots, finds echoes of her own lineage in these women. “Amanda Wingfield could be my grandmother. Blanche might be someone I know on the edge of town. They’re not relics. They’re living, breathing reminders of what women endure—and what they survive.”
In Interior: Panic, the seeds of Streetcar are evident, but Bethany emphasizes the focus on the relationship between the sisters, crafting an emotional landscape more intimate than iconic. In The Pretty Trap, the play’s lightness is neither dismissed nor downplayed but used to explore how women navigate joy, hope, and denial in equal measure. The tone is shifting, but the perspective is clear: this is Williams through a woman’s eyes.
Photo Courtesy: Craig Mulcahy / The Fire Weeds Theatre Company (Lin Gathright and Jaclyn Bethany)
The company itself reflects that vision. Bethany and Gathright aren’t just co-artistic directors; they’re scene partners, mutual muses, and quietly defiant figures in a still-male-dominated field. With Outraged Hearts, they aim to reclaim space not only for themselves but for every woman who’s ever been told her story was secondary.
This isn’t The Fire Weeds’ first foray into reimagining classics. Their New Orleans run of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? recast Martha as the protagonist, and their upcoming New Play Festival in June will highlight emerging female and non-binary playwrights. What ties it all together is a willingness to listen differently—to the text, to the women inside it, and to the audiences who may finally feel seen.
“The biggest challenge? Being underestimated,” says Gathright, candidly. “But we take that underestimation and turn it into fuel. If they don’t expect us to succeed, that’s fine. We’ll succeed anyway. We’ll strive to do it in our own way.”
The result is a production as bold as its name. Outraged Hearts isn’t just a title—it’s a statement of intent. It points to the emotional labor women do to hold families together, to make art in male-dominated spaces, and to reimagine the past without permission. As the show moves through its 90-minute cycle, audiences may laugh, cry, or squirm—but they will likely feel. Deeply.
“I hope they leave feeling everything,” says Gathright. “Like they’ve been wrung out and filled back up. Like they’ve just remembered something they’d forgotten.”
In a time when theater often wrestles with its future, The Fire Weeds are looking to the past, not to preserve it, but to reinterpret it. Outraged Hearts is a love letter to the women who lived between the lines and a battle cry for those still writing their stories today.
Outraged Hearts runs May 15–30 at Houghton Hall Arts Community. For tickets and information, visit www.thefireweeds.org.
Published by Jeremy S.
