Portraiture Returns!
Helltown Players bring back the hit play with a bold new cast for Women’s Week at The Art House in Provincetown.
Last summer, Portraiture captivated audiences with its smart writing, inventive staging, and compelling exploration of identity, art, and legacy. Now, by popular demand, Helltown Players –in association with Rainbow Event Productions – is bringing this powerful play back to Provincetown. This time the production will feature a new cast of dynamic actors and will run at The Art House during Women’s Week, October 15–19.
Written and directed by Margaret Van Sant, Portraiture unfolds in the Rare Reading Room of Yale’s Beinecke Library, where charismatic art historian Sylvia Santos leads a tour that features the portraits of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Mabel Dodge Luhan, painted by modernist artists at the height of their influence.
But what begins as a lecture soon becomes something far more intriguing.
As the tour deepens, the portraits — and the women behind them — come alive. Stories emerge. Histories shift. And the audience is invited to reconsider not only how we remember these iconic figures, but who gets to decide how their lives are framed.
Stein, Toklas, Dodge Luhan… Together Again!
With humor, intelligence, and heart, Portraiture reimagines historical biography as living conversation. It’s a play about legacy, myth-making, and the roles women have played — sometimes quietly, sometimes defiantly — in shaping modern art and culture.
"Portraiture gives contemporary audiences a thoroughly entertaining opportunity to see how the lives of three brilliant, trailblazing women not only changed the course of history, but continue to inform and impact contemporary culture."
— Boston Spirit Magazine
Stellar Cast & Creative Team…
This Women's Week production features an all-new cast, including:
Susanna Creel as Sylvia Santos
Lynda Sturner as Alice B. Toklas
Mary Chris Kenney as Gertrude Stein
Kim Lajoie as Mabel Dodge Luhan
The creative team includes returning collaborators Will Oxtoby (Stage Manager), Jim Dalglish (Producer/Dramaturge), John Killwey (Set Design), and Tami Trask (Costume Design).
Venue:
The Art House
214 Commercial Street
Provincetown, Massachusetts 02657
Dates / Times:
October 15 - 18 (Wed. - Sat.) at 7:00pm
October 19 (Sun.) at 2:00pm
Tickets:
Tickets: $15.00 - $40.00
Lynda Sturner as Alice B. Toklas – More than Stein’s partner—her chronicler, conscience, and quiet revolutionary.
Kim Lajoie as Mabel Dodge Luhan – The social disruptor whose salons and scandals reshaped American art and identity.
Susanna Creel plays Sylvia Santos - A brilliant but struggling art historian caught between the past and her precarious present.
Mary Chris Kenney as Gertrude Stein – The domineering voice of modernism, unrelenting in her pursuit of literary immortality.
Production Partner…
Produced in partnership with Rainbow Event Productions, this run of Portraiture promises to be a highlight of Women’s Week in Provincetown—and a fresh opportunity to see a play that’s as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
