“This Streetcar is brilliant. It is reverting and propulsive. I couldn’t look away.”

“What a beautiful thing to watch these glorious beasts do such a wild throw-down!"

“It was like I was hearing the play for the first time."

"It was as though I was watching a new play. Tennessee Williams as a bright young thing here in 2023 here to help us find our way through the grief of this moment in our world. Startled, moved and oh so present inside of the story and what Nick and the whole company are bringing to every new space they inhabit. We all need to take a leaf out of this company's book on theatre making, now. It's brave and so fresh." 

I was blown away by this STREETCAR. The creative team created a bewitching and incredibly visceral experience. The actors are extraordinary. They make the language sing and cut through in thrilling ways. They make the invisible architecture of the play thrum with life. I heard and felt the play as I never have before.

“I've never fully ‘heard' the play until this production… a reminder of how powerful it is when a great cast and a talented director focus all their skill on telling a clear story.   Tennessee Williams has never landed harder or more beautifully for me.”  

“This is how you make a great play SING. Pare away all the trappings and trust that the words alone, in the right hands, can make a whole world. I’ve never seen or heard this play so clearly.”

"A thrilling new model of theater that celebrate its ephemerality paired with gutsy, daring performances that strip Tennessee Williams’ classic to its core.”

“An electrifying theatrical experience. A completely unique evening that I won't soon forget. The entire cast absolutely shines. Portnoy fills Stella with strength and palpable conflict, Koed's Stanley is sexy & scary in equal amounts, and Will Roger's finds all the humor and every inch of darkness, while proving himself incredibly likeable.  And WOW...Lucy Owen. Her Blanche Dubois is living rent free in my head and for days I've been saying "I wonder if Stella's come back with my lemon Coke?" to anyone that will listen. Her portrait of a troubled woman clinging to every scrap of dignity she has left is breathtaking. She's seductive, sad, terrifying, hilarious and powerful all at once.  This was the first full production I've seen of this classic and now the one all others are going to have to live up to. Bravo to all involved.”

“It’s like someone stripped the paint off to reveal a classic. This Streetcar is a hidden gem. You’ll feel as though it’s your own dirty secret.”

“We partnered with this incredible production of Streetcar, which sold out almost immediately. Our audience was thrilled to experience the play in a way they had never imagined. There is a rawness, a nakedness, when this company fills an unexpected space that allows Tennessee Williams’ language to pierce your heart.”

(Chelsea Altman is restaurant owner, entrepreneur and former Streetcar host.)

“Streetcar completely rediscovered with every word in tact. Living through four actors who filled my imagination with a world I thought I knew and then had a totally vibrant, alive, new experience.”

(Anthony Edwards is an Emmy-winning actor and former Streetcar host)

"As someone who considers this play one of my top three, maybe two, works of drama in the canon, I was a bit trepidatious as the lights went down. But then, the lights never really did go down; rather, the actors started inhabiting the space as naturally as if it had always belonged to them. Tears were falling from my eyes within moments -- just to behold this thing I have loved so passionately for so long explored before me with such grace and ingenuity, by artists so committed and embodied. To watch this production is not really to watch it, but rather to join with these artists in touching all the edges of this text which we together find to be hallowed for so many more reasons than its greatest admirers even gave it credit for."

“This is the Streetcar that I have always desired. One free of the tired southern tropes that have long oppressed it. Like magic, these artists suspended themselves in an eerie, ethereal, liminal space and bewitched me with the poetry, guts and ghosts of the play so that I could experience it as if for the first time. And it continues to haunt me even now, like a troubled memory longing to be relived.”

“Under Nick Westrate's masterful direction, this STREETCAR is the epitome of FOMO-triggering live theater, capturing the glamour and grit of the Williams world. As the actors prowled around the warehouse, I could feel my own demons surfacing and resurfacing in response to this dangerous New Orleans fever dream. And of course, because every space is different, every single performance is a true exploration - it's impossible to see the same show twice. See it or you'll regret it. Then, see it again.”

“I saw this four person Streetcar twice, once in a small barn where they were literally right next to me, I could feel their emotions and my heart beat fast, and once in the open air of an outdoor stage, where their voices were echoing in the trees, their faces were aglow in candle light, and I heard every word anew of this thrilling play that I love. Both times. Incredible.”

‘’Nick Westrate and his agile team of four, transport you to the French Quarter without need of any props or sets whatsoever. It's a simple but powerful act of the imagination and it works like all the best Williams, as a kind of theatrical magic trick. And co-creator Lucy Owens' bold and brilliant take on Blanche is nothing short of a revelation. This belle isn't still fluttering around the cotillion ball. Her talons get in early and deep, as she claws her way through the play with a desperate grip on her sanity, in a searing and gutting performance.”

"By stripping STREETCAR down to just the words and bodies in space, i feel like i saw the play in its truest form, allowing for a presence and empathy rarely experienced in the theatre. this is the production i’ll compare every other STREETCAR to."

“An achingly good STREETCAR. Desperately human and horrifying. 

No sets, no props, no costumes: just the feral heartbeat of predator and prey. And Lucy Owen and the cast- this isn’t acting, it’s alchemy.”

“A wonderful version of STREETCAR, cracked wide open and without any fussiness. It brings Williams’ gorgeous language front and center, amplified by four beautiful and modern performances.”

“It was refreshing to see "Streetcar" in this raw format.  It allowed us to hear the play as if for the first time.  Nick clearly understands the humor and the tragedy baked into the play and directed these fierce actors beautifully. Lucy Owen blew me away.”

“This stripped-down Streetcar is so detailed and clear and touching and wrenching. I loved how, at Invisible Dog, the audience and light and dark and sound and expanse and textures of the physical environment informed the performance by these amazing actors. I loved being in the dark with them and with all of the people. I loved how we were in a warehouse space in Brooklyn and also in a flat in the Quarter—I saw it, in the dark. I loved how a bunch of queer and straight folks stood around me after, saying, “This hits different when you get older.””

"Nick Westrate's production of A Streetcar Named Desire is a revelation. But I mean that literally. The bare-bones aesthetic, focus on the text, and incredible acting revealed this play to me in a way that I'd never experienced before. The way the characters drown and cover their grief, the nakedness of their confessions, and the psychological toll of their denial and broken hearts have never been clearer to me. I felt as if I were encountering the play for the very first time. And, in many ways, I was."

“No one would ever associate Tennessee Wililams with minimalism, but in this stripped down version without props or accents or mad scenes, we can truly hear the call of the play. The clarion call of need. I've never felt more how the torque of systemic oppressions have forced these characters to fight for their dignity, and sealed their entwined fates. And Lucy's reinvention of Blanche allows us to see her imagination as an elegant rather than a depraved method of survival. It's an exploration of a beloved, timeless classic that we can all learn from.”

“I can’t remember a more exciting version of a Williams piece.”

“It was heartbreaking but also hilarious- and the action was so close and so nimble that I feared my laughter might break the spell.”

“One of the most impressive and original things I’ve ever seen.”

“This show rocked my understanding of Streetcar. It's lightning in a bottle. Exactly the kind of fearless, feisty work I hope we get to see -- and do!-- more of in the American theater.”

"A true thrill. I imagined Tennessee giggling in the corner, delighted someone had made something so new and raw with his words.”

“Revelatory!!! Stripped down bare to magnificent brilliance!!!!!  Cast to perfection!!!!! Lucy Owen, Lucy Owen, Lucy Owen!!!!!!  Our best actors redefining what it means to be in an ensemble!!! The direction is intelligent, bold, and unexpected. The production is Sublime!!!!! It was like seeing the play for the first time. Bravo!!!!”

There is a kind of punk ethos at work as The Streetcar Project makes a virtue of apparent lack of resources, to condense the play into its rawest, essential elements. The audience were all buzzing after the performance I saw in LA. Everyone felt as if we had felt the power of the story, and heard the music of the language, for the first time.

In The Streetcar Project, Blanche transcends Kowalski, and all the men who seek to confine her. Tennessee Williams imagined the inner life of Blanche, and of her sister, of the dynamics between them, of the torturous tensions with the men they are trapped with, and of the two women’s desperate and failed attempts to overcome the obstacles stacked against them, with a profound empathetic insight, and the production has honored this by restoring Blanche as the tragic heroine. Williams deeply understood a woman's experience in our still all-too patriarchal culture, one in which “woman” is defined and confined by male projections––rendered as an object of desire or a locus of envy, as a site of battle, and as a threat to be occupied and destroyed….

The Streetcar Project feels like a beginning. It is as good as theater gets