Pollock: A Staged Reading featuring Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch

We were pleased to present a theatrical reading of Pollock on June 16, 2018, featuring the original actors, Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch, in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. French playwright Fabrice Melquiot's drama, translated into English by Kenneth Casler and Miriam Heard, and directed by Paul Desvaux, illuminates the profound connection between the brilliant madness of Jackson Pollock and his marriage to artist Lee Krasner, exploring the charged space between his genius and her spirit, his inhibitions and her frustrations. It was our honor to shine a spotlight on these two important artists, both of whom spent time in the Hawthorne Barn.

This performance was made possible through the support of The Cultural Services of the French Embassy, which promotes the best of French arts, literature, cinema, digital innovation, language, and higher education across the U.S.

Marissa Nadler Select Songs: "All The Colors Of The Dark," "Drive," "Dead City Emily"

Singer-songwriter Marissa Nadler performed on June 1, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. She performed music from her latest album “For My Crimes,” as well as the single tracks below.

John Gorka Select Songs: "Nazarene Guitar," "Love Is Our Cross To Bear," "When Doves Cry (Prince)"

Iconic singer-songwriter John Gorka raised the rafters on May 18, 2018 in the Hawthorne Barn with his spirited acoustic guitar playing, insightful lyrics, and wry, witty storytelling. Veteran of countless world tours and collaborations with the likes of Nanci Griffith, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Ani DiFranco, Gorka released his fifteenth album, True in Time, in January 2018. We were proud to be a stop on his album release tour, where he performed a solo set of songs including the featured tracks below: “Nazarene Guitar,” “Love Is Our Cross To Bear,” and a cover of Prince’s “When Doves Cry.”

John Gorka in Concert (full)

Iconic singer-songwriter John Gorka raised the rafters on May 18, 2018 in the Hawthorne Barn with his spirited acoustic guitar playing, insightful lyrics, and wry, witty storytelling. This concert was part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival.

Kevin Morby Select Songs: "Beautiful Strangers," "I Have Been To The Mountain," "Parade"

Singer-songwriter Kevin Morby performed solo in the Hawthorne Barn on June 15, 2018, in Provincetown, Mass. as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Watch single tracks of "Beautiful Strangers," "I Have Been To The Mountain," and "Parade."

Overcoats Select Songs: "Cherry Wine," "Mother," "Nighttime Hunger"

On Sunday, June 10, 2018 Overcoats joined us for an intimate concert. The New York-based female electronic-pop duo of Hana Elion and JJ Mitchell, performed in the historic Hofmann Studio in Provincetown, the former West End home and studio of artist Hans Hofmann, as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Watch single tracks of "Cherry Wine" (Hozier cover), "Mother," and "Nighttime Hunger."

Michael Cunningham and Daniel Mendelsohn: Select Topics

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham and the internationally best-selling essayist, critic, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn discussed how writers turn consciously to literature itself as a way of broadening their own horizons on Sunday, May 27, 2018 in Provincetown’s Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. In the select topic videos below, the two writers each talk about writing Michael’s novel The Hours and Daniel’s memoir An Odyssey, along with a discussion on translation and what it’s like writing books about books.

Michael Cunningham and Daniel Mendelsohn in Conversation (Full)

Making literature out of literature: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Cunningham and the internationally best-selling essayist, critic, and translator Daniel Mendelsohn discussed how writers turn consciously to literature itself as a way of broadening their own horizons on Sunday, May 27, 2018 in Provincetown's Hawthorne Barn as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival.

Isaac Mizrahi and Alan Cumming: Select Topics

On Saturday, May 19, 2018, actor Alan Cumming interviewed fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. In each video below they discuss four different topics: Cabaret and Performing, Trump and Celebrities Spiraling, Art vs Commercial Work, and What's Next for each of them.

Martha Wainwright Select Songs: “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole,” “Factory,” “Proserpina"

On Saturday, May 19, 2018, musician and songwriter Martha Wainwright performed in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass. as part of Twenty Summers' annual month-long arts festival. Watch single tracks of “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole,” “Factory,” and “Proserpina.”

Jill Ciment and Amy Hempel in Conversation

Twenty Summers Introduction

We're Twenty Summers, an arts-based nonprofit organization in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is our story.

Music for Barns

Following up on last season’s “Good-bye, Sailor” and 2014’s “Rich and Strange,” we invite you to a third program of music and words produced for Twenty Summers by M.T. Anderson, National Book Award–winning author of Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. Our theme this year is the role of the rustic and the rural in the American imagination. The Aurea Ensemble, praised by theHuffington Post for its “intensity, superb sound, precision, and musicality that makes everything soar,” will play fiddle-tunes, hymn-tunes, and modern pieces based on traditional Americana. Movements for string quartet—culminating in Ben Johnston’s deeply moving Quartet No. 4 (“Amazing Grace”)—will alternate with excerpts from works by Robert Frost, John James Audubon, S. J. Perelman, and others, to be read by M. T. Anderson and Twenty Summers cofounder Julia Glass.

Season Four Trailer

Watch the teaser for Twenty Summers' full length videos from the 2017 season of concerts and conversations.

Watch the teaser for Twenty Summers' full length videos from the 2017 season of concerts and conversations. Season Four features concerts with David Wax Museum, Aurea Ensemble, Emily Wells, Lucy Kaplansky, and Duncan Sheik; and the following conversations: authors Alysia Abbott and Joan Wickersham, architects Peter Bohlin and William Rawn, authors Junot Diaz and Jacqueline Woodson, poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty, authors Hannah Tinti and Richard Russo, art critics and scholars Karen Wilkin and Marcelle Polednik, and filmmaker David France with political commentator Andrew Sullivan.

Our month-long festival takes place in the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown, Mass, each year in May and June. Learn more at 20summers.org.

Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow, Lise King, Matt Suter, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

Peter Bohlin and William Rawn in Conversation

World-renowned architects Peter Bohlin and William Rawn discussed the current and future role of architecture and their experiences designing buildings private and public for art and commerce and living and visiting.

Production Credits: Filming by Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

Sharon Olds and Mark Doty in Conversation

June 10, 2017

Iconic poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty read from their influential collections, and discuss the secrets behind their fearless craft. This event took place on June 10, 2017, and was moderated by Provincetown poet Kelle Groom.

Production Credits: Filming by Sean Gannett Productions / Audio by Chris Blood / Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

Lucy Kaplansky in Concert

Blending country, folk, and rock styles, vocalist Lucy Kaplansky performed in the Hawthorne Barn, sharing original songs as well as covers of June Carter Cash, Gram Parsons, Lennon-McCartney, and Nick Lowe.

Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

David France & Andrew Sullivan in Conversation

In 2012, author and journalist David France released the documentary How to Survive a Plague, the culmination of his decades-long coverage of the U.S. AIDS crisis. It won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and was an Oscar nominee. Last fall he published his book of the same title. In reviewing it for the New York Times, provocative political commentator Andrew Sullivan called it “the first and best history” of the courage behind the fight to end AIDS “and a reminder that if gay life and culture flourish for a thousand years, people will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’ ” In bringing them together, we experienced a bracing discourse on politics, culture, history, and more.

Boston Pride co-presented this event.

Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

Emily Wells in Concert

Performer, producer, singer, composer, and classically trained violinist, Emily Wells joined us in the Barn with her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation as well as her deft approach to live sampling. She has evolved into a uniquely modern singer and composer who uses a variety of instruments, from strings and drums to synths and beat machines, to create what NPR has praised as “gospel-folk music that’s immersed in secular desires and experiences” and the New York Times as “quietly transfixing.”

Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy

Junot Díaz & Jacqueline Woodson in Conversation

Authors Junot Díaz and Jacqueline Woodson join us for a conversation in the Barn that delves into the divisive politics of our age and what it means to be an American fiction writer of color today. Junot Díaz, whose work has been honored with a Pulitzer and a MacArthur, joins Jacqueline Woodson, whose books for readers of all ages have won prizes including a National Book Award and a Coretta Scott King Award. From his Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to her Brown Girl Dreaming, from his activist work in the Dominican-American community to her stories for teenage readers about what it means to grow up black and gay, Diaz and Woodson are writers who know how to raise their voices when it counts.

WCAI was a media sponsor for this event.

Production Credits: Filming by Stone Dow and Lise King, Sean Gannett Productions Audio by Chris Blood Edited by Filipp Kotsishevskiy