In January of 1919, celebrated Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky gives his final ballet performance and begins the diary that will chronicle his descent into madness. In 1936 St. Louis, Rose Williams – beloved sister to renowned playwright Tennessee Williams – discovers Nijinsky’s diary and dreams of escaping into his world. Separated by every possible spatial, temporal, and social barrier, the virtuosic dancer and the secluded sister have one thing in common: both are suspected of a peculiar and precocious dementia that terrifies and repulses their families who will do anything – anything – to contain them. A play about desire, madness, and the legacy of art, The Intense Fragility imagines an encounter outside the slipstream of history that brings two people together in the realm of the subjunctive where anything is possible and fantasy becomes reality.

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