After a successful run, including two extensions, “Geovanni’s Room” at Quintessence Theatre, the show closed on Sunday, July 6, 2026. Although the adaptation could have had a third extension, contractual considerations made that impossible.

On May 28, Quintessence Theatre Group in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania brought a literary classic to life in the world premiere of James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” adapted by Benjamin Sprunger and Paul Oakley Stovall. The James Baldwin estate granted permission to produce this theatrical adaptation of the novel exclusively at Quintessence. Directed by Stovall, Baldwin’s story is an explosive exploration of identity, love, and shame; an American man wrestles with his sexuality and societal expectations while living in 1950’s Paris. 

“This novel and its characters played a significant role for me and for generations of Americans looking to find themselves and better understand their identity and sexuality,” said Burns. “The act of translating a novel to the stage is a complex one; the brilliance of this adaptation is its effortlessness in bringing Baldwin’s searing text to vivid theatrical life. Through the intimacy of our theatre, Baldwin’s words, and this world-class ensemble, “Giovanni’s Room” will be an unforgettable cultural and theatrical event for all of Philadelphia this June and July.”

James Arthur Baldwin was a writer and civil rights activist who garnered acclaim for his essays, novels, plays, and poems. His 1953 novel “Go Tell It on the Mountain” has been ranked by Time Magazine as one of the top 100 English-language novels. In 1955, the manuscript for “Giovanni’s Room” was rejected by Baldwin’s publisher, Knopf, and was not accepted until a year later by Dial Press. Since its publication in 1956, it has been recognized as a landmark contribution to both American and LGBTQ+ literature by authors and critics. “Giovanni’s Room” was included in BBC News’s 2019 list of 100 most influential novels and ranked number two in The Publishing Triangle’s 100 best gay and lesbian novels compiled in 1999.

In James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room,” a beautiful young American named David travels to Paris with his girlfriend Hella to deliberate their future marriage. In the City of Light, David discovers a vibrant queer community and falls in love with Giovanni, an Italian bartender at a local gay bar. Unsettled by the discovery of an erotic nature in himself and the men around him and scared by the newfound force of his desire and passion, David is unable to imagine a future public life with Giovanni. He disappears into his past self, setting off a series of fatal, tragic accidents. 

This world premiere production of “Giovanni’s Room” is 17 years in the making, dating back to when co-playwright Benjamin Sprunger first conceived of adapting Baldwin’s novel. A veteran actor with over 20 years of TV and film appearances, Sprunger first reached out to the Baldwin Estate in 2008 about developing a stage adaptation of the story. His adaptation would honor the novel by using as much of its original dialogue as possible. A short time later, Sprunger joined forces with playwright, filmmaker, and activist Paul Oakley Stovall as he continued to develop and refine the script. Stovall serves as the production’s co-playwright and director under the tutelage of actress, singer, and stage director Phylicia Rashad. 

In April 2024, Quintessence Theatre’s Artistic Director, Alexander Burns, formally reached out to the Baldwin Estate to request limited stage rights for the world premiere of Giovanni’s Room to conclude the theatre’s 2025 season and received approval shortly after that. This marks the first stage adaptation of Baldwin’s books authorized by his family estate, with the 2018 film version of “If Beale Street Could Talk” representing the only time one of his books was presented in a different medium.

In addition to his work writing and developing this adaptation, Benjamin Sprunger has spent over 20 years performing as an actor in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Though he currently makes his home in Chicago, he lived in Los Angeles from 2001 to 2006, where he appeared on network television shows and several short films. Sprunger performed at various LA theatres, including productions at Secret Rose Theatre, Greenway Court Theatre, The Hudson Theatres, and The Ivar Theater. He also appeared in David Lee’s 2001 production of “Do I Hear a Waltz?” at Pasadena Playhouse. In Chicago, Sprunger has worked with Northlight Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Victory Gardens Theater, Steppenwolf Theatre, Music Theater Works, and more. 

The world premiere of James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” is directed by co-playwright Paul Oakley Stovall, an artist and activist based in Chicago. He notably appeared as George Washington in the first national tour of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical “Hamilton: An American” Musical (Mark Taper Forum, 2015). As a playwright, Stovall has written five plays and a musical, including Written by Phillis (Quintessence, 2023) and the stage comedy Immediate Family, directed by Phylicia Rashad. He also served as a producer for the 2022 Broadway production A Strange Loop, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical. 

After seeing the performance on Saturday, July 5, we interviewed Benjamin Sprunger and Paul Oakley Stovall. 

Questions from David Roberts and Joseph Verlezza (TRL):

TRL: What drew you to Baldwin’s work, and why did you feel this story was particularly suited for theatrical adaptation?

Paul Oakley Stovall: My mother was an English and Humanities teacher for over 25 years. James Baldwin was on the family bookshelf growing up. I started with Go Tell It On the Mountain, and something stirred in me. Then Giovanni’s Room spun my teenage self right off into oblivion. Revisiting the novel every few years has been fascinating. Baldwin’s genius lies partially in that over the years in reading the same book, but it reveals different things each time, or maybe it makes space for me to find different corners of myself.

I actually wasn’t so sure at first that it was suited for the theatre. It feels like the perfect novel, and I’m a real proponent of leaving well enough alone. But I came around and began to see the wild imagination in it as the perfect companion to the ingenuity one can find in the theatre.

Benjamin Sprunger: I was introduced to Giovanni’s Room via an AOL chat room for gay men in Columbus, Ohio, around 1996. I was in my junior year of college pursuing a degree in theatre performance, and the dialogue was just so cinematic to me.  I wanted to lift scenes from the novel and perform them for class (most especially Hella’s goodbye scene – where I wanted to play Hella, of course). I never did, but the novel left an undeniable impression on me. After multiple re-reads, I finally started fashioning a sort of radio play version of Giovanni’s Room in 2007.

TRL: Did you make any updates or adjustments to reflect contemporary perspectives, or did you aim to stay true to Baldwin’s original time period?

POS: We didn’t make updates per se. We absolutely recognized that much of the novel resonated with today’s society and looked to shine a little light on those moments. It is a novel “of its time.” Some of the text, although true to its current climate, may have distracted modern audiences. So as we shaped the adaptation, we excised some of that material without sacrificing the main storylines.

BS: Good question. There are some references to Giovanni “beating his mistress” in the original text that never made it into any script that either Paul or I worked on. Though we took great, painstaking care to use as much of Baldwin’s words as possible, there was just no way that would’ve sat well with a contemporary audience. There is some casual misogyny in the novel we did retain however (“Oh, these absurd women running around today, full of ideas and nonsense” being a good example), but we felt (we hoped anyway) that audiences would understand that more as a prevailing and accepted notion about women from that time period. It helped, of course, that Hella is incredibly intuitive and independent.  That, and we had incredible actors!

TRL: Did you see parallels between the societal pressures in Baldwin’s time and those faced by individuals today? Was that motivation to adapt the novel?

POS: There are clear parallels, sadly, between societal pressures then and now. Baldwin, in many ways, feels like an oracle, not just with Giovanni’s Room, but with all his writings. And as I’ve read the novel over the years, I see different societal pressures than I saw in earlier readings; aging in the gay community, American exceptionalism, the way religion can cripple you… and on and on. 

For me, the motivation to adapt came first simply from Ben asking me to take a swing at it with him. But very quickly, the motivation shifted to a need to do right by Mr. Baldwin.

BS: I’m fascinated that audiences could both watch this at a remove and think, “Thank god, it isn’t 1956 anymore.” But also see how certain things haven’t changed much and be horrified about how little progress has been made. Paul and I are now both in our 50s, and though we likely didn’t identify with Jacques when we read the novel in our 20s, his observations about aging in the gay community really hit home for us now. But no, the desire to adapt (for me) was just to bring this novel that I was so obsessed with/passionate about to a theatre audience, because a script didn’t yet exist (or so I thought).

TRL: Were there specific challenges in maintaining the lyrical quality of Baldwin’s writing while making it accessible for live performance?

POS: I can speak better to this as the director. A lot of the lyricism is supported through staging and movement, through lighting and projections. With the writing, the goal was to tell a compelling, action-filled story and to get out of Baldwin’s way. I was determined not to get stuck in linear storytelling. So, it was a balancing act of honoring Mr. Baldwin’s poetry and the need to create a thrilling evening of theatre.

BS: The novel is all from David’s point of view. He is narrating the novel. If we had retained that framing, the script would’ve been riddled with David monologues, and it would’ve been more self-reflective than either Paul or I wanted. The script wouldn’t have had a lot of action to it. It wouldn’t have propelled itself, with increasing speed, to its tragic end – which is essential in the theatre, I think.  We also chose to reformat the story more linearly than the original text, which helps to underscore and clarify cause and effect.

I was also very interested in this idea of David as an enigma – in our adaptation, the audience isn’t privy to his train of thought and why he does the things he does – which is a risky departure from the novel, but I think it pays off. Is David likeable? Is he monstrous? Is he a textbook sociopath? Or is he just a victim of his time period? Again, in stripping away David’s narration, we took great care in placing those Baldwin-penned lines in other characters’ mouths. I can think of only two examples where Paul and I (during previews) thought to add some additional Baldwin “lyrics,” but later we felt it was kinda like putting a hat on a hat, so to speak, and we cut them.

TRL: Were there any parts of the novel that you felt were particularly challenging to adapt for the stage?

POS: All of it. It was all a risk. The parts I wanted to add felt like a wonderful challenge. The most fun one can have in the theatre, whether as a director, writer, performer, designer…is to paint yourself into a corner, and then find your way out. That’s the gig. Follow the clues, walk the path, and trust in yourself.

BS: In my original radio play version, I did not include Joey, Clothilde, or Aunt Ellen.  That was all Paul’s doing – thinking them essential and writing those scenes – and I think it works beautifully.  For me, I remember feeling a great trepidation and reluctance to write dialogue for scenes we deemed necessary for the script but were not in the novel. (The marriage re-proposal and Hella’s letter home [at the top of Act Two] are not in the novel.) Who was I to think I could write in the style of the great James Baldwin? Or even come close enough so that the audience wouldn’t know it wasn’t James Baldwin? As co-adaptors, Paul and I often split duties.  Somewhat hilariously, Paul gave me a deadline for the Hella letter, so I hammered it out and ended up being quite pleased with it. 

TRL: What role does Paul Stovall’s staging and Shaun Motley’s set design play in conveying the emotional and thematic weight of the story? Did you work closely with them in the development of the project?

POS: I did work closely with myself LOL. I think my staging is another arm of storytelling in this project. I used my staging to mirror the cinematic quality of the novel, and also the “page-turning” quality of any great novel should lead you when attempting to stage an adaptation.

TRL: Did you focus on certain aspects of identity, love, or societal judgment more than others? This relates to the following question.

POS: There’s a great humbling that one must submit to. This novel operates on so many levels, it’s important to not get caught up in trying to excavate every nook and cranny. It speaks… our job is to listen and proceed accordingly. It’s also important to use one’s own life experience. As Ben and I have gotten older and lived through loss and change and adversity, it has made it easier to find ourselves in the story, and by extension, find the universality coursing through every character.

BS: I don’t know that we focused on any of these things “more than others.” During the rehearsal process, I kept marveling at how certain things were revealing themselves to me from the novel that I don’t know that I had ever really considered before. Chief among them was this Baldwin-penned condemnation of American post-war exceptionalism as it relates to Europe and Europeans. These examples of Americans’ devil-may-care behaviors as they are gallivanting around Europe doing things they would never do at home without consequence. I found it fascinating.

TRL: There are not any explicitly transgender characters in James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room.” In the staging of your adaptation, the character “Flaming Princess” is not only mysterious and flamboyant, but also transgender. We do not know the gender status of the actor Midge Nease nor is it relevant to the question. We found the character refreshing and important and Midge Nease’s performance authentic and believable. Was casting them as transgender intentional?

POS: Ben and I felt from the beginning that Flaming Princess was mostly likely, as described, transgender. It was thrilling to lean into that. Ben’s answer stands for both of us. Midge gave the best audition…

BS: Paul handled the casting, so I’ll let him answer. I will say, though, that the novel is fairly clear that Flaming Princess is a cross-dresser, and the observations about Flaming Princess are from David’s 1956 perspective (Flaming Princess is referred to with he/him pronouns). I do not know the etymologies of the following terms (or when they entered common parlance), but we didn’t feel it was too far a stretch from cross-dresser to drag queen to transsexual to transgender. Paul would often say that he believed Baldwin saw/knew all these characters he wrote about in Giovanni’s Room.  Baldwin encountered a Flaming Princess in Paris, and he wrote about them.  Baldwin wouldn’t have used the term transgender in 1956, but we believed he might if he were writing about them today.

TRL: Are there specific emotions, questions, or reflections you want viewers to leave with?

POS: My goal is for people to find a bit of themselves in every character; and to realize that being true to yourself is the most important thing in life. If you push away the demons, if you try to erase rather than embrace your past and your obstacles, things will most likely not work out in your favor. One must face the darkness; find your peace there.

BS: This is kinda silly, but, just once, I wanted someone to come up to me after the show and accuse us of creating that Giovanni was to be “executed by guillotine for dramatic effect.” That, surely, France wasn’t using that as a form of capital punishment in 1956. I wanted this to happen just so I could tell them that the last execution in France by guillotine was 1977!

TRL: Finally, is there anything else you would like to share about your adaptation of James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room?”

POS: I guess I’ll just share that working with Ben was a joy. We made a commitment to each other and let nothing tear us asunder. Collaborations are very hard. And I’m proud of how we not only handled the early days, but how we’ve moved through this phase of the journey.

BS: I am still wrestling with the enormity of what we accomplished with this production.  The first stage production of Giovanni’s Room authorized by the Baldwin Estate. That alone has been such an honor and the unquestionable pinnacle of my theatrical career thus far. And that it was so widely praised! I am hopeful that our adaptation will continue to have a life beyond our critically acclaimed, six-week run in Philadelphia.

TRL: That is our hope as well! Thank you for the interview.