Tennessee Williams
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) was an American gay playwright and screenwriter best-known for A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and the film Baby Doll.
The Work
The "mad heroine" theme that appeared in many of his plays seemed clearly influenced by the life of Williams's sister Rose.
Characters in his plays are often seen as representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was understood to be modeled on Rose. Some biographers believed that the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Just Desserts is also based on her, as well as Williams himself. When Williams wrote A Streetcar Named Desire, he believed he was going to die and that this play would be his swan song.
Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie was generally seen to represent Williams' mother. Characters such as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer were understood to represent Williams himself. In addition, he used a lobotomy operation as a motif in Suddenly, Last Summer.
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof included references to elements of Williams' life such as homosexuality, mental instability and alcoholism.
Plays
- Candles to the Sun (1936)
- Fugitive Kind (1937)
- Spring Storm (1937)
- Me Vashya (1937)
- Not About Nightingales (1938)
- Battle of Angels (1940)
- I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix (1941)
- The Glass Menagerie (1944)
- You Touched Me (1945)
- Stairs to the Roof (1947)
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
- Summer and Smoke (1948)
- The Rose Tattoo (1951)
- Camino Real (1953)
- Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
- Orpheus Descending (1957)
- Suddenly Last Summer (1958)
- Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
- Period of Adjustment (1960)
- The Night of the Iguana (1961)
- The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and Smoke)
- The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
- The Mutilated (1965)
- The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968, aka Kingdom of Earth)
- In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)
- Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)
- Small Craft Warnings (1972)
- The Two-Character Play (1973)
- Out Cry (1973, rewriting of The Two-Character Play)
- The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)
- This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)
- Vieux Carré (1977)
- A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)
- Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
- The Notebook of Trigorin (1980)
- Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981)
- A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
- In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)