The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in a matching format the plays of a genius of the American theatre. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes. Leading off Volume 5 is The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1964), a play that explores the tenacity of the human body and spirit when confronted with death. The more light-hearted Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle) was first produced on Broadway in 1968: the text offered here incorporates changes the author made for its 1975 revival. Small Craft Warnings (1972), one of Williams’s more searching works, is based on one of his shorter dramas, “Confessional,” published in Dragon Country (1969). The volume concludes with The Two-Character Play (1975), the author’s reworking of his earlier Out Cry (1973).
Arguably America’s greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Mississippi on March 26, 1911. The son of a salesman and a Southern belle, Williams spent his much of his early childhood in the parsonage of his beloved grandfather, an Episcopal priest, but moved with his family to St. Louis, where he attended high school and began to write. Forced by his father to leave the University of Missouri and take a 9-to-5 job in a shoe factory, Williams became more and more determined to be a successful writer. He took classes at Washington University in St. Louis, and wrote his first plays. In 1938 he earned a degree fro the Univeristy of Iowa, where he wrote Spring Storm. Of the theater he remarked: “know it’s the only thing that saved my life.” By 1939, he had adopted the name of Tennessee Williams, written Battle of Angels (for which he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant) and found his loyal and intrepid agent Audrey Wood. His first great success came in 1944 with his “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie, which opened in Chicago to rave reviews and moved to Broadway, where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the year. A Streetcar Named Desire, his next play, was a huge success in 1947 and established Williams as the premiere American playwright of his generation. Between 1948 and 1959, he enjoyed a string of Broadway successes, including Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). By 1959 he had won two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and a Tony Award. Movies were made of many of his plays and brought him huge success, renown and wealth. He continued to write voraciously, every day, producing novels, stories, and many new, radical and inventive plays, which did not always meet with the public’s approval, but which are now being revived and re-staged to great acclaim. As well as being astonishingly talented and prolific, Tennessee Williams was a man of considerable personal courage, willing to be open about being a gay man at a time when few were.
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The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in a matching format the plays of a genius of the American theatre. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes. Leading off Volume 5 is The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (1964), a play that explores the tenacity of the human body and spirit when confronted with death. The more light-hearted Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle) was first produced on Broadway in 1968: the text offered here incorporates changes the author made for its 1975 revival. Small Craft Warnings (1972), one of Williams’s more searching works, is based on one of his shorter dramas, “Confessional,” published in Dragon Country (1969). The volume concludes with The Two-Character Play (1975), the author’s reworking of his earlier Out Cry (1973).
Arguably America’s greatest playwright, Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in Mississippi on March 26, 1911. The son of a salesman and a Southern belle, Williams spent his much of his early childhood in the parsonage of his beloved grandfather, an Episcopal priest, but moved with his family to St. Louis, where he attended high school and began to write. Forced by his father to leave the University of Missouri and take a 9-to-5 job in a shoe factory, Williams became more and more determined to be a successful writer. He took classes at Washington University in St. Louis, and wrote his first plays. In 1938 he earned a degree fro the Univeristy of Iowa, where he wrote Spring Storm. Of the theater he remarked: “know it’s the only thing that saved my life.” By 1939, he had adopted the name of Tennessee Williams, written Battle of Angels (for which he received a Rockefeller Foundation grant) and found his loyal and intrepid agent Audrey Wood. His first great success came in 1944 with his “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie, which opened in Chicago to rave reviews and moved to Broadway, where it won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the year. A Streetcar Named Desire, his next play, was a huge success in 1947 and established Williams as the premiere American playwright of his generation. Between 1948 and 1959, he enjoyed a string of Broadway successes, including Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). By 1959 he had won two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and a Tony Award. Movies were made of many of his plays and brought him huge success, renown and wealth. He continued to write voraciously, every day, producing novels, stories, and many new, radical and inventive plays, which did not always meet with the public’s approval, but which are now being revived and re-staged to great acclaim. As well as being astonishingly talented and prolific, Tennessee Williams was a man of considerable personal courage, willing to be open about being a gay man at a time when few were.
