The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in a matching format the plays of one of the America s most influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes. "

The Theatre of Tennessee Williams brings together in matching format the plays of one of America's most persistently influential and innovative dramatists. Arranged in chronological order, this ongoing series includes the original cast listings and production notes for all full-length plays.

Tennessee Williams' journey from first reading Chekhov's The Sea Gull to his adaptation of that play as The Notebook of Trigorin mirrored his own creative life. Early on, Williams thought of directing The Sea Gull, and, over the years, often returned to the play, his empathy gradually shifting from Constantine, the youthful experimenter, to Trigorin, the world-weary writer. Williams, in his pursuit of success, had also made compromises. Near the end of his life, Williams realized his dream to interpret The Sea Gull when the University of British Columbia sponsored a production at the...

Menagerie was Williams's first popular success and launched the brilliant, if somewhat controversial, career of our pre-eminent lyric playwright. Since its premiere in Chicago in 1944, with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the role of Amanda, the play has been the bravura piece for great actresses from Jessica Tandy to Joanne Woodward, and is studied and performed in classrooms and theatres around the world. The Glass Menagerie (in the reading text the author preferred) is now available only in its New Directions Paperbook edition. A new introduction by prominent Williams...

Fugitive Kind, one of Tennessee Williams's earliest plays, is one of his richest in dramatic material. Written in 1937 when the playwright was still Thomas Lanier Williams, Fugitive Kind introduces the character who will inhabit most of his later plays: the marginal man or woman who, through no personal fault, is a misfit in society but who demonstrates an admirable will to survive. Signature Tennessee Williams' characters, situations, and even the title (which was used as The Fugitive Kind for the 1960 film based on Orpheus Descending) have their genesis here. At...

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof first heated up Broadway in 1955 with its gothic American story of brothers vying for their dying father's inheritance amid a whirlwind of sexuality, untethered in the person of Maggie the Cat. The play also daringly showcased the burden of sexuality repressed in the agony of her husband, Brick Pollitt. In spite of the public controversy Cat stirred up, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Circle Award for that year. Williams, as he so often did with his plays, rewrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for many years the present version...

Who better than America's elder statesman of the theater, Williams' contemporary Arthur Miller, to write as a witness to the lightning that struck American culture in the form ofA Streetcar Named Desire? Miller's rich perspective on Williams' singular style of poetic dialogue, sensitive characters, and dramatic violence makes this a unique and valuable new edition of A Streetcar Named Desire. This definitive new edition will also include Williams' essay "The World I Live In," and a brief chronology of the author's life.

Collections of interviews with notable modern writers

Mrs Stone changed from a famous, rich American actress to a notorious, very rich American widow. But the transition took years and all that time her youth and legendary beauty slipped away. So she escapes to Rome. But even the distractions of the Eternal City cannot stop old age wrinkling its way into her life.