An Exclusive TWTC New Orleans Timeline!

TENNESSEE & NEW ORLEANS

A TWTC timeline

• 1718 - New Orleans is founded
• 1720s-30s - Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is constructed, though likely it was not a smithy at the time. Eventually, it will be reputed to be one of (if not) the oldest structures used as a bar in the nation.
• 1803 - The Louisiana Purchase: The United States obtains a vast expanse of land including New Orleans from the French.
• 1911 - Thomas Lanier Williams is born in Columbus, Mississippi.
• 1918 - Tom and his family are transplanted from Clarksdale Mississippi to St. Louis, Missouri. This would be New Orleans' 200th year.
• 1938 - In the last few days of the year, Tom Williams moves to New Orleans for the first time. One of his first homes here is 722 Toulouse Street, where he stays in the attic of the rooming house lorded over by a domineering landlady. He becomes acquainted with the Quarter characters and locales, including James's Bar, a gay haunt, and Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, which by this time is a bar. The spot he stayed in just prior to 722 for a few days was 431 Royal Street.
• 1939 - Tom departs New Orleans to head out west with a teacher named Jim Parrot. During his westward adventures, he's being sought by some famous emissaries of New York theatre who have trouble tracking the vagrant down!
• 1941 - Williams returned to NOLA to work on some material, and during this time he was a resident of 708 Toulouse and 722 Dumaine Street (not to be confused with 722 Toulouse, from before!)
• 1944 - The Glass Menagerie opens in a snowstorm in Chicago, but manages to garner critical praise and audience applause. It's headed to Broadway!
• 1945 - Tom (now Tennessee) has his first big break for The Glass Menagerie, a memory play that is the first in what will be a triptych of his autobiographical works about love, family, and writing. He'll ride the wings of fame all over America and beyond, bringing him back to...
• 1946 - Tennessee is working on The Poker Night, which will become A Streetcar Named Desire, from his perch at 623 1/2 St Peter Street. During this time, he's dating a local man named Pancho Rodriguez y Gonzalez. On future visits, before he purchases his home, he would stay at the Maison De Ville at 727 Toulouse Street (just across from 722!) when he visited, or he'd get a room at the Monteleone with his grandfather. He also occasioned the Hotel Royal-Orleans until he was turned away with his long-time partner Frank Merlo.
• 1947 - Streetcar opens on Broadway to great acclaim. It stars Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Jessica Tandy, and Marlon Brando, and is directed by Elia Kazan. Williams has cemented his place as America's foremost playwright. He takes home his first Pulitzer Prize.
• 1951 - The film version of Streetcar is released. Vivien Leigh plays Blanche, replacing Jessica Tandy. Through this film, the words of Williams and the spirit of New Orleans is carried across the globe and into the imaginations of millions of people all over the world.
• 1958 - Suddenly Last Summer, another New Orleans play, opens Off-Broadway under a double bill alongside Something Unspoken, which is collectively titled Garden District after the Uptown neighborhood.
• 1962  - Williams buys his home in the French Quarter at 1014 Dumaine. It's located across the street from Marti's, which will be one of his favorite restaurants for years to come. Local theatre legend Ricky Graham even had the pleasure of seeing Williams around when he worked there later in the playwright's life.
• 1966 - The Mutilated and The Gnadiges Fraulein open under the collective title Slapstick Tragedy on Broadway. The Mutilated is a Christmas story that takes place in the Quarter.
• 1975 - Williams releases his Memoirs, which provide a frank account of his life, and particularly of his time in the French Quarter.
• 1977 - Vieux Carré, the second retrospective play in his autobiographical triptych, opens for a very short run on Broadway. It looks back on the days following his move to New Orleans in 1938/39, and picks up almost where The Glass Menagerie left off.
• 1981 - Something Cloudy, Something Clear completes the triptych of memory plays, following a writer who has relocated to Provincetown, Massachusetts to complete a commercial work meant to be his big break. It picks up (more or less) shortly after the westward hi-jinx of The Writer and Sky in Vieux Carré.
• 1983 - In January, Williams makes his final visit to 1014 Dumaine Street, the house he sold to Dr. Lutz, who still owns it to this day, with the condition that the playwright could keep quarters there until his death. On February 25, Williams is found dead in his hotel room in New York City. The cause of death is initially reported as choking, but is later amended to the actual cause of death: seconal poisoning. He's buried in St. Louis, but Dr. Kenneth Holditch and a number of other New Orleanians arrange a memorial for Williams at the St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square.
• 1986 - The Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival is established.
• 2011 - The Comédie Francaise produces A Streetcar Named Desire in Paris. It is the first American play to be produced in the Salle Richelieu. This is the year Williams would have been 100.
• 2015 - The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans is founded as the first theatre company to focus on the works of America's Greatest Playwright, right here in his spiritual home.
• 2016 - TWTC produces the world premiere of The Strange Play, which takes place in a French Quarter courtyard and is likely to have been completed during or shortly after his first stay in the Quarter in 1938/39.
• 2018 - New Orleans turns 300. TWTC celebrates with its own triptych of New Orleans plays: Vieux Carré, The Mutilated, and Suddenly Last Summer in its 4th season. 

  

  A Fabulous View of the Quarter by Tennessee Williams

Don't forget to grab your tickets to Vieux Carré, now running through August 25th! Experience TW's French Quarter for yourself at the Marigny Opera House featuring local legends Adella Gautier, Janet Shea, Tracey Collins, Kyle Daigrepont, and more!

www.twtheatrenola.com

Bonus: A Fabulous View of Tennessee from the Quarter.

Liz, Augustin, & Tennessee Talk About Boys

Augustin: The year is 1947. The world was not ready. 

“Catch”, he brayed, and she called back, “What?”

And then we all got a load of Stanley’s meat.

It’s in the first few moments of A Streetcar Named Desire that we’re introduced to the swagger and eye candy of Stanley Kowalski. He disappears from the stage as quickly as he arrived, giving us a tease of the danger and the desire that surrounds him.

The world wasn’t ready. Until this moment, no man in western literature since the Greek and Roman heroes had been so lionized—not as just a warrior or a winner, but as a steaming heap of sexy. He was more than a one-syllable “man”…he was a three-syllable “may-uh-nuh”. Discussing a play like Streetcar, it can seem at first reductive to discuss the beefcake when such rich characters as Blanche, Stella, and the arguably more vulnerable Mitch are waiting in the wings for their next entrance. But there’s something unique about the smoldering Stanley that goes unnoticed in our modern age.

Tennessee Williams eroticized men in a way no other American playwright had before. He set them in front of the lens of complex women characters often torn between longing and danger—the two ends of desire. This wasn’t just unique of Williams as a playwright. It set him apart as a trailblazer for queer drama.

Oh, hey, Stanley.

Liz: As Tennessee Williams saw it, homosexuality was his “selected” way of life. His queer perspective shapes his written work, something that academics and artists love to excavate for their deeper meanings. What is wonderful about Williams’ treatment of homosexual desire is his frankness. At a time when such things were not meant for polite society, Williams’ writing blatantly explored his (sometimes dark) desire for male bodies. In a 1975 interview about his published memoirs, Williams said, “Sexuality is a basic part of my nature. I never considered my homosexuality as anything to be disguised. Neither did I consider it a matter to be over-emphasized. I consider it an accident of nature.”

In the same 1975 interview, Williams commented that his voice can often be found in his female characters. So like you said, A Streetcar Named Desire’s Stella and Blanche have the visceral experience of Stanley as a figure to be feared, ridiculed, and yet, lusted after.

A: So in a way, using women as the protagonists and the lens through which we understood the men onstage, he was exploring desire for men from a safer space, and that one degree of separation was enough for “polite society” as you termed it, to accept his brand of desire.

L: Speaking of undisguised but un-over-emphasized desire, Suddenly Last Summer introduces us to the poet Sebastian, whose desires and desirability take on a dark hue in the light of his sexually exploitative practices with young men in North Africa, and his tragic end being literally devoured by dark-skinned street children--gobbled up by the darker side of his longing.. Sebastian was certainly a predator feeding sexually off men, and yet, not an entirely undesirable one. The horror Mrs. Venable displays at her son also invites the audience’s empathy. Just as we see in Streetcar, it seems that desire and danger were, for Williams, entertwined. The character of Catharine, Sebastian’s cousin states, “we all use each other and that's what we think of as love.” Consuming flesh is, in turns, appealing and appalling; we find such appetites lurking in our most intimate relationships.

Elizabeth Taylor's Catharine sees more of
Sebastian in the film than we do onstage.

The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by illustrates
 the painful juxtaposition between voluptuous
ecstasy and pain.

A: What’s so striking about Sebastian is that we never see him onstage, and yet—like the children that eat his flesh—we’re ravenous for him. Catharine and Violet both paint such a vivid picture of him that even in his absence, he’s erotic.

L: Like Skipper in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

A: Right; both Skipper and Sebastian are dead at the outset of the play and yet they’re also the impetus for all of the action. In Sebastian’s case, it was his inability to negotiate sex with men that killed him. In the case of Skipper, it’s Brick’s inability to reciprocate the kind of love that Skipper was afflicted by that ultimately starved and killed Skipper.  In both instances, shame surrounding sexuality and men was what ended their lives.

Anika Noni Rose as Maggie pleads Terrence Howard's Brick

L: Meanwhile, Brick is a fading beauty, an aging football star—check two boxes of desirability for the people around him—whose emotional repression, gay or not, has resulted in an unhappy and sexually unfulfilling marriage. Skipper looms over him as a spectre. Brick’s bitterness and alcoholism is escalated by his rejection of Skipper’s declaration of desire, and Skipper’s subsequent suicide. Brick is destroyed by his self-denial and repression; he is doomed to a life of mendacity.

A: Unless he can, to borrow a Shanley quote by another queer icon, “Snap out of it!”…which is what his father, Big Daddy begs him to do. Just like Brick is being slowly disintegrated by his notions of male affection being dirty, Big Daddy knows that his entire fortune is built on the backs of two men in a reciprocal, healthy gay relationship—Jack Straw and Peter Ochello are two more dead gay men who add to the situation of the play, but they’re an illustration of what benefits pure love can generate.

 

L: …And can we just talk for a minute about Ollie Olsen in One Arm? Ollie is a former sailor and boxer, a hustler, and a powerful figure. Ollie is objectified blatantly in One Arm, as the seedy underbelly of desire both devours and sustains him.

A: More overtly than in other cases, his sexuality is his currency, and he thinks he’s always got good credit because he’s totally unaware of the emotional withdrawals he’s engaging in.

L: He also shapes those around him, his physical beauty, anger, and vulnerability leaving an impact on his patrons long after he is no longer available for their physical pleasure.

A: And before you know it, he’s way in debt (emotionally), and it’s too late for him to turn his life around. Between the real, deep tragedy and the fact that the screenplay was sooooooo gay for its time, it’s not surprising it took Moisés Kaufman adapting the play version for audiences to get a really good look at this character.

Adler Hyatt's Ollie in TWTC's recent One Arm is reached for by anyone in his sphere, but he is unable to reach back.

L: Desire is not simple in Williams’ work; it spells disaster when denied, yet it may devour us when indulged. Williams’ male objects of desire frighten and intoxicate, and Williams’ work plunges us into the churning consequence of our basest -- most beautiful -- nature.

A: I feel like there’s still so much more to discuss…We’ll be back next time to discuss Chance Wayne from Sweet Bird of Youth, Alvaro Mangiacavallo from The Rose Tattoo, and the semi-nefarious Chicken from Kingdom of Earth!

Introducing Liz Bruce

A Note From Augustin J Correro, Co-Artistic Director & Sometimes-Blogger
Hey, TWTC Family!
The last year has been a whirlwind at TWTC, and we've fallen behind on blogging. We're growing so fast and producing theatre is no small feat. That's why we've recruited help to be sure we're still turning out quality content! Please join TWTC in welcoming Liz Bruce as a contributing blogger!

Why Tennessee Means NOLA To Me

by Liz Bruce, M.A., M.F.A., Contributor

I wasn’t born in New Orleans, but the city began bewitching me at an early age. That bewitchment, I owe primarily to Tennessee Williams. I remember it clearly: assigned to read The Glass Menagerie for English class, I found myself captivated by the visceral, vibrant words that Williams wrote. I quickly checked out a Williams anthology from the school library and was soon swept away by this far off land where such lovely, dark, and tumultuous things happened.Williams made sure I knew that New Orleans was special.

Years later, when my now-husband gave me my first physical introduction to his native New Orleans, I felt some trepidation. Being from New York, I was raised with the snobbish attitude that New York City is the center of the entire world; no other city could possibly compare. What if New Orleans failed to live up to the myth Williams had given me? 

I needn’t have worried. It was a warm day when I drove into New Orleans, and as my AC was broken, I had the windows rolled down. A favorite song of mine was playing on the radio as I pulled up to an intersection, and I was dancing to it, blissfully unaware, caught up in my groovy tunes. From the next car over, a peal of laughter rang out, and I turned, ready to be embarrassed, but the driver simply cheered and started dancing along with me. There we were, strangers stopped at a red light, having a dance party, sharing in a moment of unadulterated joy. Just like that, I was hooked. This was my city.

I moved to New Orleans about six months ago. As a newly minted and proud transplant, standing on the brink of my first Mardi Gras season, a celebration enhanced by the advent of the tricentennial, I’m finding New Orleans a home I didn’t know I was looking for, and I sometimes can’t fathom why anyone would choose to be anywhere else. In this, I feel a particular kinship with that other transplant, Tennessee Williams himself, who not only called New Orleans his spiritual home, but who also famously said, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

Williams’s writings communicated New Orleans to a broader world in a way that continues to reverberate from the heart of the city outward. His homes and haunts occupy many corners of the city that can still be discovered today. The madness of a boarding house landlady in Vieux Carré comes from Williams’s own demented landlady. The famous Desire streetcar route ran right past William’s St. Peter Street apartment, and Williams’s favorite bistro, Galatoire’s, makes a brief appearance in Streetcar, with Stanley declaring vehemently that he isn’t going there for supper. 

But Williams’ writing allowed outsiders to know the streets in a way that moved beyond its geographical points of interest. Williams’s descriptions of New Orleans, often found in his detailed stage directions, invite audiences to feel, to smell, to hear: In the opening of A Streetcar Named Desire, for example, Williams describes the “raffish charm” of the poorer neighborhood, the lyricism of the sky, the faint smell of bananas and coffee, and the ever-present sound of, “a tinny piano being played with the infatuated fluency of brown fingers. This ‘Blue Piano’ expresses the spirit of the life which goes on here.”

Williams moved to New Orleans when he was 28, and there found an escape from a troubled family life and a puritanical past. In New Orleans, Williams found safety and freedom as he had never experienced before; he found a sacred slice of bohemia where artists, adventurers, and lovers could live unfettered. Williams referred to New Orleans as a “vagabond's paradise” and remarked, “In New York, eccentricities, authentic ones, are ignored. In Los Angeles, they’re arrested. Only in New Orleans are they permitted to develop their eccentricities into art.” New Orleans was a place where William’s creativity and individuality would not only be nurtured, but celebrated. 

Certainly, a defining characteristic of this safe haven was New Orlean’s position as a singular bastion of sensual fantasy and permissiveness, set apart from the rest of the world. It was in New Orleans that Williams selected homosexuality as his, “sexual way of life.” Williams himself even told the story of losing his virginity to a sailor who climbed up his fire escape from a party below. New Orleans spoke in daylight what was too often whispered in darkness, and that suited Williams just fine.

Williams’ words painted a picture of New Orleans that was at once cosmopolitan and decaying, a city of glorious contradictions and tangles of difference. New Orleans was a place where the senses were titillated, awakened, and sometimes even assaulted. It was an intermingling of races, sexualities, celebrations, and sometimes despair. For Williams, this churning mess of spirit and flesh was what he needed.

Check out Wiliams' portrayal of NOLA with each show this year--starting with One Arm by Moises Kaufman and all the way through our 4th Season, NO Quarter...starting this summer!

Spirit and flesh continue their dance in the streets of New Orleans today, something that I like to think would make Tennessee Williams proud. His legacy continues to spread the good news of this strange, wonderful city to the wider world, and New Orleans in turn does its part to keep his legacy alive, through productions of his plays and celebrations of his life and work. 

In all that Williams has said of New Orleans, my favorite is a simple sentence from his journal: “Here surely is the place I was made for if any place on this funny old world.” 

I don’t think anyone could have said it better.

Hey, Gang! It's Augustin again. Don't forget to grab your tickets to One Arm by Moises Kaufman, adapted from the short story and screenplay by Tennessee Williams, opening March 22 in collaboration with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival! On Saturday, March 24, there'll be a conversation with Mr. Kaufman facilitated by me and the New Orleans Advocate's Bradford Rhines! Just click the image below and reserve your seats now!

Tickets Now On Sale!