A Playwright In Reviews

Part Two: This Is What It Looks Like

Welcome back. We have been on a short break as this blogger recently lost a close family member, but here we are with Part Two in our triptych series on Williams critique!

Last post, we deconstructed a real review of a production of Summer and Smoke. This time, we've constructed a fictional review of an imaginary production of King Lear by William Shakespeare, a brilliant play considered to be one of the "Big Four" tragedies. This way, we're not selecting an unknown playwright or a living one to be our prototype for a faux-critique; instead we're going to let into another indisputably great playwright who is also dead, that way we won't be taking any more cheap shots than one might when eviscerating Mr. Williams. To highlight how it comes across when scholars, reviewers, critics, and commentators compare all of Williams to A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Glass Menagerie, we will spend almost all of this review comparing Lear to "better works" of Shakespeare: comedies. Who doesn't like a comedy better, right?!

    King Lear has it all: mistaken identity, familial turmoil, duels, and that signature Shakespeare flair. This production, however, lacks the romantic, star-crossed sparkle of Romeo and Juliet or the Bard’s other triumph A Midsummer Night’s Dream, leaving something sweet to be desired of England’s foremost playwright. Lear blows until it cracks its cheeks, but with no love-lorn payoff. To be fair, it seems the playwright was experimenting with a decidedly un-romantic form when he set pen to paper, and rumor has it his life was fraught with suffering and fear of his own mortality, so it’s no wonder the work is unfocused. Still, there are some moments that make this current production worthwhile.

  Gabrielle Onion’s direction tries to salvage a rusty old ship which should have stayed sank on its maiden voyage. If it were not for her efforts and the work of the scenic designer Saul Giamatti and lighting designer Katya Rasputin, the two-and-a-half hour slog would be unwatchable. This writer feels that the playwright might have better stuck to his tried and true skills before delving into foreign territory.

Kitty McGee as Cordelia is laudable as Cordelia, Lear’s daughter most like Juliet, or perhaps even Hermia. McGee can be seen mining the sub-par interactions at the top of the play for all it’s worth, carving out a genuinely likable portrayal of a character we wish we could see more of. In her scene, she’s forced to make a Sophie’s choice between flattering her father, muscularly played by Bill Beau Baggins, and telling him the truth and earning his scorn. Tugging at our heartstrings, McGee elects truth over flattery, professing her true devotion to her father, thus setting him at odds with her. He banishes her, and we hope to see more of McGee’s Cordelia as she tries to win her way back into her father’s good graces. But our hopes, like Cordelia’s, are dashed.

Rather than following Cordelia’s journey as we do the lovers in Midsummer, R&J, or even the farcical Twelfth Night, Shakespeare instead opts to parade before us a gross procession of figures we can’t imagine we could associate ourselves with. The playwright’s less savory notions find a voice in this throng of damnable buffoons. Jerry Jones as Kent and Tony Braxton as Gloucester are two of the only lights in the dark tunnel that is this narrative of degradation, but that’s come to be expected of the two veterans. Another promising performance is that of Edgar, played by P. Michael Jackson, as he carves his way through the mire of a plot-line. 

While Shakespeare is no stranger to a sub-plot and he’s shown some agility with maneuvering them before, Lear lacks the fluidity of Romeo & Juliet that you might expect, as it jumps from place to place with no regard for helping the audience to understand the passage of time. At once we are at the castle of Goneril, the lascivious and over-done daughter of Lear—written with a heavy hand and little nuance, and the next we find ourselves at Regan’s castle (she is the other daughter of Lear, and it is hard to distinguish whether we like her character less than Goneril, or if it’s a plodding and self-aware performance by Charlotte O’Dair).

The playwright uses the husbands as set-dressing, trotting out his old trick of placing women at the fore, but the women we meet are detestable. Therefore, we’re left to watch the titular role of Lear bombast his way through excruciatingly indulgent speeches. At the end of the day, after the storm has passed (an unwieldy metaphor which Shakespeare attempts but does not see through), everyone is either dead or miserable, and we lack the pathos and uplift of seeing our Montagues and Capulets seeing the error of their ways or of the frolicking lovers ultimately seeing their wedding days, with all the strange magic undone.

If Lear is an attempt to cast such magic, perhaps it’s less of a spell and more of a curse. Congratulations to the cast and creative team for the hard work they’ve done attempting to breath life into sub-par Bard.

As you might have guessed by now, the goal here has been to illuminate the way this single standard of style for a playwright is unfair. It's not used for any other playwright, but for Williams it is extremely common? Why might that be?

The final post in our triptych of reviews will be after we open our upcoming show The Rose Tattoo! Get your tickets now!

www.twtheatrenola.com

A Playwright in Reviews

Part One: Williams vs. Williams
by Augustin J Correro

Thanks to everyone who's been following our blog during our Inaugural Season. We're kicking off season two in the same vein as our very first post back in August of 2015. This is the first of a three-post series about the critical reception of Tennessee Williams' plays, focused specifically on reviews.

There's something that happens to writers when reviewing Williams plays that can only be described as a phenomenon. Whereas in most situations, a production will be considered by its own flaws and merits, reviewers almost reflexively beat up on the playwright if that playwright is Tennessee Williams. This "Tennessee Williams Punching Bag Syndrome" is probably rooted in a multitude of factors: his iconic works being so widely known, his besmirched celebrity during the 1960s, his refusal to adhere strictly to one style as an artist, and perhaps the notion that attacking him is less of a low blow than attacking a member of any given artistic community (who is still living and needs to eat).

This isn't to say that reviewers and critics don't write thoughtful reviews, or even that a review can't be thoughtful and include some of these over-arching factors. What TWPBS does, however, is create a lopsided context for the reader. It creates a passively hostile environment in which it's vaguely clear that the playwright should have stayed in his corner instead of writing plays in a style less familiar to the reviewer. It invites the reader to dinner party with Williams but makes it *just a little* uncomfortable for everyone. If that sounds convoluted, that's because it is. It's systemic. 

Picking out one of these micro-biases will help to illustrate. Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. These are considered "The Big Three". Branching out from the Big Three, there's a slightly more expansive canon which (depending on the level of fandom) may include between five and seven other plays. It is widely accepted that the Big Three are the standard against which all Williams plays be measured. Returning to the dinner party metaphor, consider the awkward feeling you might have if the parents kept bragging on your date's ex-lovers while you try to enjoy your meal. This is problematic. 

It's problematic because Williams wrote over a hundred plays, thirty-three of which were full-length, and only a handful of which are, or truly resemble, the Big Three. If these three are the standard, it's easy for a reviewer to downplay the virtues of other spectacular plays simply on the merit that they're dissimilar to Cat, Streetcar, or Menagerie. While this may strike the writer as particularly damaging (it's only one review, after all) — incrementally and over time, it has been extremely unhelpful in identifying and criticizing the hundred-plus other plays in a fair and balanced way.

This phenomenon began in Williams' lifetime, once his Big Three had already made their marks. Critics expected him to turn out more of the same. When he didn't do so, it became fashionable to berate him for it. Without a Blanche to cling to, critics felt duped and betrayed, and chose to take it out on Williams, the seeming perpetrator of this diabolical and un-Streetcar-ly ruse. This continued after his death, and few writers have dared to challenge the convention. What I hope to do here is to challenge the reviewers, present and future, to look at Williams' plays not exclusively as lesser versions of the Big Three, but instead on their own virtues and failings.

HEY! ARE YOU SAYING YOU THINK CRITICS ARE DUMB???!!!
I should probably take a moment here to point out reviewers and critics are vital to a theatre landscape. They are often unsung heroes who, amid deadlines, deluges of requests to see multitudinous productions, and paltry word count edicts, still commit to helping further the discourse on theatre and inform audience members about what's happening in their communities (read: get people into seats). With that said, many critics and reviewers welcome conversation about what they write, as art is an ongoing conversation.

As an example, below are some excerpts from a review of a production of Summer and Smoke from Richmond, Virginia, in which I am boldfacing every overt comparison to Cat, Menagerie, or Streetcar or the style thereof, and underlining the less apparent comparisons, or comparisons to other plays. Fred Kaufman, whose astute review neither pulls punches nor shows any intention of detraction from Williams' brilliance, is a great example of a mindful review which is still informed by a climate of underlying bias toward the more canonical works.

Virginia Rep’s ‘Summer and Smoke’ is a masterful production of a troubled play

by Fred Kaufman

After becoming the toast of Broadway with the staging of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams went to work on his next play, Summer and Smoke.  Almost as soon as Williams finished the play, he realized that it was too diffuse, murkily metaphysical, and melodramatic. He ripped into the script, abandoning subplots and allowing the poetic tragedy of his heroine to emerge and to flower.

But this massive rewrite of Summer and Smoke was finished too late to use as a replacement—rehearsals for the London production were well under way—so the original play was doomed to hold the stage and, predictably, to fail.  The rewrite was retitled as Eccentricities of a Nightingale.  By the time he released Eccentricities, Williams’ star was on the wane and the play succumbed to disinterest.  It has been thankfully revived in the years since and, for me, is the gem he was looking for when he originally sat down to write Alma’s tale.

...

Even though Essentricities is a much better play, Summer and Smoke is still pure Southern Gothic Tennessee Williams.

The play takes place in turn of the century Mississippi.  The plot concerns Miss Alma, an overly proper and overly nervous Southern spinster who lives with her harsh clergyman father and her mentally ill mother.  She lives next door to young Dr. John who has just returned home from medical school to practice with his father.  The stodgy Alma has been in a suppressed love and lust fantasy with the free spirited John ever since they were children.

We find out that John is more than carefree, he is self-destructive.  He is addicted to alcohol and risky sexual behavior.  Despite her own nervous condition, Alma makes excuses to spend time with him.  Each episode ends badly with Alma resisting John’s boozy flirtations.  John takes up with a low class Mexican tart in furtherance of his need for raw sexuality and risky personal behavior (no stereotypes there).

Alma seeks the aid of John’s father when she learns John intends to marry his tart.  The tart’s father shoots John’s father in a pretty far-fetched scene.  Of course this tragedy sobers John who does a 180, loses the tart and finds respectability.

By this time Alma, having been rejected and afraid of dying alone cloisters herself in her father’s house and refuses to see John for months.  We can assume she has had a nervous breakdown.  When she recovers she is stripped of her good manners and seems to have been philosophically and morally changed.  She goes to John and attempts to seduce him, but it is too late.  He is now the prim and proper gentleman engaged to a good girl.  Their ships have passed in the night and Alma is devastated to the point where she displays risky sexual behavior at the end of the play.  The roles have been reversed.

...

Williams is never clear as to why John is so self-destructive.  We know his mother died when he was a boy and can assume his father’s reputation is near impossible to live up to.  Whether this justifies his behavior is speculative.  Williams abandons John’s dilemma in Eccentricities but finally finds the answer to this character problem in his Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  We know why Brick self-destructs.  We understand it is a mixture of repressed homosexuality and the inability to live up to his youthful glory football days.

We’re also are never fully satisfied with why John and Alma just miss being happy together.  Their dramatic arcs overshoot each other, leaving both of them unhappy and unfulfilled.  This is also Tennessee Williams’ style.  No one goes home happy.  But it doesn’t feel completely honest.

The job of making it honest belongs to the actor.  Even problematic Williams is rich material to mine and an actor’s delight.  And the actors in this production take great delight in playing Williams and as a result they are delightful to watch.

...

Carolyn Demanelis is a wonderful Alma.  She is a different Alma than I have seen before.  She focuses on a stronger, less fragile and less “eccentric” Alma.  It only half works.  While I liked moments of that choice, she forgoes any indication of an emotional fragility which will lead to her nervous breakdown later in the play.  Alma, like Laura in The Glass Menagerie or even Blanche in Streetcar all have a break-ability factor that makes watching them deteriorate very sympathetic and painful to watch.  Ms. Demanelis finds the neurotic characteristics to play but they are the second best choice in terms of watching this delicate flower wilt.  When she emerges from her house after a long hibernation, it is hard to justify her shift in character without seeing the vestiges of that breakdown.

...

All of the younger actors succeed very well playing their age but not as well playing the older, commonplace people of this Mississippi.  Such roles are more difficult as Williams imbues them with the prejudicial, stubborn, gossip filled characteristics that he hates.   With one exception.  Trace Coles is wickedly spot on as young John.  You can see the genesis of all the problems that will plague John in his older years.  He also hits the mark as a very awkwardly dull Roger, a very second rate suitor to Alma.  This is a young actor to watch.

...

The review goes on to praise what appears to be a very nicely executed production of a Williams classic, directed by Richmond theatre great, Bruce Miller.

What stands out in the paragraphs above is that that the only time the play is allowed to stand on its own without comparison is in its summation. Any critical reference to the play is almost exclusively in comparison to Cat, Streetcar, Menagerie, or Eccentricities of a Nightingale — a later play and a permutation of Summer and Smoke. Even as the author launches into his synopsis of Smoke, he prefaces with Eccentricities being a superior play. While comparison absolutely has its place in criticism, there could also be space to judge the play based more on the material itself. 

Fred was a great sport and very gracious to allow me to use this review as an example, and for that I'm very grateful. He understands that Williams is not infallible, and that the play about which he's writing has some dead spots, potentials for pitfalls in production, and a capacity for being languid.  You can read his full review here. He also recognizes the skill of Williams to create rich roles for actors, an ability to wield ambiguity masterfully, and a powerful ability to render emotional expression.

I thank Fred and his fellow critics and reviewers for the commitment to the communities which they serve.

In our next post on this discussion, I will be inventing a review of a production of King Lear in which I compare the entire production to Romeo & Juliet to highlight the incongruity in reviews of Williams when matched against other great playwrights who chose to write in different styles. 

World Premiere Tennessee Williams: How It's Possible

Our next production, Tennessee Williams: Weird Tales is an evening of delightfully bizarre one-act plays by America's Greatest Playwright. Two of these plays, Ivan's Widow and The Strange play have never before been staged. Very regularly we get asked by folks who haven't heard, "What's your next show?", and when we tell them that we're giving two Williams plays a world premiere, we're generally met with astonishment and the question, "How is that even possible?"

The question is asked so frequently that we thought it best to articulate it in a blog post, so the news and the details can reach even more people who are interested in Tennessee Williams' plays.

So much writing!
Tennessee Williams wrote a lot. It's probably safe to say that we have more of Williams' writing than any other significant American playwright. Between plays, short stories, poems, screenplays, and novellas, his body of work is considerable. However, if you count his collected journals, letters, notebooks, essays, and memoirs, there's even more to read about the playwright than you could have guessed (there are also paintings!). Williams wrote daily, prolifically, and compulsively. He left behind about as many clues as to his inner workings and his creative life as a person could. In an age before around-the-clock tweets and twenty-four-hour news, he was setting everything down on paper, providing future generations with a wealth of information about himself and his writing.

How do we have so many of these private clues?
So proud of her "writing son", the playwright's mother Edwina was as obsessive about collecting his work as her son was about producing it. From her collection, the writings found their ways into various archives, libraries, and collections. Draft after draft of famous Williams plays can be compared and contrasted, as he was dedicated to making every syllable count. His notes can be found  scrawled on the edges of typed sketches. They'e still pored over by dedicated scholars, dramaturgs, and lovers of Williams today.

But wait, there's more...
Williams didn't just leave behind previously produced, plays, though. There were also new ones — plays which had not been published or, in some cases, staged during his lifetime. In the three decades since his death at age 71, a number of Williams plays received their first performances, and TWTC is excited to be numbered among the companies given the privilege of staging the master's work for the first time.

En Avant!

Some of the plays premiered posthumously are from early in the author's career. The Strange Play (c. 1939) is an early, experimental work. Other plays such as Ivan's Widow (c.1982) showcase the playwright's mature, later-lifemusings. 

If you'd like to join us to toast our two never-before-seen Williams plays, Tennessee Williams: Weird Tales opens this Friday, April 1st in conjunction with the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival.

We'll see you at the theatre!

www.twtheatrenola.com

Photo Credits: (above) Alexandra Kennon in Ivan's Widow and Emily Russell in The Strange Play, photographed by James Kelley.

10 Myths About Tennessee Williams

We see a lot of clickbait online these days with titles like "Twenty-Six Dogs Who Don't Have Their Lives Together" or "Five Tips For a Better Workout Without Exercising" or "More Than One Way To Skin a Cat". In traditional clickbait fashion, today we'll be debunking...

10 Myths About Tennessee Williams (and Some About His Plays)

#1) Tennessee Williams is from Tennessee.
False. Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi. There are various rumors as to how he came to adopt the nom-de-plume, but the fact is, while he was a Southerner...he was not a Tennesseean.

Left: Tennessee's first home in Columbus, Mississippi.

#2) Tennessee Williams found religion late in his life.
False. At any point in his life, Tennessee knew just where to find a church. In his early childhood, he was raised by his mother and his loving grandparents—a minister and his wife. They instilled in young Tom, as he was known then, a solid understanding of Christian scripture and practice. Eventually, Tennessee would break away from strictly organized religion, but he always had a respect for what went on in houses of worship. His plays frequently included religious themes and references, showcasing Williams' understanding and fascination with the spiritual. This myth is perpetuated by the idea that his brother Dakin "saved" Tennessee after a difficult period during the 1960s. Tennessee allowed his brother to "convert" him to Roman Catholicism, but the playwright would then go on to say that it didn't really stick.

#3) Tennessee Williams hated his family.
Very False.  Tennessee loved his sister Rose dearly, and ventured to take care of her for his entire life. His relationship with his mother, while strained at times (whose isn't?), was one of devotion and understanding between two complex people. His brother Dakin was never his closest sibling, but the two got on well enough, it would seem. Of course his relationship was wonderful with his grandparents, going so far as to travel with his elderly grandfather all over the world. The most troublesome relationship, perhaps, is that with his father, Cornelius. They'd never see eye to eye in their lifetimes, but upon Cornelius's death, Tennessee wrote a touching essay exploring his feelings about his father. In "The Man In the Overstuffed Chair", Tennessee expressed a touching understanding of the troubled patriarch of the Williams clan.

#4) Tennessee Williams lived his life in the closet.
False. While Tennessee didn't wear his sexuality on his sleeve in the same way as Gore Vidal or Truman Capote, he certainly didn't work to hide it. In the 1960s and 70s, he came under fire for not being as proactive as some activists thought he should be. He was accused of demonizing his gay characters or writing covertly gay characters in the guise of women. The truth is, he wrote gay character just as raw, broken, and magnificent as any of his other characters. However, in the films based on his plays, gay themes would often be cut out or whittled down by the studios for censorship purposes. All the more reason to see his plays in a live theatre!

#5) Tennessee Williams choked on a bottle cap and died.
False. Tennessee didn't choke to death. If you want to know more about this myth, John Lahr's biography, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is a good place to start. But I won't spoil the surprise.

#6) Tennessee Williams only wrote about Southern belles.                              Below - TW & Anna Magnani.

False. Tennessee wrote some of the most famous Southern belles in cultural memory—Blanche DuBois, Maggie the Cat, Amanda Wingfield...but he wrote about so much more. From Mexico to Rome; Russia to the bottom of the sea—Tennessee's plays spanned the globe, always filled with colorful and contrasting characters.

#7) Tennessee Williams was a misogynist.
Extra False. Many of Williams' richest, most developed characters were women. He basically set the standard in eroticizing the male body through the lens of the female character—which is the opposite of say, a Bond film, in which women are set dressing and men rule the world. Even in a world where the men hold the power, which is often the case in the symbolic and realistic worlds in Williams' plays, the female voices are some of the most pointed and poignant.

#8) Special Super-Southern Myth: Tennessee Williams paints a negative portrait of the South.
Well, yes and no. If by "negative" you mean "not sugar-coated", then yes. Tennessee wrote the South the same way he wrote every other locale: with brutal, unflinching honesty. The heroes have flaws, the antagonists can be charismatic, and society looks like society—at best, dysfunctional. What some might be unused to seeing is the South drawn in such a way that's not precious, sweet, and slow. That South is two-dimensional. Tennessee's is not.

#9) Tennessee Williams detested St. Louis, Missouri.

Below: The infamous shoe factory alluded to in The Glass Menagerie.

Qualification: Sometimes. Young Tom Williams and even young-ish Tennessee expressed a strong distaste for "the city of St. Pollution". He was dragged from an idyllic Southern landscape into a cramped urban setting where he was poked fun at for his accent and, more importantly, was made to live in a hostile environment at home, where his mother and father were constantly at odds. Later in his life, however, Tennessee would come to accept that St. Louis was part of his artistic journey. While it was never his favorite place, Tennessee would forgive St. Louis for what he came to understand were offenses committed not by the place, but by circumstances.

#10) Tennessee Williams is America's Greatest Playwright.

TRUE! Not a myth! ...Well, we think so, anyway. And we hope you agree. But whether you love Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Lillian Hellman, August Wilson, or whomever—we hope your life has been or will be enriched by Williams' unique contribution to the American theatre landscape.

www.twtheatrenola.com

The "Shakespeare" Treatment

The Great and Challenging Aspects of Staging Classics

by Augustin J Correro

One of the main goals of a TWTC production is to share with the audience a performance that is unique and innovative. We purposefully aim not to restage films, since movies will always do movies better than theatre artists. We like to bend expectations and try new things. We believe that's what will help us to keep theatre relevant and living. The alternative to living theatre is artificial theatre: theatre as an artifact.

We have great reverence for artifacts, don't get me wrong. However, artifacts aren't something we're normally allowed to touch. Just the same, it's hard for artifacts to touch us from the inside of a glass case—and we're interested in theatre that touches people.

Somewhat often, audience members express a feeling of disconnection (of not being touched) when they see classics produced. Moliere falls flat for them, or Sophocles is less of a tragedy and more of a snooze. The folks that share this feeling with me express that they appreciate the plays, but that they really don't derive enjoyment from seeing them. One culprit for this kind of audience exclusion is expectation. Producers and artists alike have to grapple with the expectations of what plays might-or-should look and sound like, sometimes to the detriment of the experience. Whether it's austere Ibsen or fancy-schmancy Shaw, people have expectations about plays and playwrights, and they can be hard to shake.

Several of Tennessee Williams' plays are American classics. Naturally, they come with expectations (conventions like Southern belles wrestling with desire or families battling over inheritance). In addition to informing how the better known plays are staged, the TW classics dictate how the general public views the plays they're not as familiar with. For example, it's hard to find a review of a Tennessee Williams play that doesn't compare the play being discussed to Streetcar, The Glass Menagerie, or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 

In addition to fulfilling expectations set down by other plays, some productions of Williams' works seem to mimic conventions from previous stagings, giving the audience some approximation of what they might have come to expect. This creates even more stagnancy in how Williams' plays are staged. 

However, even though many productions err on the familiar side, others blow the lid off of those expectations. They challenge the expectations, toss off the conventions, and create unique iterations of the plays. For the audience, it really can go either way. It can be an absolute thrill to see a complete departure or a style of Tennessee they never expected, or it can be a blazing hot mess. 

When it comes to staging plays, there are those who would say "do it like it's been done before, always", or more pragmatically "give the people what they want". These are valid notions, but to illuminate the other side of the argument, I'd like to draw a comparison between Tennessee Williams and the other greatest English-speaking playwright: William Shakespeare.

There are die-hard purists in both the Williams and the Shakespeare camps, suggesting the actor doesn't breathe or blink unless it's in the script . There are also those who would yank the literary texts out of the library and burn the books, choosing only to stage the heart and soul of the plays, with no regard for the particulars. We at TWTC prefer a more measured approach than either of these, and we're not alone.

There are lots of factors which contribute to the "Shakespeare Treatment", where we universally acknowledge that something is "great", but when we go to see it or pick it up to present it, we can't figure out why it doesn't make us feel "great". It's also hard to express why to those around us because we're afraid to sound unsophisticated when we say "Shakespeare is over my head" or "Tennessee Williams is like grandma stuff". We can feel left out when we're told that Shakespeare is universal and that Tennessee Williams is the poet of the human soul, but that production with those good actors around that lacy table just wasn't our cup of tea. I've been there. Then I saw productions that changed my mind.

Some of the most thrilling iterations of Shakespeare that I've ever seen were reimagined, updated in terms of staging, or non-traditionally cast. Some of them were painstakingly staged to resemble the original productions but focused on the audience's understanding rather than showcasing the esoteric virtuosity of the performers. Either way works, as long as it's audience-centered. By treating Shakespeare's plays as living art, companies are able to engage new audiences, captivate existing ones, and challenge artists—all while respecting the text. Rather than pumping formaldehyde into the plays to preserve them at just below room temperature, these kinds of productions keep blood flowing to the heart and brain of theatre, keeping it alive, hot, and vital.

The same can be said of Williams' plays, and it's our hope that more productions will exhibit daring, innovation, and imagination. We've seen it work (we've seen it not-so-much work, too), and TWTC is committed to sharing new, unique, and enriched stagings with the New Orleans community.

Our upcoming production of Small Craft Warnings by Tennessee Williams features a diverse cast and is set during the holidays, present day. It's performed very close to the audience in a bar (the setting put down by TW in the script), and you can drink from the very same bar as the characters. These choices are all departures from previous productions, but were made with respect for the text and the audience. See how it makes you feel. We'll see you at the theatre!

Small Craft Warnings by Tennessee Williams

December 10-20, Thursdays-Monday. 8pm Weekdays, 7pm Saturdays & Sundays. 

Performed at Mag's 940 - 940 Elysian Fields (at Elysian & North Rampart)

Tickets can be purchased at www.twtheatrenola.com or by calling 504-264-2580

Tennessee Around Town

TWTC’s Commitment to Our Community

As we gear up for our next show, TWTC wants to share some of the good work we’ve been doing offstage, too! We’re committed to engaging our community and sharing Tennessee with New Orleans and the surrounding area. If you know of a school or organization who would like to learn more, email info@twtheatrenola.com !

Students from Bonnabel High School in Kenner came to see Kingdom of Earth and were treated to a a special discount and got to partake in our first Talking Tennessee session before the show! Above are some of the students after the show with Sean Richmond, who played Chicken.

Co-Artistic Directors Nick and Augustin gave an informative talk about Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, and led a Q&A with students from Cabrini High School in New  Orleans!

Will Mr. Merriwether Return from Memphis? was FREE to anyone who wanted to attend, and was hosted by New Orleans Public Library. Pictured above, the show was performed outside on a perfect night for theatre on the lawn of Latter Library.

Look forward to more posts about TWTC in our community!

Public Indecency

Dispelling the High-Brow Tennessee Williams Myth

by Augustin J Correro

Cherri Golden as Sister Felicity in Suddenly Last Summer, Columbus MS Tennessee Williams Tribute

Photo Credit: Hope Harrington Oakes

There’s an ongoing joke between me and a director friend of mine. Chris Bentivegna, who is known in New Orleans for staging campy, knock-your-socks-off theatre events that often leave audiences busting guts and/or covered in fake blood, will at intermission to his shows glibly say to me “Well, it isn’t Tennessee Williams”. He knows this both tickles me and chafes just a little. 

Chris knows that Tennessee Williams is filled with varied and colorful humor alongside poetic pathos, yet our little joke does speak to a larger notion in the zeitgeist about the playwright: that Tennessee Williams’ plays are high-brow entertainment. I’d like to take the time in this post to dismantle that half-baked notion.

The Shakespeare Treatment

To begin, let’s examine another playwright whose work is viewed by some as strictly high-brow: William Shakespeare. At the risk of sounding indelicate, Shakespeare is the source of more penis, breast, and butt jokes than most playwrights in the English language. A kind of hyper-historical preservation of the author’s plays, however, has a chilling effect on the human warmth laid down in them. This isn’t to say that Shakespeare’s poetry is not poignant, or that he didn’t touch on much deeper truths in his drama. Instead, I posit that it’s both—and that without one, the other may suffer from a reputation closer to a relic than a living piece of art and literature.

Putting Shakespeare onstage as if it’s inside a glass case in a museum creates a degree of separation between the play and the audience. The same is true for Tennessee Williams. If the primary concern in a production is replicating what the play “ought to be” based on prior productions or academic correctness, there’s an increased likelihood of a flat, dull production. A viewer may not be able to place why he or she isn’t moved by the production, but it’s very possible that he or she will feel “left out” of the conversation. Rightly so: the museum glass case prevents touching from happening.

Thanks to the efforts of several theatre groups, innovative productions of Shakespeare have been happening for some time (It also helps that the bard’s plays are in public domain, so more companies can perform them). What this means is that while there are still “historically accurate” renditions of Shakespeare’s plays, there are also evocative new productions which bend the collective imagination. These two opposite production types serve a vital purpose in sustaining the poet’s legacy. I would propose Tennessee Williams receive a similar balance in the scope of staging techniques. Globally, companies are already making headway in this vein, but Americans remain concerned with filmic re-presentations. This gives many audiences, particularly young ones, the idea that Tennessee Williams is dated and polite.

Sweet Tea Tennessee

It should come as no shock that audiences don’t all go to the theatre with the expectation of seeing nice people being kind to one another. Even Christmas Pageants have a conflict (“What do you mean ‘No Vacancies’?!”). We seek drama at the theatre, but a flawed image of 20th Century American Southern life leads many to believe that Tennessee Williams should be just that: sweet. But if Steel Magnolias taught us anything, it’s that Southern life is just as complex and fraught with drama as life anyplace else. Williams wrote what he knew. He placed his vivid portrayals of a crushing, ambivalent universe below the Mason-Dixon Line (many of them, anyway), and somewhere along the way, an outmoded view of Southerners as dull, drawling simpletons overtook the bold substance of the dramatist’s works.

The result of this “Sweet Tea Tennessee” is that violence, sexuality, and the uniquely thrilling drama of Williams is stripped out of productions so that they can fit a mold that is more precious and pleasant. It’s not always the case, but it happens frequently enough to bear mentioning. It’s also not something that the companies should necessarily be blamed for. It’s often an oversight, in the interests of putting on a show how it “ought to look”.

Let’s NOT Go To The Movies

When we talk about how a production “ought to look”, usually what determines an “appropriate” production is how closely it resembles the film. As I mentioned in my post on Kingdom of Earth, however, the films were censored to shreds and were presented for a wider and more conservative audience than the playwright was necessarily writing for. In an effort to make it more palatable to the censors, performances also had to be sterilized to a degree, and violence had to be tempered on film in a way that it didn’t on stage.

Furthermore, Williams recognized that film and theatre were not the same medium, and concessions needed to be made for both, and that in some situations, one allotted more freedom than the other. For example: in A Streetcar Named Desire, when Stanley rapes Blanche in the theatre, Stella can still choose to be with him (for better or worse). In film, Stella had to deny her husband, because rape had to be punished to satisfy decency. Conversely, in the film version of Suddenly Last Summer, we are able to see the interior of the asylum and various other locales—a luxury that cannot be afforded to a stage production.

The Lady Ain’t Just

Another wrench in the gears that turn toward progress in Williams’ legacy is that after his death in 1983, the Lady Maria St. Just took Tennessee’s reputation in a choke hold and didn’t let go until she herself kicked the bucket over a decade later. A social climber of the highest caliber, the Lady St. Just (who John Lahr brilliantly describes here) had very strong ideas about how Williams must be preserved and presented. Through blackmail, obfuscation, and probably good old fashioned black sorcery, she kept Williams hostage long after he died. Her zeal for promoting her vision of Williams’ writing was detrimental especially in academic conversation, and she even went so far as to delay the publication of one of the quintessential texts on Williams’ life—Lyle Leverich’s Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams—until it was too late in the biographer’s life to produce its second installment.

Without being lofty or scholarly, I provide the above information for this reason: stopping up or limiting the conversation about an author especially in the years after his death does terrible damage to the collective conception of that author. While Maria St. Just may have had noble (albeit demented) intentions for Williams’ legacy, she caused stagnation in the discussion around America’s greatest playwright at a time when he needed kindness. Instead of being permitted to dispel ugly rumors and experiment with his rich texts, scholars and producers had to negotiate with a gatekeeper. Ergo, what was believed of Williams and his plays in 1983 was encircled in a thicket of brambles like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, and we’re still hacking through it to this day.

St. Just had her own idea of how Williams “ought to look”, and she defended her conception of the plays like a dragon guards its hoard. She felt that his plays should be immutable, and that they should not grow. This vigilant effort to keep the art static and exclusive played a part in why the aforementioned misconceptions of Williams weren’t discounted sooner.

Literary Criticism
The last point that I feel I have to make is one which I might come under the most fire for: that while Williams' plays are literature, they are dramatic literature. They were meant to be staged and viewed, not just read and ruminated on. Williams wrote novels, short stories, and poems, all of which were meant to exist on a page, but the plays were written for the stage. There are valiant English and humanities departments around the country which are teaching the works of Williams, and I dare not discount the work that they are doing—exposure is paramount. Like with Shakespeare, however, Williams should be staged in addition to more static reading so that it does not gather dust on a library shelf. Historians and professors can only do so much for the reputations of playwrights; the rest is up to the theatre makers in each generation.

This brings us back around to the notion of dusty old high-brow Williams. Let's shelf that notion, and explore instead a high-and-low-brow Tennessee. As a playwright for the people, Williams was not just writing for Broadway matinees. He always had some concern for the commercial viability of his longer plays, but at the same time, he didn’t pull punches. He packed in violence, shame, humiliation, ecstasy, hilarity, grotesquery, and so much more. Nevertheless, all too often high schoolers groan upon being made to crack open Streetcar  or The Glass Menagerie. In 2015, Williams runs the risk of being viewed as archaic, out-of-date, super-formal, academic, and exclusive. The work of organizations and companies who advocate for Williams through exciting presentation and drumming up enthusiasm (the half-dozen Tennessee Williams festivals including New Orleans’s own comes to mind) is invaluable to breaking these stereotypes about Williams. TWTC is committed to doing this, and we look forward to sharing our daring with our local community and visitors.