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Tennessee Williams
Mesa Encore Theatre
- Tennessee Williams
Authors
This stark drama is one of the playwright's major contributions to the American stage. It is one of the least produced because of Williams' departure from the more traditional dramatic structure. The 100 minute, one act play is actually a play with two long monologues that are regarded as the writers most poetic work. These beautiful monologues by the two main leading characters are almost operatic in nature. It is a play that anyone who loves serious and thought provoking drama should see.
The drama can be considered an allegorical fable involving a mother who is desperate to preserve the wholesome image of her deceased son. The stark play is set in an overgrown garden in New Orleans in 1936 following the tragic and mysterious death of her idolized 40 year old son Sebastian.
Tennessee Williams wrote the drama soon after entering psychoanalysis in 1957 and about the same time he began to visit his paranoid schizophrenic sister who had been institutionalized by his mother Edwina. She had authorized lobotomy on her daughter under the Freeman and Watts procedure, and this had a profound effect on the playwright. Williams wrote the play to show the very essence of life which the playwright viewed as cannibalistic. Tennessee Williams said Man devours man in a metaphorical sense. He feeds upon his fellow creatures, without the excuse of animals. Animals actually do it for survival, out of hunger ... I use that metaphor to express my repulsion with this characteristic of man, the way people use each other without conscience. As Catharine says, Yes we all use each other and thats what we think of as love.”
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