Tennessee Williams, T-Shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater

Tennessee Williams, T-shirt Modernism and the Refashionings of Theater reappraises the received wisdom that Williams's work fell into decline in the late 1960 as the Naturalism he was associated with, not always through his own choice, was replaced by European theatrical experimentalism and as culture saw a lifting of sexual restrictions. It suggests, instead, that Williams was always experimental, always more Chekhov than Ibsen, a lyrical playwright inflected with the poetry of Harte Crane, and that his late plays are as central to Williams's reshaping of American theater as those works of the immediate post-World War II era that brought him fame and fortune. Its general aim, then, is to engage the perception that "Tennessee Williams is the greatest unknown playwright America has produced" (David Savran, City University of New York). In many respects the work of Tennessee Williams, after a protracted period of neglect, is primed for reappraisal, reinterpretations and, subsequently, re-stagings. This work is part of that process, academically at very least, but performatively as well as academic reinterest often regenerates theatrical reinterest.

Author: S. E. Gontarski
Publisher: Anthem Press
Published: 06/01/2021
Pages: 250
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.66h x 5.83w x 0.47d
ISBN13: 9781785276873
ISBN10: 1785276875
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | American | General
- Performing Arts | Theater | Direction & Production
- Performing Arts | Theater | History & Criticism

About the Author

S. E. Gontarski is Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State University. He is a writer, director and filmmaker who specializes in twentieth-century Irish studies, in British, U.S., and European Modernism, performance theory, history of text technologies and modern(ist) book history.