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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS   (1911 - 1983)


Tennessee Williams
   Nationality:
American
   Literary Agent: *:
   Email:
n/a
   Website:

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Plays by Tennessee Williams

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
27 Wagons Full Of Cotton
1st Produced:
Dixon Hall; Tulane University, New Orleans
1955
Company:
-
1st Published:
in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One Act Plays, New Directions, NY
1946
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: In order to boost his own cotton ginning business, Jake Meighan sets the local Syndicate Plantation ablaze. The superintendent of the Syndicate Plantation sends over 27 wagons full of cotton for ginning, and turns aside his suspicions that Jake is the arsonist in exchange for apparent sexual favors from Jake's wife, Flora.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Adam and Eve on a Ferry
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays, Samuel French, London
2006
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Genre:
play
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Here, Tennessee Williams gives a comic portrait of D.H. Lawrence as someone who functions as an analyst for repressed women. As he sits embroidering on the porch of his villa, Lawrence is visited by Miss Ariadne Peabody. Adopting a Sherlock-Holmesian intuition, Lawrence divines that spinsterish Miss Peabody met a man aboard a ferry, he propositioned her, but in her passionate excitement she forgot his name and where they were to meet. Happily, Lawrence helps Miss Peabody recover her memory.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
American Blues
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
Dramatists Play Service, NY
-
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Genre:
short plays collection
One Act
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: MOONY'S KID DON'T CRY. A short play about a worker, his wife and child. (1 man, 1 woman.) THE DARK ROOM. A tragic sketch about an Italian woman and a welfare worker. (1 man, 2 women.) THE CASE OF THE CRUSHED PETUNIAS. A delightful, humorous playlet. (2 men, 2 women.) TEN BLOCKS ON THE CAMINO REAL. A lyrical fantasy. (13 men, 3 women, 10 dancers, flexible casting) THE LONG STAY CUT SHORT, OR, THE UNSATISFACTORY SUPPER. A moving sketch about an old servant. (1 man, 2 women.)
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays, Samuel French, London
2006
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
play
One Act
Parts:
Male
4
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Candy Delaney is a successful New Orleans interior decorator and landlord who is also a drag queen approaching "her" ~ birthday. On the rebound from a seventeen-year relationship, Candy has picked up a rough, vicious sailor, Karl, on whom she lavishes money. On the day of the dreaded birthday, Karl walks out and it's left to the two queens who live upstairs, Alvin and Jerry, to comfort Candy.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
At Liberty
1st Produced:
New York
1968
Company:
-
1st Published:
in American Scenes, ed William Kozlenko, Day, NY
1941
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
-
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Drama about a trapped, frustrated Mississippi actress dying of consumption
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Auto-Da-Fe
1st Produced:
New York
1947
Company:
-
1st Published:
in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One Act Plays, New Directions, NY
1946
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: A young postal worker struggles with his sexual repression. His frustration ends in an attack on a female boarder in the cottage and the eventual burning of the cottage, his mother, and the female boarder.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Baby Doll
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis:
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Battle Of Angels
1st Produced:
Wilbur Theater. Boston, Mass
1940
Company:
-
1st Published:
Pharos-New Directions, Murray, Utah
1945
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
11
Female
11
Parts Other:
-
Notes: revised as Orpheus Descending (produced 1957)
Synopsis: As in its later, and substantially rewritten version (entitled Orpheus Descending) the play deals with the arrival of a virile young drifter, Val Xavier, in a sleepy, small town in rural Mississippi. Taking a job in a store his smouldering animal magnetism draws out the latent sexual passion in the love starved store keeper, whilst her husband lies dying upstairs. A sense of inevitable tragedy grows and there is a denouement of overwhelming and chilling intensity.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Beauty is the Word
1st Produced:
The University of Missouri at Columbia
1930
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
3
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: The play concerns the life of a South Pacific missionary, his wife, their servant and the wife's niece and her husband.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Big Game, The
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays, Samuel French, London
2006
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
play
One Act
Parts:
Male
6
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Tony, a vigorous young footballer, is about to be discharged from the men's ward. In contrast, the other two occupants are a terminally ill youth, Dave, and Walton, a middle-aged patient about to undergo surgery for a brain tumour. When Tony leaves, Walton introduces Dave to the concept of eternity by looking at the stars. Walton dies during the operation and the play ends with Dave, alone, contemplating the stars.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cairo! Shangai! Bombay!
1st Produced:
Rose Arbor Playhouse; Memphis, Tennessee
1935
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: The manuscript is not published, and the short descriptions allude the possibility of two female prostitutes, but it is not clear if the sailors ever meet them.
Synopsis: The first of William's plays to be academically produced. Two sailors look for two prostitutes while on shore leave.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Camino Real
1st Produced:
New York
1953
Company:
-
1st Published:
New Directions, New York
1953
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
Fantasy
Parts:
Male
26
Female
10
Parts Other:
extras, doubling possible
Notes: revised version of Ten Blocks on the Camino Real
Synopsis: Hawkins, writing in the NY World-Telegram, describes the play as having "no limits of time or space. The set is a walled community, from which the characters ceaselessly try to escape, without success. Only Don Quixote, who calls himself 'an unashamed victim of romantic folly,' has access to the outside, and finally Kilroy goes with him. Kilroy is a central figure, an ex-boxer, always the patsy, the fall guy, who asks so little and always gets short-changed, but he never quits hoping&The other principal story is a romance between the aging, hunting Camille, and the fading Casanova, who yearns now only for tenderness and faithfulness&The play has subdued sequences of tenderness and pathos. It also has scenes of cataclysmic violence. The near escape of Kilroy, the battle to ride the escape plane are hair-raising, as is the wild fiesta to crown the 'tired old peacock,' Casanova."
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Candles to the Sun
1st Produced:
Wednesday Club Auditorium. St. Louis, MO
1937
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
10 scenes
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
11
Female
6
Parts Other:
-
Notes: Williams has a nervous breakdown after working at the International Shoe Company in St. Louis. He recovers in Clarksedale, Mississippi at his maternal grandparents' home and writes Candles, which he submits to the Dramatists Guild Contest in New York. He attends the University of Washington where he befriends a group of student and poets and finds himself highly influenced by the poetry of Hart Crane.
Synopsis: Based on newspaper accounts; the story of a coal mining strike and its momentary impact upon the lives of mining families
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Case Of the Crushed Petunias, The
1st Produced:
Cleveland
1957
Company:
-
1st Published:
in American Blues: Five Short Plays, Dramatists Play Service, NY
1948
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Delightful, humorous comedy-fantasy
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
1st Produced:
The Morosco Theatre. New York City
1955
Company:
-
1st Published:
New Directions, New York
1955
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
8
Female
5
Parts Other:
4c
Notes: -
Synopsis: In a plantation house, a family celebrates the sixty-fifth birthday of Big Daddy, as they sentimentally dub him. The mood is somber, despite the festivities, because a number of evils poison the gaiety: greed, sins of the past and desperate, clawing hopes for the future spar with one another as the knowledge that Big Daddy is dying slowly makes the rounds. Maggie, Big Daddys daughter-in-law, wants to give him the news that shes finally become pregnant by Big Daddys favorite son, Brick, but Brick wont cooperate in Maggies plans and prefers to stay in a mild alcoholic haze the entire length of his visit. Maggie has her own interests at heart in wanting to become pregnant, of course, but she also wants to make amends to Brick for an error in judgment that nearly cost her her marriage. Swarming around Maggie and Brick are their intrusive, conniving relatives, all eager to see Maggie put in her place and Brick tumbled from his position of most-beloved son. By evenings end, Maggies ingenuity, fortitude and passion will set things right, and Bricks love for his father, never before expressed, will retrieve him from his path of destruction and return him, helplessly, to Maggies loving arms
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Chalky White Substance
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Plays in One Act, harper collins
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Sc-fi post nuclear war and will your boyfriend sell you out to the authorities - if the price is right? Yes.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Circus, The
1st Produced:
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: written by Gerald Schoenwolf and Tenessee Williams
Synopsis: -
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Clothes For A Summer Hotel
1st Produced:
Washington, D. C.
1980
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
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Genre:
Ghost Play
-
Parts:
Male
13
Female
14
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: The play begins outside the North Carolina asylum where Zelda Fitzgerald is receiving treatment for her mental disorder. She is visited by her husband, Scott, now reduced to hack writing in Hollywood and trying desperately to control his drinking. Their meeting is deeply disturbing for them both, and as Scott realizes that Zelda will never recover, the action shifts to a series of flashbacks which illuminate the causes of their sad plight. We see them in younger, happier, but inescapably destructive daysshe in a tempestuous affair with a young French aviator; he matching wits with an acerbic Ernest Hemingway. And, throughout, the drinking, the wild extravagance, and the steady erosion of talent and potential. In the end we are back at the hospital, sure of what must come, but moved by the memory of what once was
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Confessional
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: -
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Creve Coeur
1st Produced:
Spoleto Festival, Charleston, South Carolina
1978
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
2 scenes
One Act
Parts:
Male
-
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes: Creve Coeur is the title of work as presented at Spoleto Festival. Title changed to A Lovely Sunday for a Creve Coeur for NY production
Synopsis: Four very different women cross paths on a Sunday morning. Dorothea is thinking of moving out of the apt that she shares with Bodey so she can better entertain her lover the principal at the school she teaches at. When she discovers he is engaged to another woman, she decides to stay with Bodey.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Dark Room, The
1st Produced:
London
1966
Company:
-
1st Published:
in American Blues: Five Short Plays, Dramatists Play Service, NY
1948
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
1
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Tragic sketch about an Italian woman and a welfare worker
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Demolition Downtown: Count Ten In Arabic - Then Run
1st Produced:
Carnaby Street Theatre, London
1976
Company:
-
1st Published:
in "The Theatre of Tennessee Williams VI", New Directions, New York
1981
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
Play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
4
Parts Other:
-
Notes: The play was produced along with The Lady of Larkspur Lotion
Synopsis: Two families attempt to cope with life in a post-revolutionary America
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Eccentricities Of A Nightingale, The
1st Produced:
Nyack, NY
1964
Company:
-
1st Published:
New Directions, New York
1965
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
5
Female
5
Parts Other:
-
Notes: revised version of Summer and Smoke
Synopsis: The action takes place in Glorious Hill, Mississippi, shortly before the First World War. Alma Winemiller, a sensitive and lonely young woman, has become increasingly restive and disturbed by the fear that she will remain a spinster. Hemmed in by her stern minister father, and her deranged mother, she makes a final, and almost desperate attempt to win the man of her choicea young doctor whose social-climbing mother frowns on his attachment to Alma. The play centers on the complex relationship between these two; her touching attempts to sway his emotions; and his uncertainty as to where his heart should lead him. In the end there is to be only one truly beautiful moment between themfor neither can break the ties of family and position which draw them apart and which, inevitably, defeat Alma's hopes for a new and fuller life.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Enemy, The: Time
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Theatre, NY
1959
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: -
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Escape
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays, Samuel French, London
2006
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
play
One Act
Parts:
Male
3
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: Three prisoners in a bunk-house play cards and listen while their ceilmate makes a run to the railtracks with guards and dogs in hot pursuit. Finally, they hear gunshots but when they see the guards return with a body they believe Billy's free at last.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Fat Man's Wife, The
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
in Mister Paradise and Other One Act Plays, Samuel French, London
2006
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
play
One Act
Parts:
Male
2
Female
1
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: It's New Year's morning 1938. Vera and her husband Joe, an influential theatre producer, are returning from a party, at which a young playwright, Dennis Merriwether, has paid great court to Vera. Rather than compromise his art, Dennis has decided to quit New York for Acapulco and wants Vera to accompany him. But Vera sends him away; she is, after all, the fat man's wife.
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Frosted Glass Coffin, The
1st Produced:
-
-
Company:
-
1st Published:
Samuel French, London
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
One Act
Parts:
Male
4
Female
2
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: The setting is the street facade of a low-priced Miami hotel of the sort which caters to aged pensioners. It is morning and the old men at the Ponce de Leon Hotel gather to watch the daily line-up of oldsters at the cut-rate restaurant across the street, chuckling at the thought of the consternation that will result when the doors open and the waiting customers discover that prices have been raised. But then a sad note is struckone of their fellow guests has passed on, leaving a blind and helpless husband. But it is a loss that none will face squarely, for the nearness of death is what all of them must live with and joke about. For are they not all living in frosted glass coffins, through which light, and life, can just barely be perceived?
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Fugitive Kind
1st Produced:
St Louis
1937
Company:
-
1st Published:
-
-
To Buy This Play:
I don't think the play has been published but you could try abebooks.com
or the playwright direct where their email is shown at the top of the page
Genre:
-
-
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: -
Synopsis: -
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Garden District
1st Produced:
New York
1958
Company:
-
1st Published:
New Directions, New York
1958
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Genre:
-
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male
-
Female
-
Parts Other:
-
Notes: includes Something Unspoken, Suddenly Last Summer
Synopsis:
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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Glass Menagerie, The
1st Produced:
Civic Theatre. Chicago, IL
1944
Company:
-
1st Published:
Random House, NY
1945
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click, otherwise
(below) are AbeBooks for secondhand & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies