Tennessee William‟S Contribution to American Drama

Tennessee William‟s Contribution to American Drama

Mrs.M.Kokila1, T.Akhila2 1M.A., M.Phil, Assistant Professor, Nadar Saraswathi College of Arts and Science, Theni 2M.A., English, Nadar Saraswathi College of Arts and Science, Theni

Abstract- Tennesse Williams is a dramatist of lost souls. seen in the work of Europeans such as John Osborne, His milieu is the south, a tense and unreconstructed Harold Pinter and Jean Genet as well as in that of locale typical only of an environment we all inhabit. In Americans such Williams Inge, paddy Chayefsky and the mythology of his work, the south is an antebellum Edward Albee. mansion of faded elegance inhabited by gentle dreamers, misfits, fugitives and outcasts losers who are WILLIAMS, THE MOST POPULAR not meant to win. Always the gothic focus of his work echoes an awareness of loneliness and loss a sense of PLAYWRIGHT AND A MAJOR DRAMATIST corruption and the physical violence which is an aspect of southern romanticism. His theme is the plight of the William‟s claims to the status of a major dramatist individual trapped by his environment, the loneliness rests, in large measure, on the significant and popular and lack of communication between human beings acceptance accorded four works: THE GLASS unable to reconcile the flesh with sprit. It is his special MENAGERIE (1945), A STREETCAR NAMED to temper extremes of physical violence, brutality and DESIRE (1947), SUMMER AND SMOKE (1948) perversion with gentle, loving glimpses of humanity and and CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1955). While a passionate concern for dispossessed people living on some critics have found greater literary merit in the the border line of despair. work of O‟ Neill, wilder, sarayon, miller, Clifford

Index Terms- Mythology, Fugitives, Trapped and Odets, the fact remains that Williams, since the first Brutality. decade of his broad way activity, has been the most popular playwright in the life of the American WILLIAMS‟ “THE GLASS MENAGERIE”: A theatre, and one of the most widely performed NEW EPOCH IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN dramatist in the history of the western stag. Despite THEATRE the critical controversy which has attended his career in the theatre, Williams has won a substantial When Tennessee Williams‟ poetic drama the glass measure of acceptance as a serious writer. One of the menagerie opened in New York in 1945, a new epoch earliest signs of the gratitude was the prize awarded in the history of western theatre began. With this play to the young artist in 1933 by the writers „guild of Williams seemed to succeed Eugene o‟ Neill as the St.Louis, Missouri. In 1930, he was a recipient of an chief architect of form in the American drama. In the award given by the group theatre in New York. In decade which followed, the American theatre was to 1940 he won the coveted Rockefeller Fellowship for produce atleast one other major dramatist as well as a playwriting. In 1944, he cited for his achievement by number of minor playwrights of merit. In 1964, some the National institute of arts and Letters. The work of nineteen years later, it is a matter of general critical his mature years has, thus far, won the playwright agreement that Williams remains one of the pivotal four Critics Circle Award (1945, 1947, 1955, 1961), figures in the “American school”. Although two Pulitzer prizes (1947 and 1955), and membership Tennessee Williams is a writer less highly regarded in the National institute of arts and Letters (1952). by many critics than Eugene o‟ Neill, Thornton wilder, William sarayon or Arthur miller, he has, THE THEATRE OF TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: A nonetheless, exerted a decisive influence on the SECOND AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: development of form in the contemporary theatre. His influence, particularly in relation to the The emergence of Tennessee Williams as a major elucidation of character and dramatic action, may be dramatist is a significant development in American

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© January 2019 | IJIRT | Volume 5 Issue 8 | ISSN: 2349-6002 cultural history. Study of details of his career points Although the glass menagerie promised a new epoch up significant parallels. In an important sense, the in American stage history, it was not as revolutionary theatre of Tennesse Williams is an aspect of a second as it seemed. For the play shared a significant American Renaissance, which, like the first, followed distribution of characteristics with such earlier works a great war. In the same way as the theatre of Eugene as THE ADDING MACHINE (1923), STRANGE O‟Neill seemed to emerge out of the heightened INTERLUDE (1928), AWAKE AND SING (1935), national consciousness which marked the close of OUR TOWN (1938) and THE TIME OF YOUR World War I, so the theatre of Tennesse Williams LIFE (1939). Moreover elements of its form could be seems to have been an expression of a new sense of traced to European antecedents, not only to the work identity which American arts and letters reflected at of modern dramatist such as Strindberg Chekhov and termination of World War II. Certainly by 1945, the Pirandello, but the entire literature of revolt which political, social and intellectual climate of America had its formal beginning in that movement described had become more favorable to the idea of a strum and drang. perhaps the most revolutionary characteristically American drama than it had been characteristics of the glass menagerie was that in its any time before. Moreover, by mid century the total concept in reflected an imaginative quality – a theatre had succeeded in establishing many of the vision of reality-which was clearly and unmistakably conditions necessary for popular acceptance of American. American dramatic kind. Out of the experimentation The presence of this distinctive quality was not of O‟Neill, wilder, Saroyan, Odets, Elmer Rice, John accidental. According to Williams, The Glass Howard Lawson and Paul Green there had emerged a Menagerie had been designed especially for the rich and complex American theatrical convention, popular American audience. It was, in the sense, an possessing its own catalogue of themes, character, especially significant achievement; for it opposed modes of speech, styles of acting, and patterns of Williams to the theatre of purely traditional form. It visual design. The conventionalized theatrical represented his public commitment to the creation of language had found a vital complement in emerging popular art. With this play Williams fulfilled the art of the mise en scene, in a distinctively American mandate of Walt Whitman, uttered almost a century system of directing and design which had been given before. He succeeded in the evocation of a living strong impetus in the work of Arthur Hopkins, Robert form, created from the emergent American Edmond Jones, Cleon Throckmorton, Norman consciousness. Belgeddes, Mordecai Gorelik, and Lee Simonson. Other conditions affecting Williams marked success WILLIAMS‟ “PLASTIC THEATRES” as a playwright had their origins in more comprehensive patterns of cultural growth. Like the The opening of the glass menagerie in 1945, like the popular dramatist of Elizabethan age, he found a rich production of Le Cid in 1936 or the performance of source of theatrical material in the patterns of Le Docteur amoureux in 1658 or the revival of the familiar phrase emerging in his inhabitant land. The seagull in 1898 marked the beginning of the new triumph of the glass menagerie may be traced in apart epoch in western theatre history. Apparently to his effective use of colloquial forms, chiefly to his Williams was his conscious of his role in an historic ability to deliberate between the world of thoughts development. In the manifesto that prefaced the and the language of the familiar man. As in the published edition of the play, he wrote, “These Elizabethan age, the talent for translating into remarks are not meant as a preface only to this universal language the idealistic perceptions, political particular play. They have to do with a consumption event, and societal circumstances of an age brought of a new, plastic theatre which must take the place of to the playwright and his theatre a large and varied the exhausted theatre of realistic convention if the audience. theatre is to resume vitality as part of our culture.” For Williams “vitality” was associated with the return THE IMAGINATIVE QUALITY OF “THE GLASS of the theatre to its natural function; to joyous and MENAGERIE” WAS DISTINCTIVELY irreverent entertainment, to shock and terror, to AMERICAN symbol making, and to the figurative explorations of

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© January 2019 | IJIRT | Volume 5 Issue 8 | ISSN: 2349-6002 life. He proposed to recover these purposes by re- the Winter of Cities (1956) and in the new Directions establishing the creative relationship of the drama to series XI, XII, XIII and XIV. idiomatic forms of expression. Like Shakespeare, Corneille, Moliere and Lope Williams effected his WILLIAMS‟ ACUTE “SENSE OF THEATRE” restoration by introducing into traditional structures mode of expression down from all level of While his technical skills have been of obvious value experience. Many years before the experiences of the in William‟s search for a representative form, his glass menagerie he had begun this process of important asset may be something less tangible, an adopting traditional forms of the vivid, vulgar, and acute “sense of theatre”. Williams‟ clear interest in energetic modes of expression which appeared in the theatre for performance rather in closet drama has cinema, the soap opera, and the radio jingle; at street involved him in constant controversy, particularly corners, revival meetings, and political debates; in with critics of traditional schools. In the main, his jazz songs, brass bands, children‟s games. He wrote subordination of literary interests to theatricality- of this motive: “ In this scene I am trying to catch the playability-has left him less esteemed among quality of really „tough‟ Americana of the comic academician than wilder or miller; however, it has sheets, the skid-row bars, cat-houses, grade B won for him the enthusiastic support of the theatre movies, street -Arabs, vagrants, dunks, pitchmen, itself: Of actors, directors, scenic artist, who have gamblers, whores, all the rootless, unstable and maintained consistently high standards of highly life beneath the middle-class social level in the interpretation for his plays. It has been this states.” theatricality which has given his dramas that broad This essentially poetic motive- that of seeking to base of appeal which is vital to a popular art. The interpret obscure realities in a universal language- theatre Williams is still finding new audiences had been seen in the work of other American through the successful transportation of his plays to dramatist, particularly in that of thornton wilder, allied arts-to radio, television, cinema, ballet and Clifford Odets, William Saroyan. But Williams, modern dance. perhaps, had more comprehensive motives than those which had been apparent in place such as the time of WILLIAMS‟ THEATRICAL DESIGN: THE FRUIT OF ARTISTIC COLLABORATION your life, awake and sing, or our town. Like O‟Neill, he conceived for popular theatre an ancient purpose: Early in his professional career, William becomes the exposure of human suffering. allied with a group of artist who for long has been

concerned with the development of an American art WILLIAMS‟ TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS of mise en scene. The circle included the director Elia

Much of American criticism stresses that William‟s Kazan, the designer Jo Mielziner, the teacher and the technical achievement had been seriously theorist lee Strasberg. Out of this creative association underestimated. Close student of his form find, emerge appropriate dramaturgies for his theatre: an however, that he conceals beneath sensuous texture act of directing, acting, production and design of his work a significant ability as a writer of play congruent with the demands of his texts. This pattern dialogue and action. These abilities may be traced, in became so popular that this “American formalism” part, to the playwright‟s extended technical training has taken its roots in world theatre as a characteristic and wide professional experiences. Throughout much art of the mise en scene. of his career, Williams has worked in non dramatic REFERENCE media as well as in the collection One Arm and Other

Stories (1948) and Hardy Candy (1954). Hi novel, [1] Williams, Tennessee “A Street Car Named the roman spring of Mrs. stone, was published in Desire”, published by: Lakshmi Narain 1950. Of direct influence of his idea of dramatic form Agarwal. has been his interest in poetry. Examples of his facility in this medium may be seen in the volume In

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