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Home , Out Cry, Small Craft Warnings, Summer and Smoke, The Glass Menagerie, The Night of the Iguana

Tennessee Williams

Project By: Kirsten, Mariam, and Collin Drama and Poetry

• The word drama defines a genre, or style of writing. Drama is a play that can be performed for theatre, radio or even television. These plays are usually written out as a script, or a written version of a play that is read by the actors but not the audience.

• Poetry is defined as literary work in metrical form, often employing meter and rhyme as well as descriptive and imaginative language. Drama is literature that focuses on dialogue and conflict, written to be performed on a stage. Short stories are prose fiction pieces that can be read in one sitting. Background

• Birth name is Thomas Laner Williams • Born on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi • His mother “Miss Edwina” the daughter of an Episcopalian minister • His father, Cornelus, traveling salesman • Worked away from the home a great deal and when he was home he was a violent drunk • result Williams turned inward and started to write • He is the second child of Cornelius and Edwina Williams‘. They had three children. Whom were all predominantly raised by their mother. Background Continued

• Williams was sick as a child which made his mom even more protective over him. • In the summer of 1916, at the age of 5, Williams contracted diphtheria and nearly died from the respiratory illness. • Never married or had any children but had many lovers • William was a homosexual • Religion (non denominational) • Had many jobs Later Years

• In 1929, Williams studied at the University of Missouri for 2 years, studying journalism. But he was soon withdrawn from the school by his father, who became enraged when he learned that his son's girlfriend was also attending the university.

• Williams returned home, and at his father's urged him to take a job as a sales clerk with a shoe company. He worked at the job for nearly 3 years and hated his job. He begin to get depressed. He turned to his writing, crafting poems and stories after work. Eventually, however, the depression took its toll and Williams suffered a nervous breakdown.

• He decided he wanted to return to college. In 1937 he enrolled at the University of Iowa and he graduated the following year.

• When Williams was 28, after college he moved to New Orleans and changed his name to (he landed on Tennessee presumably because many of his descendants hailed from that state) Later Years Continued

• In 1960s Williams work received poor reviews. As a coping mechanisms he turned to alcohol and drugs. He also used wide variety of drugs to help him sleep and to help him stay awake in the early morning while he worked.

• In 1969 his brother hospitalized him. Once Williams was released, he got right back to writing.

• He wrote a mix of several new plays as well as Memoirs in 1975, which told the story of his life and his afflictions.

• Williams died in a New York City hotel room on February 25, 1983, apparently he choked to death on the lid of a pill bottle. American Blues

• One of Williams many plays produced at local theaters.

• A collection of One- Act Plays.

• In 1939, Williams won a prize for American Blues Battle of Angels / • Battle of Angels was a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1940 and ultimately failed.

• In 1957, Williams rewrites the Battle of Angels play and renames it to Orpheus Descending. It enjoyed a brief run on Broadway of about 68 performances with only modest success.

• The play is a modern retelling of the ancient Greek Orpheus legend and deals, in the most elemental fashion, with the power of passion, art, and imagination to redeem and revitalize life, giving it new meaning. The story is set in a dry goods store in a small southern town marked, in the play, by conformity, sexual frustration, narrowness, and racism. Into this scene steps Val, a young man with a guitar, a snakeskin jacket, a questionable past, and undeniable animal-erotic energy and appeal. He gets a job in the dry goods store run by a middle-aged woman named Lady, whose elderly husband is dying. Lady has a past and passions of her own. She finds herself attracted to Val and to the possibility of new life he seems to offer. It is a tempting antidote to her loveless marriage and boring, small-town life. The play describes the awakening of passion, love, and life – as well as its tragic consequences for Val and Lady.

• The play was revived on Broadway in 1989, the production ran for 13 previews and 97 performances. • Williams first success

• Created in 1945 and in 1950 it became the first of one of Tennessee's plays to be adapted for the screen. It was an American Drama film.

• William called it a "Memory Play," seen through the recollections of the writer, Tom, who talks to the audience about himself and about the scenes depicting his mother, Amanda, poverty-stricken but living on memories of her southern youth and her " gentlemen callers"; his crippled sister, Laura, who finds refuge in her "menagerie" of little glass animals; and the traumatic effect of a modern "gentleman caller" on them.

• While there are similarities between Edwina, Rose, and Tennessee on the one hand, and Amanda, Laura and Tom on the other, there are also differences: the play is not literally autobiographical.

• Williams used screen projections, lighting effects, and music to emphasize that it takes place in Tom's memory.

• The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of the season.

• The creation of it: It was first performed on Broadway on December 3, 1947, and closed on December 17, 1949, in the Theatre.

• Overview of the play: Disturbed Blanche DuBois moves in with her sister in New Orleans and is tormented by her brutish brother-in-law while her reality crumbles around her.

• Critical Reception: Often regarded as among the finest plays of the 20th century, and is considered to be many to be one of Williams’ greatest.

• Movie Adaptation: The play was adapted into a movie that was released in September 18, 1951 by Elia Kazan. The film, just like the play, also received critical acclaim. .

• Written in 1950 and hit Broadway in February 1951.

• The film adaptation was released in 1955.

• It tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has allowed herself to withdraw from the world after her husband's death, and expects her daughter to do the same. The tempestuous heroine, Serafina, soon finds love again. .

• Written in 1955, one of Williams's best-known works and his personal favorites.

• The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955 and in 1958 the first film adaptation was created.

• Set in the plantation home in the Mississippi Delta of Big Daddy Pollitt, a wealthy cotton tycoon, the play examines the relationships among members of Big Daddy's family, primarily between his son Brick and Maggie the "Cat", Brick's wife. It features several recurring motifs, such as social mores, greed, superficiality, mendacity, decay, sexual desire, repression, and death. Dialogue throughout is often rendered phonetically to represent accents of the Southern United States. Other Works.

• (1948) • (1953) • Garden District (1958) • (1959) • (1961)

• The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Summer and Smoke, were all made into films. William's Downwards Spiral.

• After the extraordinary successes of the and 1950s, the 1960s and 1970s brought personal turmoil and theatrical failures. Although he continued to write every day, the quality of his work suffered from his increasing alcohol and drug consumption as well as occasional poor choices of collaborators. In 1963, his partner Frank Merlo died. Consumed by depression over the loss, and in and out of treatment facilities under the control of his mother and younger brother Dakin, Williams spiraled downward. Kingdom of Earth (1967), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), (1973), The Two Character Play (also called , 1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), Vieux Carré (1978), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980) and others were all box office failures, and the relentlessly negative press notices wore down his spirit. His last play, A House Not Meant To Stand, was produced in in 1982 and, despite largely positive reviews, ran for only 40 performances. Pictures!! Works Cited

• http://www.biography.com/people/tennessee-williams-9532952#early-years

• http://www.notablebiographies.com/We-Z/Williams-Tennessee.html

• http://flavorwire.com/161476/71-things-you-didnt-know-about-tennessee-williams

• http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-drama-terms-time-periods-and-styles.html

• https://www.reference.com/art-literature/differences-between-poetry-drama-short-stories- 604a1af5ae9b50cd

• "A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 09 Mar. 2017.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6TrgQxf3lk