Tennessee Williams (redirected from Rose Williams)

Williams, Tennessee 

(real name Thomas Lanier Williams). Born Mar. 26,1914, in Columbus, Miss. American playwright.

Williams studied at the universities of Missouri and Iowa between 1935 and 1938. As a playwright, he shows a critical perception of reality, as in The Glass Menagerie (1944), and a particular sympathy for the doomed protagonists of such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and Orpheus Descending (1957). The influence of naturalism and modernism, as well as of the idealist tendencies in modern philosophy, is especially evident in The Night of the Iguana (1961) and the plays in his collection Dragon Country (1970). In the staging of his works, Williams, who espouses the concept of a “plastic theater, ” makes prominent use of mise-en-scène, lighting, and musical effects to reinforce the text.

Williams also has written short stories, some of which have been collected in Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed (1974). In both theme and style, they are closely related to his dramatic works.

WORKS

Four Plays. London, 1956.
Five Plays. London, 1962.
In Russian translation:
“Stekliannyi zverinets” i eshche deviat’p’es. Moscow, 1967.
“Sladkogolosaia ptitsa iunosti.” Teatr, 1975, no. 12.

REFERENCES

Istoriia amerikanskoi literatury, part 2. Moscow, 1971.
Maxwell, G. Tennessee Williams and Friends. Cleveland-New York [1965],