18 Unforgettable Plays by Tennessee Williams
It was Tennessee Williams’ birthday – let’s celebrate with a countdown of his greatest works!
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays
The thirteen one-act plays collected in this volume include some of Tennessee Williams‘s finest and most powerful work. They are full of the perception of life as it is, and the passion for life as it ought to be, which have made The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire classics of the American theatre.
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
When Alma Winemiller, a sensitive and lonely young woman, becomes increasingly restive and disturbed by the fear she will remain a spinster, she makes an almost desperate attempt to win the man of her choice — the young doctor John Buchanan.
She finds herself hemmed in by her stern father, her deranged mother and the young man’s social-climbing mother who frowns on his attachment to Alma.
Period of Adjustment
Two couples, one married for five years and the other recent newlyweds, experience ups and downs in their relationships, in a comedy of human foibles and frustrations.
Suddenly Last Summer
In an opulent Garden District mansion, Violet Venable sets out to exact revenge on Catharine Holly. Truth, deceit and horror intermingle inside the garden walls where Catharine struggles for her life. What horrible secrets are locked in Catharine’s head, and why is Violet so determined to silence them…and could it be that Violet is the victim, and that Catharine is the hunter?
Summer and Smoke
A Biz Staff Pick!
A repressed minister’s daughter nurses a longtime unrequited love for the boy next door, who grows up into a playboy whose nature is completely at odds with hers. A perennial favourite of summer theatres and schools, the play one of the author’s most highly regarded works.
Summer and Smoke has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues, female/female scenes, and female/male scenes.
I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix
A fictionalized version of D. H. Lawrence’s last hours, supported by an abrasive wife, Frieda, and a doting friend, Lady Brett. As the poet clambers the tortured steps to death, refusing to go gently into that good night, we do get glimpses of Lawrence’s phoenix spirit and poetic pain; Lawrence was one of Williams’ chief literary influences.
The Rose Tattoo
Set among a colony of Sicilian fisherfolk on the American Gulf Coast, The Rose Tattoo is the story of a woman for whom love was stronger than death. One of the author’s most beautiful and powerful plays.
Not About Nightingales
Portrays a shocking prison scandal in which a prison warden locked some convicts leading a hunger strike in a section of jail made unbearably hot by radiators. An early Tennessee Williams play is based on a true incident and indelibly presages the great plays he was later to write.
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
Focusing on one morning and one encounter of four women. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner once again skillfully explores, with comic irony and great tenderness, the meaning of loneliness, the need for human connection, as well as the inevitable compromises one must make to get through ‘the long run of life.’
Orpheus Descending
A Sicilian immigrant’s daughter, unhappily running a dry-goods store in the South and tending to her dying husband, is reawakened by a mysterious drifter who appears in town. A vague reworking of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend in modern America, with a Southern township presumably representing Hell.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel
F. Scott Fitzgerald visits his wife, Zelda, in a mental hospital in Asheville, N.C. They look back over their lives and relationship in Tennessee Williams‘ final play to play Broadway in his lifetime.
Camino Real
This hauntingly poetic allegory takes us to the mysterious Camino Real, a surreal netherworld populated by a colourful collection of lost souls anxious to escape but terrified of the unknown wasteland lurking beyond the city’s walls. When Kilroy, an American traveller and former boxer, inadvertently lands in Camino Real, he sets off on a phantasmagoric venture through illusion and temptation in an attempt to flee its confines – and defy his grim destiny.
American Blues: Five Short Plays
Contains 5 one-act plays by Tennessee Williams published under the collective title American Blues. Included in this collection are: The Case of the Crushed Petunias, Moony’s Kid Don’t Cry, The Dark Room, Ten Blocks on the Camino Real, and The Long Stay Cut Short, or, The Unsatisfactory Supper.
Sweet Bird of Youth
A local boy gone bad returns to his home town with an aging movie actress to reclaim his childhood sweetheart, but must face the brutal truth – lost innocence is impossible to resurrect but shame and regret live on forever.
The Night of the Iguana
A Biz Staff Pick!
A defrocked priest accused of having sexual relations with a teenage girl seeks shelter at a Mexican inn run by his blowsy, widowed old friend, who finds herself competing for his attentions with a kindly spinster who is caring for her grandfather, an aging poet.
The Night of the Iguana has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues, male monologues, female/female scenes, and female/male scenes.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A Biz Staff Pick!
In this Pulitzer Prize winner, a wealthy Southern patriarch faces impending death and manipulates his family, as his children squabble and mislead in desperate attempts to secure the family inheritance. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a modern tale of a world filled with people determined to keep secrets and lie while keeping up a certain appearance that feels particularly relevant in the age of social media and influencers. Especially recommended for school and contest use.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues, female/male scenes, and male/male scenes.
A Streetcar Named Desire
A Biz Staff Pick!
Fragile Southern belle Blanche DuBois moves to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella, and her brutish brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in a dingy apartment. Temperaments clash, fireworks fly and secrets are revealed in Tennessee Williams‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Streetcar Named Desire. Especially recommended for school and contest use.
A Streetcar Named Desire has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues, female/female scenes, and female/male scenes.
The Glass Menagerie
A Biz Staff Pick!
The author achieved his first major success with this autobiographical “memory play,” which looks at the Wingfield family – frustrated writer Tom, his nagging mother, Amanda, who is often lost in memories of her Southern-belle past, and his painfully shy sister, Laura – and the effect a visit from a “gentleman caller” for Laura has on all their lives. Especially recommended for school and contest use.
The Glass Menagerie has long been a favourite of acting teachers for female monologues, male monologues, female/female scenes, and female/male scenes.
Enjoy and comment below with your picks!
Related Posts
5 Holiday Plays You Need to Read! →
4 Plays You May Not Know by Kate Hamill →
5 LGBTQIA+ Books and Plays for Pride Month →
