Name: not about nightingales
SKU: 2557409
Price: 403.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
Author: Williams, Tennessee ; Hale, Allean ; Hale, Allean
ISBN: 9780811213806

Type

Physical Book

Author

Tennessee Williams

Illustrated by

Allean Hale

Introduction by

Allean Hale

Publisher

New Directions Publishing Corporation

Language

English

Pages

163

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.1x13.5x1.3 cm

Weight

0.20 kg.

ISBN

0811213803

ISBN13

9780811213806

Synopsis "not about nightingales"

In early 1998, sixty years after it was written, one of Tennessee Williams' first full-length plays, Not About Nightingales, was premiered by Britain's Royal National Theatre and was immediately hailed as one of the most remarkable theatrical discoveries of the last quarter century (London Evening Standard). Brought to the attention of the director Trevor Nunn by the actress Vanessa Redgrave (who has contributed a Foreword to this edition), this early work...changed our perception of a major writer and still packs a hefty political punch (London Independent). Written in 1938 and based on an actual newspaper story, the play follows the events of a prison atrocity which shocked the nation: convicts leading a hunger strike in a Pennsylvania prison were locked in a steam-heated cell and roasted to death. Williams later said: I have never written anything since that could compete with it in violence and horror. Its sympathetic treatment of black and homosexual characters may have kept the play unproduced in its own time. But its flashes of lyricism and compelling dialogue presage the great plays Williams has yet to write. Not About Nightingales shows us the young playwright (for the first time using his signature Tennessee) as a political writer, passionate about social injustice, and reflecting the plight of outcasts in Depression America. The stylistic influences of European Expressionism, radical American theatre of the 1930s, and popular film make it unique among the group of four early plays. Not About Nightingales has been edited by eminent Williams scholar Allean Hale, who has also provided an illuminating historical introduction.

Tennessee Williams

(Author)

View Author's Page

(Mississippi, 1911 - New York, 1983) Thomas Lanier Williams III, better known by his stage name Tennessee Williams, was a prominent American playwright. He graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Letters from the University of Iowa, and in 1948 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire, and in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Critics of the genre maintain that Williams wrote in a Southern Gothic style. His characters are often alien to social conventions. His work is well-known because many were made into films, with scripts by Tennessee Williams himself in most cases.

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