Tennessee Williams’s lyrical drama

Year 2021, Issue: 10, 331 - 339, 15.08.2021

Esmeralda Subashi

https://doi.org/10.21733/ibad.873373

Abstract

Critics, scholars and readers alike have hailed Tennessee Williams as the greatest Southern playwright and one of the most distinguished dramatists in the history of American drama. He is indisputably the most renowned American playwright of the second half of the 20th century. This article endeavors to make an overview of Tennessee Williams’s lyrical drama, focusing on its main features such as characterization, art, language, major themes represented in his plays, etc. Williams introduced the innovative concept of the Plastic Theater into the American drama, which combined all elements of production- dialogue, action, setting, lighting, even props - in a unified and symbolic expression of truth. Williams was a very prolific playwright, poet and prose writer but his three plays- The Glass Menagerie, his most experimental play; A Streetcar Named Desire, his masterpiece; and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, his most popular play- have entered and captivated the imagination of theater audiences for generations.

Keywords

lyrical drama, self-lyricism, Plastic Theater, characterization, poetic imagination,, poetic imagination,, dramatism

Supporting Institution

University of Tirana

Project Number

2021-01

Thanks

I would like to thank IBAD journal for providing me with this wonderful opportunity and best wishes to your staff and professor Kahya.

References

• Bigsby, C. W. E. (2000). “Tennessee Williams: The Theatricalising Self.” Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jackson, Esther. M. (1965). The Broken World of Tennessee Williams. Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press.