Tennessee Williams, Not About Nightingales

Jordan Sanderson (Auburn University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1938

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Not About Nightingales, a play Tennessee Williams wrote in 1938, was first performed on March 5, 1998 at London's Royal National Theatre. Vanessa Redgrave, who met Tennessee Williams in the early 1980's, stumbled across a brief reference to Not About Nightingales in the foreword he wrote of Orpheus Descending (Redgrave viii); however, it was 1993 before she obtained a copy of the play. In 1996, Redgrave decided that the play must be performed and “spent many hours” studying the Williams archive at The University of Texas at Austin (ix). Soon thereafter, her company staged the play with her brother, Corin Redgrave, playing the part of Warden Whalen, a performance about which critics raved. Trevor Nunn, …

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2483 words

Citation: Sanderson, Jordan. "Not About Nightingales". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 May 2005 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16810, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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