Tennessee Williams' Women and the Autobiographical 'I'

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams created a self-portrait in the character of Tom Wingfield but across his best known works for stage and screen, like A Streetcar Named Desire and Suddenly Last Summer, he would also explore his personality and preoccupations through female characters.

This talk will focus on the women in the playwright’s life: his family, his characters, and the actresses for whom he created marvellous roles. It will explore the extent to which Elia Kazan, a director who worked closely with Williams over many years, was right when he said “everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life.”

Free pre-show talk by Sharon Monteith, Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham.