Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2022 | Historic New Orleans Collection

Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2022 | Historic New Orleans Collection
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Header/cover image: Henriette Morineau as Blanche in
Uma rua chamada pecado
(Rio de Janeiro, 1948).
Courtesy of FUNARTE / Centro de Documentação e Pesquisa.
Header/cover image: Henriette Morineau as Blanche in
Uma rua chamada pecado
(Rio de Janeiro, 1948).
Courtesy of FUNARTE / Centro de Documentação e Pesquisa.
Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2022
Number 21
Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2022
Number 21
Founded in 1998, the
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
remains the only journal devoted to the works, worldwide influence, and cultural context of one of the most pivotal playwrights of the 20th century. Many issues showcase a previously unpublished work by Williams.
Wounded
and
crippled
as she is, [Blanche] remains yet the little point of pure light in a muddy and vulgar turmoil of the South today. She is Tennessee . . . out of place, not accepted, given to vast and sudden sinning, but still proud.”
Elia Kazan, writing in his director’s notebook
In this issue
In 1947,
A Streetcar Named Desire
premiered on Broadway, where the first performance received a seven-minute standing ovation. The 2022 issue of the
Review
commemorates the debut's 75th anniversary and the play’s universal appeal with images from HNOC’s exhibition
Backstage at “A Streetcar Named Desire”
: rarely seen photographs taken on the set of the 1951 film join images of early stage productions around the world, Kazan’s director’s notebook, and more. Essays dive into the play’s first stage productions in Brazil and the USSR, discuss Blanche’s tragic young husband, and follow Williams’s iconic heroine into her twenty-first-century incarnation in
Blue Jasmine
Print Issue
Table of Contents
Contributors
Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2022
HNOC 2022
softcover • 6" × 9" • 144 pp.
21 color images, 19 b&w images
ISSN 1097-6035
ISBN 978-0-917860-88-1
$15.00
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Table of Contents
Front Matter
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Editor’s Note
R. Barton Palmer
Celebrating the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of
A Streetcar Named Desire
Mark Cave and Margit Longbrake
Tennessee Williams’s
A Streetcar Named Desire
, directed by Elia Kazan, premiered on Broadway in December 1947 and ran for 855 performances. Its reflection of a crumbling social order appealed worldwide to people who had lived through the unprecedented violence of World War II. Kazan’s production and 1951 film won awards, and the play was soon staged in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Greece, Italy, London, Paris, Sweden, Japan, Korea, and eventually the USSR and mainland China. In spring 2022 the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) presented the exhibition
Backstage at “A Streetcar Named Desire,”
in which images, objects, and recordings from HNOC’s Fred W. Todd Tennessee Williams Collection joined objects from Harry Ransom Center, New York Public Library, Le Petit Theatre, Whitney Museum of American Art, Reid Cinema Archives, Wesleyan University, and other lenders. The journal’s feature offers a selection of objects from the exhibition, with additional images of early productions around the world. Includes 34 images: 19 color, 15 b/w.
The First Major Soviet Production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
Maxim M. Gudkov and Michael D. Freese
The Mayakovsky Moscow Theater (Московский театр имени Маяковского), one of the oldest and best-known venues in Russian theater, staged the first major production of
A Streetcar Named Desire
in the USSR. The production debuted on 30 December 1970, starring Svetlana Nemolayaeva, Armen Dzhigarkhanyan, and Svetlana Mizeri. Directed by the esteemed Andrey Goncharov (1918–2001), a pioneer of Williams’s drama in the USSR, it ran for a quarter century. In keeping with Soviet priorities, the Mayakovka’s production simplified the plot and gave it a happy ending, making the play more socially pointed, virtuous, and optimistic than the original. Nevertheless, the groundbreaking production set off the nation’s Williams boom. The essay recounts the director’s vision and reports on the challenges involved in casting and set design, along with other details of the production’s development. Includes 6 images: 1 color, 5 b/w.
A Streetcar Named Desire
in Brazil: A Brief Description of Selected Stagings
Adriana Falqueto Lemos and Emerson José Simões da Silva
Tennessee Williams’s
A Streetcar Named Desire
was staged in Brazil in Portuguese six months after its Broadway debut—possibly the first staging outside the US—by the director Zbigniew Ziembinski, considered by many the father of Brazilian modern theater. Ziembinski’s
Uma rua chamada pecado
premiered on 23 June 1948, starring Henriette Morineau. The production’s creative staging and lighting choices and the director’s approach to dramaturgy changed the course of the nation’s theater. The history of productions of
A Streetcar Named Desire
(later translated as
Um bonde chamado Desejo
) shows Brazilian theater companies incorporating techniques and approaches from foreign artists, professionalizing their practice, and becoming less reliant on outside influence for their innovations. Includes 4 b/w images.
Woody Allen’s
Blue Jasmine
: A
Streetcar
sans Desire
R. Barton Palmer
Woody Allen’s 2013 film
Blue Jasmine
, starring Cate Blanchett, is a straightforward, if unacknowledged, reimagining of
A Streetcar Named Desire
. The essay examines the effects of Allen’s choice to omit in his version the thematizing of desire that Williams’s title underscores. The choice becomes more surprising in the context of the pivotal role played by sexual desire in the original play and in Elia Kazan’s 1951 film version. The groundbreaking depiction in Kazan's film of the physical sensuality of Stanley and Stella’s relationship created a crisis for Warner Bros., and the essay examines correspondence among studio executives in detailing the problems it posed, the looming economic threat, and the choices that were made with and without the director’s approval. Comparing Allen’s film and its lack of physical desire with Kazan’s film throws into relief the role of desire in the original play and sheds light on Kazan’s directorial process. Includes 4 images: 2 color, 2 b/w.
The Grey Area in
A Streetcar Named Desire
Gary Harrington
A Streetcar Named Desire
circles around the absence of Blanche DuBois’s dead husband, Allan Grey, whom Blanche is unable to forget. Allan’s first and last names point to a constellation of imagery, wordplay, and literary and historical references that shows the text constantly returning, like the mothlike Blanche, to Allan’s dim light. The essay tracks references to color and memory; to canonical authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Walt Whitman, and Alexandre Dumas fils; and to objects such as perfume bottles and lanterns that go from full to empty as the play unfolds—objects becoming, like the play itself, containers filled with the absence that generates and defines desire.
Book Review
The Lines between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment
, by Bess Rowen
Tison Pugh
The Lines between the Lines: How Stage Directions Affect Embodiment
, by Bess Rowen. U of Michigan P, 2021.
Book Review
Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams
, by Henry I. Schvey
Michael S. D. Hooper
Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams
, by Henry I. Schvey. U of Missouri P, 2021.
Theater Review
Battle of Angels
, directed by Jessica Burr
Bess Rowen
Battle of Angels
, by Tennessee Williams, directed by Jessica Burr, Blessed Unrest, Friday, 24 September 2021, Provincetown Town Hall, Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Notes on Contributors
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Contributors
Mark Cave
Senior Historian, HNOC
Mark Cave
Senior Historian, HNOC
Mark Cave is Senior Historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC). He created the oral history program at HNOC and developed oral history responses following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He has also created the New Orleans Life Story Project and other smaller thematic projects, including
Viet Chronicle
. Mark is the curator for HNOC’s 2025 exhibition,
Making It Home: From Vietnam to New Orleans
. He is a past President of the International Oral History Association and is coeditor of
Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis
(Oxford 2014);
Oral History and the Environment: Global Perspectives on Climate, Connection, and Catastrophe
(Oxford 2022); and
The Global Handbook of Oral History
(Brill 2025).
Adriana Falqueto Lemos
Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
Michael D. Freese
American University of Central Asia
Maxim M. Gudkov
St. Petersburg State University
Gary Harrington
Salisbury University
Michael S. D. Hooper
Independent scholar
Margit Longbrake
Historic New Orleans Collection
R. Barton Palmer
Clemson University
Bess Rowen
Villanova University
Tison Pugh
University of Central Florida
Emerson José Simões da Silva
Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sul de Minas
Research
Tennessee Williams Studies
HNOC is one of four main repositories of the playwright’s work. We produce an annual scholarly journal and conference devoted to Williams, among other research tools, articles, and exhibitions.
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About TWAR
Although submissions are welcomed at any point,
August 15
serves as the deadline for those wishing to have work published in March of the following year.
The
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
invites academic writing on all aspects of the Williams oeuvre, including his plays, poetry, prose, and correspondence. Studies of the productions of his plays and technical analyses of stagecraft and institutional issues are also welcome. Founded in 1998, the journal routinely publishes brief texts that emerge from the ongoing examination of Williams’s literary records (usually draft versions of plays). Of particular interest is the history of the reception of Williams’s work—and the public persona cultivated by the author—in the postwar Broadway renaissance and in the period roughly from 1940 to 1980, in the US and abroad. Also of interest are the lasting effects of Williams’s work on the cinema of the 1950s and after. The editors are also eager to consider work devoted to present-day productions of recently discovered and newly edited texts.
In addition to work that focuses primarily on Williams, the journal is interested in studies of his contemporaries—of playwrights and other creative personnel as well—and of relevant issues (e.g., the queer history of the period). Especially welcome is scholarship that draws on archival sources and helps illuminate the material history of Williams’s literary output, as well as the culture his work and public persona both reflected and shaped.
Specifications
All submissions should be 4,500 to 9,000 words long, including notes but not including works cited, and should follow the most recent MLA guidelines.
Please prepare submissions in a recent version of Microsoft Word and send them as email attachments to Margit Longbrake, managing editor (
Margit.Longbrake@hnoc.org
).
Author anonymity: Authors should redact their names from their essays before submission, and notes or references to the author’s previous work should be in the third person. The journal will make every effort to respect the privacy of reviewers and readers of manuscripts submitted for review.
All quotations, sources, and images should be fully cited in such a way that the original source can be located. Authors must fully cite in the manuscript, at submission, their use of all content (whether text, images, data, or other) created by an AI tool. All submissions must carry assurance that they have been submitted exclusively to the
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
Permission to use any copyrighted, third-party material will need to be obtained before the contribution is published. Authors will be required to sign a license granting the
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
the right to publish. The license will ask authors to warrant that they are the original and sole authors of the work and that no material has been plagiarized from other sources.
Editor
Annette J. Saddik, City University of New York
Managing Editor
Margit Longbrake, Historic New Orleans Collection and Williams Research Center
Founding and Consulting Editor
Robert Bray, Middle Tennessee State University (emeritus)
Editorial Board
John S. Bak, Université de Lorraine
Ramón Espejo Romero, Universidad de Sevilla
Tison Pugh, University of Central Florida
Matthew C. Roudané, Georgia State University
David Savran, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Past editorial board members
Thomas P. Adler, Purdue University
George W. Crandell, Auburn University
Jessica Dorman, Historic New Orleans Collection and Williams Research Center
Allean Hale, University of Illinois, Urbana
Philip C. Kolin, University of Southern Mississippi
R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University (emeritus)
Nancy M. Tischler, Pennsylvania State University
PUBLISHER
The
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
(ISSN 1097-6035) is published annually by the Historic New Orleans Collection and Williams Research Center.
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
Historic New Orleans Collection
522 Royal Street
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
Online versions of issues 1 through 17 (1998 through 2018) can be accessed in our archives. Print copies of many back issues can be purchased from the
Shop at the Historic New Orleans Collection
STATEMENT OF PUBLICATION ETHICS
Guiding principles
Initially published in 1998 by Middle Tennessee State University and published since 2005 by the Historic New Orleans Collection, the
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
is committed to presenting high-quality peer-reviewed scholarship and to the responsible publication of valuable original work uncovered in the ongoing process of examining Tennessee Williams’s literary papers. The
Review
’s processes are guided by ethical best practices for academic journals of arts and literature.
Process
Scholarly essays submitted to the journal for consideration are evaluated first by the editor. Those deemed to have potential for the journal undergo a double-blind peer-evaluation process at the end of which a decision is made by editorial board vote. Manuscripts submitted or invited for the journal’s Previously Unpublished section and other special features where anonymity is not possible are evaluated according to the rigorous standards applied to blind submissions.
Professional conduct
The journal makes every effort to respect the privacy of authors and readers of manuscripts. Editors, reviewers, and authors are expected to communicate and conduct themselves respectfully and professionally. Discrimination, intimidation, or harassment of any kind is unacceptable.
Plagiarism
The journal is strictly against unethical copying or plagiarism in any form. Prior to publication, authors will be asked to sign an agreement warranting that they are the original and sole authors of the work; that no material has been plagiarized from other sources; and that permission to use any copyrighted third-party material has been or will be obtained before the contribution is published.
Author responsibilities
Originality
Authors should submit only original, unpublished work. Any content derived from previous publications, including previously published work by the author, should be accompanied by the relevant citation. Authors must fully cite in the manuscript, at submission, their use of all content (whether text, images, data, or other) created by an AI tool.
Author anonymity
Authors of essays submitted for consideration should redact their names from the document before submission, and notes or references to the author’s previous work should be in the third person.
Integrity and intellectual property
Authors must guarantee that their submitted work contains no libelous material or content that infringes on the copyright of another party. All quotations, sources, and images should be fully cited in such a way that the original source can be identified. All submissions must carry assurance that they have been submitted exclusively to
The Tennessee Williams Annual Review
Editor and reviewer responsibilities
Confidentiality
All manuscripts received for review are confidential documents; they must not be circulated or discussed outside the journal's editorial team except if authorized by the editor. Unpublished original material in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s or reviewer’s own research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential.
Standards of objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting evidence. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.
Acknowledgment of sources
Reviewers are asked to identify relevant published work not cited in the submission. Reviewers should also identify any substantial similarity between the submission and any other published or unpublished work they may know about.
Conflict of interest
Any reviewer who sees a possible conflict of interest arising from their relation to the author or to the research described in the manuscript should notify the editor, so that the potential conflict may be discussed and an alternative reviewer chosen if needed.
Publisher responsibilities
Handling of unethical publishing behavior
In cases of alleged or proven research misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the publisher will confer with the editor and will take appropriate measures to clarify the situation and determine what action may be necessary. Steps may include the publication of an erratum or the retraction of the work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable measures to prevent the journal from publishing work in which research misconduct has occurred. Neither the editors nor the publisher shall encourage or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.
Access to journal content
The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining its own digital archive.
Author fees
Authors are not charged any submission, processing, or publication fees by the publisher.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING
Authors retain the copyright to their published work. Authors will be required to sign a license granting the journal the right to publish, a right that is exclusive for one year after publication. Thereafter the right becomes nonexclusive, and authors may publish the work at their discretion, provided that the
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
be cited as the first publisher. The license will ask authors to warrant that they are the original and sole authors of the work; that no material has been plagiarized from other sources; and that permission to use any copyrighted, third-party material has been or will be obtained before the contribution is published.
Thomas P. Adler, Purdue University
Mauricio D. Aguilera Linde, University of Granada
Shelley Akers, Independent scholar
Gabe C. Alfieri, Salve Regina University
Alicia Andrzejewski, Graduate Center, City University of New York
José I. Badenes, Loyola Marymount University
John S. Bak, Université de Lorraine
Mark Bernard, Carson-Newman College
Larry Blades, Independent scholar
Darrell Bourque, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Will Brantley, Middle Tennessee State University
Robert Bray, Middle Tennessee State University
Mary F. Brewer, Loughborough University
Juanita Cabello, Independent scholar
Bert Cardullo
Virginia Spencer Carr, Georgia State University
Claudia Wilsch Case, Lehman University
Mark Cave, Historic New Orleans Collection
Stephen Cedars, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Daniel Ciba, Ramapo College
Bernadette Clemens, Case Western Reserve University
Craig Clinton, Reed College
Ruby Cohn, University of California, Davis
Christopher Conlon, Writer and independent scholar
George W. Crandell, Auburn University
David A. Davis, Mercer University
Rose De Angelis, Marist College
Gilbert Debusscher, University of Brussels
Albert J. Devlin, University of Missouri
Carlos Dews, University of West Florida, Pensacola
Matt DiCintio, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities
Marianne DiQuattro, Rollins College
Linda Dorff, University of Houston
Barbara Ewell, Loyola University, New Orleans
Joe Falocco, Catawba College
Adriana Falqueto Lemos, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
James Francis, Texas A&M University
Michael D. Freese, American University of Central Asia
Raymond-Jean Frontain, University of Central Arkansas
Tiffany Gilbert, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Dirk Gindt, Stockholm University
Charles A. Goldthwaite, Jr., Writer and independent scholar
Jess Gregg, Writer
Robert J. Grosch
Maxim M. Gudkov, St. Petersburg State University
Allean Hale, University of Illinois, Urbana
John Haman, University of the South
Gary Harrington, Salisbury University
Michael Hooper, Independent scholar
Christina Hunter, University of Southern Mississippi
David Kaplan, Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
Thomas Keith, New Directions Publishing
Philip C. Kolin, University of Southern Mississippi
Jean Kontaxopoulos, Conseil de l’Union européenne
Richard E. Kramer, Writer and independent scholar
Colby Kullman, University of Mississippi
Ciarán Leinster, University College Dublin A&LL Centre
David Leopold, Al Hirschfeld Foundation
Lindy Levin, Center for the Study of Women, University of California, Los Angeles
Margit Longbrake, Historic New Orleans Collection
Jeffrey B. Loomis, Northwest Missouri State University
Deborah Martinson, Occidental College
Sophie Maruéjouls-Koch, Université de Toulouse II–Le Mirail
Michele Meek, Bridgewater State University
Tom Mitchell, University of Illinois, Urbana
Irene Morra, University of Toronto
Clay Morton, Macon State College
Nick Moschovakis, Writer and independent scholar
Brenda Murphy, University of Connecticut
Barbara Neri, Writer and independent scholar
Claire Nicolay, Loyola University, Chicago
Jacqueline O’Connor, Boise State University
Michael C. O’Neill, Lafayette College
Michael Paller, American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco
R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University
Brian Parker, University of Toronto
Brian M. Peters, Champlain College, Saint-Lambert
Alexander Pettit, University of North Texas
Tison Pugh, University of Central Florida
Stefanie Quinlan, Independent scholar
David Radavich, Eastern Illinois University
Naghmeh Rezaie, University of Delaware
Matthew C. Roudané, Georgia State University
John Rowell, Columbia College
Bess Rowen, Villanova University
Annette J. Saddik, Graduate Center and City Tech, City University of New York
Takashi Sakai, Fukuoka University
M. Tyler Sasser, University of Alabama
David Savran, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Michael R. Schiavi, New York Institute of Technology, Manhattan
James Schlatter, University of Pennsylvania
Henry I. Schvey, Washington University, St. Louis
Dean Shackelford, Southeast Missouri State University
Dorothy Shapiro
Emerson José Simões da Silva, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Sul de Minas
Lori Leathers Single, Georgia State University
Neil Sinyard, University of Hull
John Sykes, Wingate University
Nancy M. Tischler, Pennsylvania State University
Julie Vatain-Corfdir, Sorbonne Université
Ralph F. Voss, University of Alabama
Alison Walls, Graduate Center, City University of New York
Edwina Dakin Williams
Tennessee Williams
Harvey Young, Northwestern University
Laura Torres Zúñiga, Catholic University, Murcia