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Tenn at One Hundred: The Reputation of Tennessee Williams
Edited by David Kaplan, Tenn at One Hundred is the first comprehensive look at the reputation of Tennessee Williams, America's greatest playwright. Published on Tennessee Williams' centennial year, Tenn at One Hundred takes a behind the scenes look at how reputations are made.
The book is a must for anyone curious about how American icons are built up, torn down, and then given the rare opportunity to assert their own worth. Best known for the groundbreaking plays, "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and "The Glass Menagerie", Tennessee Williams began his writing career in the 1930s as a struggling and unknown poet. At the time of his death in 1983, he was the most produced playwright in the country and at the same time one of the most despised and ridiculed American writers.
Tenn at One Hundred explores the man and his legacy: the plays, films, reviews, talent, tenacity, good fortune, bad timing, friends, addictions, critics, producers, publishers, directors, actors, and biographers that helped to shape Tennessee Williams' critical reputation and iconic status in the popular imagination over the past seventy years.
The book is a must for anyone curious about how American icons are built up, torn down, and then given the rare opportunity to assert their own worth. Best known for the groundbreaking plays, "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", and "The Glass Menagerie", Tennessee Williams began his writing career in the 1930s as a struggling and unknown poet. At the time of his death in 1983, he was the most produced playwright in the country and at the same time one of the most despised and ridiculed American writers.
Tenn at One Hundred explores the man and his legacy: the plays, films, reviews, talent, tenacity, good fortune, bad timing, friends, addictions, critics, producers, publishers, directors, actors, and biographers that helped to shape Tennessee Williams' critical reputation and iconic status in the popular imagination over the past seventy years.
340 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 2011
5 people want to read
About the author
David Kaplan
10 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
David Kaplan is the author of Tennessee Williams in Provincetown (Hansen Publishing Group) and The Five Approaches to Acting (Hansen Publishing Group). He is a theater director who stages plays around the world with professional companies in indigenous languages and settings. He is a former Fellow at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, the repository of Tennessee Williams’s literary estate. He has experience directing Williams’s repertory around the world.
In 2003, Mr. Kaplan staged Tennessee Williams’s "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" in Cantonese at the Hong Kong Repertory Theater. Seasons past include directing the first Russian production of Tennessee Williams’s "Suddenly Last Summer" (the subject of a TASS documentary); a Sufi "King Lear" in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, performed in the Uzbek language and broadcast on Uzbek television; and Genet’s "The Maids" in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia, performed in Mongolian. In America, he has staged his own adaptation of "The Circus of Dr. Lao" in Los Angeles, Tennessee Williams’s "The Traveling Companion" at West Beth in New York, and Williams’s "Frosted Glass Coffins" in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the curator of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.
David Kaplan is also the author of articles on such varied subjects as Eudora Welty and Andres Segovia, the history of Shakespeare productions in Central Asia, the American monologist Ruth Draper, the twenty-first century freaks of Coney Island USA. His translations of Chinese poetry from eighteenth century Japan will appear in the journal Alehouse early 2007.
David Kaplan is the author of Tennessee Williams in Provincetown (Hansen Publishing Group) and The Five Approaches to Acting (Hansen Publishing Group). He is a theater director who stages plays around the world with professional companies in indigenous languages and settings. He is a former Fellow at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas, the repository of Tennessee Williams’s literary estate. He has experience directing Williams’s repertory around the world.
In 2003, Mr. Kaplan staged Tennessee Williams’s "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale" in Cantonese at the Hong Kong Repertory Theater. Seasons past include directing the first Russian production of Tennessee Williams’s "Suddenly Last Summer" (the subject of a TASS documentary); a Sufi "King Lear" in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, performed in the Uzbek language and broadcast on Uzbek television; and Genet’s "The Maids" in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia, performed in Mongolian. In America, he has staged his own adaptation of "The Circus of Dr. Lao" in Los Angeles, Tennessee Williams’s "The Traveling Companion" at West Beth in New York, and Williams’s "Frosted Glass Coffins" in Birmingham, Alabama. He is also the curator of the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival.
David Kaplan is also the author of articles on such varied subjects as Eudora Welty and Andres Segovia, the history of Shakespeare productions in Central Asia, the American monologist Ruth Draper, the twenty-first century freaks of Coney Island USA. His translations of Chinese poetry from eighteenth century Japan will appear in the journal Alehouse early 2007.
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