Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre

by Brenda Murphy

This is a book-length study of the collaboration between Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan. Their intense creative relationship, fuelled by a deep personal affinity that endured until Williams's death, lasted from 1947 until 1960. The production of A Streetcar Named Desire established Williams as America's greatest playwright and Kazan as its most important director; together they created some of the most influential theatrical events of the post-war era. In this book Brenda Murphy analyses this artistic partnership and the plays and theatrical techniques the artists developed collaboratively in their productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth. In addition, Murphy suggests alternative ways to examine the working relationship between playwright and director which can be applied to other practitioners in twentieth-century drama. The book contains numerous illustrations from important productions.

Genres: Theatre

236 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 1992

About the author

Brenda Murphy is the author of more than twenty books, mostly about American drama and theater. Recently she has been writing biography, memoir, and biographical fiction. Her latest books include When Light Breaks Through: A Salem Witch Trials Story (2023), Becoming Carlotta: A Biographical Novel (2018), based on the life of the actress Carlotta Monterey, Eugene O’Neill Remembered (2017, with George Monteiro), a biography in documents, and After the Voyage: An Irish American Story (2016), historical fiction based on the experience of her immigrant family in the Boston area from 1870 until the 1930s. After teaching at universities in New York and Connecticut, Brenda now lives in Maryland where she enjoys writing full time surrounded by deer and horse farms.

Reviews

[MH · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough production history of four plays by Tennessee Williams - Streetcar, Camino Real, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth - focusing on the changes made from page to Elia Kazan's staging and the shifting dominance in 1950s' American theater from playwright to director. Murphy hints at onstage difficulties among actors but doesn't explore them, nor does she explain much about the plays themselves (not a problem with the better known works, but for me Camino Real could have used a synopsis or overview) - likewise, there is little theory or speculation, just a factual reading of the notebooks, letters, publications and printings involved as Murphy cleanly traces how Williams relies on, and resents, Kazan's direction, and how Kazan reshapes Williams work for the stage (usually for the better, sometimes for the worse, and against Williams' increasing resistance).