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A dramatic scene with five people in colorful costumes and wigs, gathered on a staircase. They appear to be in an intense, theatrical argument. The setting is vibrant with floral decorations, enhancing the dynamic atmosphere.

Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2021

Number 20

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 Many issues showcase a previously unpublished work by Williams.

“For instance, suppose a plaintiff known as Dubois
Somehow engages the services of an attorney
To prosecute a defendant known as Kowalski . . .”

In this issue

The iconic Streetcar Named Desire characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski face off in court in Tennessee Williams’s poem “Kicks,” an archival gem that appears here in print for the first time. Biographical and textual introductions contextualize the poem, written during the challenging years of the playwright's late career. Inside, essays question Tom Wingfield’s memory in The Glass Menagerie, listen for Williams’s echoes of John Donne, explore archives in six states in order to track the playwright’s power struggle with Elia Kazan over Sweet Bird of Youth, and invite readers to experience a colorful and terrifying Viennese production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

A colorful theatrical scene with five performers in elaborate wigs and costumes, posing dramatically against a backdrop of roses. Text reads: The Jermyn Williams Annual Review Number 20 – 2021.

Tennessee Williams Annual Review 2021

HNOC 2021
softcover • 6" × 9" • 144 pp. 
1 color image
ISSN 1097-6035
ISBN 978-0-917860-87-4

$15.00

Table of Contents

Front Matter

Editor’s Note

R. Barton Palmer

Tennessee Williams and “Kicks”: Life and Work in Context, 1976

John S. Bak

The essay situates the poem “Kicks” in the context of Tennessee Williams’s frustration with his public image as a playwright whose best work was behind him and with critics’ and audiences’ poor reception of his avant-garde late-career plays and prose. 

Editor’s Note on the Text of “Kicks,” Tennessee Williams’s Unfinished Poem Exploring Blanche DuBois’s Crimes and Punishment

Barbara Neri

An introduction to the first-time publication of Tennessee William’s poem “Kicks,” written by the poem’s editor. The essay describes the editor’s process of finding and assembling the poem from archived pages and includes details about the manuscript. The essay also points out references in the poem to Williams’s plays and to elements in his biography, in particular a writeup of his play This Is (An Entertainment) in After Dark magazine.

Previously Unpublished

Kicks

Tennessee Williams
(Available only in print edition)

First-time publication of Tennessee Williams’s poem “Kicks,” in which A Streetcar Named Desire characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski meet in court. Includes fragments of draft versions. Available in print edition only.

Williams, Donne, and the Sometimes Conflicting Desires of the Flesh and the Spirit

Raymond-Jean Frontain

While the early modern English poet John Donne is neither a source for nor influence on Tennessee Williams in the traditional sense, this essay argues that Williams’s work can be understood to be in conversation with Donne: in particular, in both authors’ themes and imagery of the conflicting but interdependent roles played by spirituality and physical sexuality in human happiness and of the (im)possibility of achieving that happiness in a society focused exclusively on money and power. The essay tracks references to and the implicit presence of Donne’s work during formative years in Williams’s life and then puts works alongside each other to demonstrate resonances. Among other plays, Williams’s Battle of Angels and Summer and Smoke are examined alongside Donne’s “Aire and Angels,” “The Canonization,” “The Sunne Rising,” and other poems. 

“Unconscious Acts of Aggression”: Tennessee Williams, Elia Kazan, and Key Rewritings of Sweet Bird of Youth

Jeffrey B. Loomis

Critics rarely explore in depth Tennessee Williams’s somewhat radical 1961 reworking of his play Sweet Bird of Youth, eventually published as the Dramatists Play Service acting edition. The 1961 revision adds value not only in and of itself but also from its evident attempt to salvage parts of what this essay calls “the Ghost Esquire Draft”: a more full-bodied manuscript of late 1958, created for Esquire magazine but never published. Instead, the magazine published a significantly different version of Sweet Bird in 1959. Putting the 1961 revision alongside its antecedent version of 1958 and other archival texts offers important insight into the author’s process and into Elia Kazan’s role in the Broadway script in particular, fleshing out scholars’ understanding of Williams’s working relationship with Kazan.

Manufactured Memory and the Staging of Two Toms: The Absent Narrator in The Glass Menagerie

John Rowell

The essay looks closely at Tennessee Williams’s “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie, focusing in particular on scenes whose dialogue has not been remembered but instead wholly invented by the character of the narrator, Tom Wingfield, who subtly fills in words and action he was not present to witness. The essay proposes that the scenes and their possible exaggerations and omissions be read as intentional and thus as revealing of the character himself—in particular, of Tom’s fixation on and inability to free himself from his feelings of guilt regarding his family.

Theater Review

Endstation Sehnsucht (A Streetcar Named Desire), directed by Pınar Karabulut

Annette J. Saddik

Review of Endstation Sehnsucht (A Streetcar Named Desire), written by Tennessee Williams, translated by Helmar Harald Fischer, directed by Pınar Karabulut, 16 September 2019, Volkstheater, Vienna, Austria. Production featured cisgender drag, an onstage waterfall, and other elements of gender fluidity and whimsical artifice that destabilized the familiar and highlighted the play’s gender politics. 

Notes on Contributors

Contributors

John S. Bak

Université de Lorraine

Raymond-Jean Frontain

University of Central Arkansas

Jeffrey B. Loomis

Northwest Missouri State University

Barbara Neri

Writer and independent scholar

John Rowell

Columbia College

Annette J. Saddik

City University of New York
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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