Title

Summer and Smoke

Authors

Tennessee Williams

Season

1966-1967

Performance Dates

February 9, 10, 11, 12, 1967

Director

Don Garner

Files

Description

Fontbonne College Fine Arts Theatre

Introduction

With the first production of The Glass Menagerie in 1945, Tennessee Williams, a former St. Louisan, emerged as one of the finest playwrights in the American theatre. Today he is considered one of the leading dramatists of our time. A tireless experimenter in dramatic style and form, he has sought to revitalize the theatre of realistic convention by a "new plastic theatre," in which the imagery and symbolism of the poetic imagination might be transformed and concretized. His aim has been to reveal, through the interplay of characters sharing the same crisis, "the truth of human experience."

In Summer and Smoke, Mr. Williams again departs from the tight structure of realism. John Gassner has described the play as "a ruefully ironic chronicle of two lives crossing each other's orbit frequently, yet somehow never being ready for each other." The symbolic setting balances the heroine's house against the hero's, while between them stands the public park with a fountain in the form of an angel, the brooding symbol of eternity, silently dominating the entire play.

Document Type

Program

Publisher

Fontbonne University Archives

City

St. Louis, MO