THESE ARE THE STAIRS YOU GOT TO WATCH, LORD BYRON’S LOVE LETTER, and TALK TO ME LIKE RAIN AND LET ME LISTEN
by Tennessee Williams
Presented by special arrangement with The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.
In response to April de Angelis’ Playhouse Creatures, which tells the stories of the first women allowed to perform on stage in the 1660s, the Orange Tree presents three short plays by Tennessee Williams; These Are The Stairs You Got to Watch, Lord Byron’s Love Letter, and Talk To Me Like Rain and Let Me Listen explore the ‘backstage’ world of the dreams that float around fame, celebrity, and the buildings where stories are told.
A young poet starts a job as an usher at the rundown Joy Rio cinema. In the midst of Mardi Gras, two women peddle a letter that they claim to have been written by Lord Byron. And in an apartment in Manhattan, a woman imagines what she might do if she were to receive a weekly cheque in the post.
Funny, soulful and strange, these three shorts are glimpses into the less well-known worlds that Tennessee Williams imagined, each characterised by his instinct for the ridiculous and the beautiful.
Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the Episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller fellowship in 1940 for his play Battle of Angels, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and in 1955 for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Other plays include Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo, Camino Real, Baby Doll, The Glass Menagerie, Orpheus Descending, Suddenly Last Summer, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth, and The Two-Character Play. Tennessee Williams died in 1983.
Rosie Tricks is training on the Theatre Directing MFA at Birkbeck. At the OT, she has assisted on Churchill in Moscow, Twelfth Night and will be the Assistant Director on our upcoming production of Terence Rattigan’s In Praise of Love. She has directed for Scarlet Oak Theatre, Circle Theatre, and Neon Peach Theatre.
The University of the South, a national ranked liberal arts college and Episcopal seminary, is the beneficiary of the Tennessee Williams’ estate, including the copyrights to all his works. This gift was made as a memorial to Williams’ grandfather, the Reverend Walter E. Dakin, who studied at the University’s seminary in 1895. The Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fund is used to support the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference, and the School of Letters. The Fund also supports scholarships for students who wish to pursue creative writing and fellowships which are granted annually to budding playwrights or authors. Those fellows include Ann Patchett, Claire Messud, Tony Early, and Mark Richard. The Tennessee Williams Center houses the University’s theater department, and a portion of the Fund supports the department and its theatrical productions.
Visit www.sewanee.edu for more information.
About OT Lunchtime Plays
Lunchtime Plays at the OT hark back to our origins over fifty years ago when a group of actors adopted a room above the Orange Tree pub, performing with scripts in hand and nothing but the daylight through the windows to light performances. Chairs were placed around the edge of the room creating an in-the-round space that remains at the heart of our work all these years later.
Cast
Melanie-Joyce Bermudez
Tom Espiner
Lanna Joffrey
Evan Klein
Mimi Harlow Robinson
Jordan Metcalfe