Backstage at “A Streetcar Named Desire”
A feast for Tennessee Williams lovers explores the play’s journey around the world onstage and onscreen.
520 Royal Street
Tricentennial Wing
1st Floor
In 1947, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway. The first performance received a seven-minute standing ovation, and the play has virtually never disappeared from the stage since.
Williams’s themes of societal upheaval, dislocation, and brutality versus gentility proved universal, as productions spread around the world, to nearly every continent. Marking the 75th anniversary of the play’s debut, Backstage at “Streetcar” combines selections from HNOC’s wide-ranging Tennessee Williams holdings—many of them seldom displayed—with loans from the Harry Ransom Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the New York Public Library, and Wesleyan University. Visitors can read director Elia Kazan’s stage notes, listen to a rare recording of the original Broadway production, enjoy interpretations of the play in popular culture, and see photographs and ephemera from different productions around the world. Famous objects making the trip to New Orleans for the exhibition include Thomas Hart Benton’s celebrated painting Poker Night and the Oscar statue awarded to Vivien Leigh for her performance as Blanche in the 1951 film.
Tennessee Williams Annual Review
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