Stairs To The Roof

	Stairs To The Roof ''Stairs to the Roof'' is a play by Tennessee Williams, the last of his apprentice plays. It was completed in December 1941, and premiered (as a full-scale production) at the Pasadena Playhouse on February 26, 1947. The play is based on earlier stories written by Williams, including "The Swan" and most specifically, one of the same title written in October 1936, after he had recovered from a nervous breakdown arising from his experiences working in the relentlessly mechanical world of the large International Shoes factory in St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike that story, the play is optimistic, with elements of romance and fantasy, and a ''deus ex machina'' ending. The subtitle of the play (and of the earlier story) is "A Prayer for the Wild of Heart That are Kept in Cages"; though that phrase conveys the seriousness of the playwright's chosen topic, its treatment, particularly the elements not present in the original story (such as the Mummers play-within-a-play and the swan-on-a-lake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of ''The Glass Menagerie'' (1944) in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1947), ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1955), ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' (1959), and ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's '' Long Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]
picture info	Elmer Rice Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays ''The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Scene'' (1929). Biography Early years Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City. His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. After the failure of that political upheaval, he emigrated to the United States where he became a businessman. He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer, who became a politically motivated writer and shared his grandfather's liberal and pacifist politics. A staunch atheist, his grandfather may also have influenced Elmer in his feelings about religion as he refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a bar mitzvah. In contrast, Rice's relationship with his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu]