''Something Cloudy, Something Clear'' is an autobiographical play by

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 thr ...

that was originally written in 1941 as a short play titled '' The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer'', which was produced posthumously in Provincetown in 2006. In 1962, Williams retitled and expanded ''The Parade'' into a full-length play that was first produced

Off-Off-Broadway Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commercialism of the pro ...

in 1981. Both versions of the play are set on the wharfs of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and tell the story of a young playwright named August dealing with his unrequited homosexual love for another man. The situations and characters in both were "clearly drawn from a very autobiographical foundation," with August's dilemma reflecting a relationship Williams had in Provincetown with "his actual lover for nesummer, Kip Kiernan." ''The Parade'' was written after a fight with Kiernan, and Williams reflected in 1962 that "

he version of Kip in that play He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

is very completely different from Kip as he was. When someone hurts us deeply, we no longer see them at all clearly. Not until time has put them back in focus." Williams' revised version of the play, titled ''Something Cloudy, Something Clear'', opened on August 24, 1981 at The Bouwerie Lane Theatre in New York City to unenthusiastic reviews. It received its British professional premiere at the

Finborough Theatre The Finborough Theatre is a fifty-seat theatre in the West Brompton area of London (part of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) under artistic director Neil McPherson. The theatre presents new British writing, as well as UK and world pr ...

in London in 2003 with

James Hillier James Hillier, (August 22, 1915 – January 15, 2007) was a Canadian-American scientist and inventor who designed and built, with Albert Prebus, the first successful high-resolution electron microscope in North America in 1938. Biography B ...

in the lead role as August, where it sold out for the entire run.

References

1941 plays 1981 plays Plays by Tennessee Williams Plays set in Massachusetts Provincetown, Massachusetts New Directions Publishing books {{1980s-play-stub