Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess

The plays of Tennessee Williams'' post-1961 period have often been misunderstood and dismissed. In light of Williams'' centennial in 2011 which was marked internationally by productions and world premieres of his late plays Annette J. Saddik''s new reading of these works illuminates them in the context of what she terms a ''theatre of excess'' which seeks liberation through exaggeration chaos ambiguity and laughter. Saddik explains why they are now gaining increasing acclaim and analyzes recent productions that successfully captured elements central to Williams'' late aesthetic particularly a delicate balance of laughter and horror with a self-consciously ironic acting style. Grounding the plays through the work of Bakhtin Artaud and Kristeva as well as through the carnivalesque the grotesque and psychoanalytic feminist and queer theory Saddik demonstrates how Williams engaged the freedom of exaggeration and excess in celebration of what he called ''the strange the crazed the queer''.