Tennessee Williams in Sweden and France, 1945–1965: Cultural Translations, Sexual Anxieties and Racial Fantasies

The immediate post-war period marks a pivotal moment in the internationalization of American theatre when Tennessee Williams' plays became some of Broadway's most critically acclaimed and financially lucrative exports. Dirk Gindt offers a detailed study of the production and reception of Williams' work on Swedish and French stages at the height of his popularity between 1945 and 1965. Analysing the national openings of seminal plays, including The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending and Suddenly Last Summer, Gindt provides rich and nuanced insights into Williams' transnational impact. In the process, he charts a network of fascinating and influential directors, actors, designers, producers and critics, all of whom left distinctive marks on mid-twentieth-century European theatre and culture. Gindt further demonstrates how Williams' work foregrounded cultural apprehensions, racial fantasies and sexual anxieties, which resulted in heated debates in the critical and popular media.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements List of figures Introduction: Cultural translations and patterns of migration Chapter 1: Setting the stage: The Glass Menagerie Chapter 2: Encounters with the Other: A Streetcar Named Desire Chapter 3: Sinful sexualities and commercial triumphs: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Chapter 4: Fantasies of the Deep South: Orpheus Descending Chapter 5: Critical watershed: Suddenly Last Summer Epilogue Appendix Notes References About the Author Index

About the Author :
Dirk Gindt is Professor in the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. His research attends to post-war and contemporary queer theatre and performance from an international and intercultural perspective. He is the co-editor of Viral Dramaturgies: HIV and AIDS in Performance in the Twenty First Century (2018) and the author of over fifteen refereed articles and book chapters. His work has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Research in Canada, Journal of Canadian Studies, Nordic Theatre Studies, Journal of Homosexuality, Fashion Theory and The Tennessee Williams Annual Review. His current project critically analyses the impact of HIV and AIDS on theatre and performance in Sweden and Canada.

Review :
Adds relevant insight to contemporary Tennessee Williams scholarship, to drama studies and to the transcultural approach in the humanities ... A fascinatingly detailed assessment of the “various layers of the production and reception of Williams' plays in Sweden and France. In this fascinating book, readers dive into the snake pit with Williams's masterpieces and emerge not deranged by madness but enlightened about some of the ways cultural translation-particularly the cultural and critical anxieties of the target culture-inevitably alters a source text. Dirk Gindt's meticulously researched book offers valuable new insights into the broader impact of Williams' oeuvre from an interdisciplinary perspective that engages the complexities involved in cultural migration Dirk Gindt's meticulously researched study of the reception of Tennessee Williams's best-known plays in Sweden and France is a revelation. His is the first book to analyze the European premieres of Williams's plays by some of the most eminent directors and actors of the period. Gindt's elegantly written prose demonstrates that these plays, first seen during the height of the Cold War, served as lightning rods in Europe for heated debates about anti-Americanism, homophobia, female sexuality, and race relations.