Late playwright Tennessee Williams life story reads like a list of cheesy tabloid headlines: mentally disturbed sister, an addiction to pills and booze, a plethora of stormy gay love affairs. Seriously, the dude put Ted Haggard and Mel Gibson to shame.
But rather than sinking into obscurity or going down in a flame of publicly shouted racial epithets, Williams used his personal troubles as inspiration for award-winning plays including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Catch some of his poetry and early works in Theatre Artists Studios production of Tennessee Williams Prelude to a Play. Highlights include The Lady of Larkspur Lotion and The Dog Enchanted by the Divine View, a one-act sketch about a truck driver and a lonely widow, which Williams later expanded into The Rose Tattoo.
Fri., Sept. 9, 7:30 p.m., 2011