Talked with a man last night who knew Tennessee Williams and who had been in Something Cloudy, Something Clear
I GRILLED this man for information. It was wonderful talking with him.
A couple of things:
— Tennessee was actually kind of shy and quiet. He would sit in the back of the theatre during rehearsals and not say a word.
— One time, the director and Tennessee started conferring about something – while all the actors were up on stage – and the director said to Tennessee, “Why don’t you go down there and direct the scene?” (Not in an argument – it was completely the opposite – They obviously had been going back and forth about what was going on in the scene and the director said Go and tell them how you want it!!) So Tennessee – who had no directing experience directly, and only a little bit of acting experience – walked up on stage. The actors stood around, looking at this little old man, waiting for him to tell them what to do. Tennessee said to the man who I talked with last night, “Okay … so … you start the scene from the other side of the stage …” So the man I spoke with crossed the stage to start the scene from there. Tennessee just stood there, looking around at all the waiting actors, and finally just said, “Well, the scene kind of directs itself, doesn’t it?” I love that story.
— After the play opened, Williams still worked on the script. New pages of edits would come to the cast on a daily basis. Tennessee was a great FIXER – we talked about that last night. He may not have known how to direct actors – he had no experience – but if a scene wasn’t working on the page, he knew how to fix it. 99.9% of playwrights when they go to “fix” something – make it worse. They THINK they’re making it better, but they make it worse. Tennessee had a great eye, and a great ear … a great poetic sense … Something Cloudy Something Clear was not a critical success (the critics were extremely harsh on Tennessee for the last 20, 30 years of his life – they couldn’t forgive him for experimenting, they couldn’t forgive him for not repeating himself, they couldn’t forgive him for not producing another Streetcar … Most critics are an unimaginative bunch. If you set out to try to repeat yourself as an artist – you are DESTINED to fail. There are no exceptions. You all can probably think of a million movie sequels not as good as the original that would prove this point alone) I loved the image of the show being up and running, and pages were still coming in from Tennessee. What an experience.
— One day, there was some kind of a photo shoot involving Tennessee. The man I spoke with last night was sent to pick him up at his hotel and get him to the photo shoot. I can’t remember the name of the hotel – but it was on the Upper West Side – and it had a very Tennessee-ish name – like The Elysian Fields – or something like that. It was the summer time, and very very hot – the man I spoke with described the heat, and also – the cacophony of the New York streets – loud construction – one of those brash blinding unbearable summer days here on the island of Manhattan – and he goes up to Tennessee’s room. He knocks on the door. He is let into the room. The room is painted emerald-green. Everything is green. Even the ceiling. An undersea kind of green. In the middle of the hot dirty city. Now Tennessee always had an entourage with him … a crowd of hangers-on … He also always had some kind of male partner, not always the same one, but always the same type: younger than Tennessee, buff, Latino usually … These were the constant elements of Tennessee’s life. So the man I spoke with last night is let into this emerald-green hotel room – There are three high-backed chairs set up in the middle of the green-ness, and Tennessee and two other people are perched on these chairs, and they are all reading Rilke out loud. Taking turns.
The man telling the story just said the whole thing was so bizarre – and that Williams lived his life in that way – it was a strange life. He was an eccentric. A committed eccentric. It was a decision he made long before he became famous. He was a writer. He was gay. No way would he ever fit in, although he yearned to. So he would not try. He would be himself. He would surround himself with like types … and he would embrace being an outcast (his words – the word “outcast” is a continuing theme in all of his plays) But the man telling the story started laughing about the memory … how weird it was, to step into that green world for a second … so surreal … the emerald-green walls … Tennessee Williams and his entourage … an enclave of German poetry in the middle of the loud hot city …
