The exhibition Tennessee Williams: Dramaturgo y pintor on display at the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA), thanks to the collaboration of The Gallery on Greene, based in Key West, Florida, is currently causing a stir in Havana.
The exposition presents, without a doubt, little known aspects of the great U.S. playwright, Thomas Lanier Williams III (Columbus, Mississippi, March 26, 1911 - New York, February 25, 1983), better known by his pseudonym, Tennessee, given to him by his classmates due to his southern accent and family origins.
Nance Frank, director of the gallery, commented that the four original paintings (acrylic on canvas) on display for the first time in Cuba, belong to private collectors and the Tennessee Williams Foundation.
She recalled that the gallery, founded in 1996, has been collaborating with the MNBA for two years on the project Una sola raza, the second phase of which is the Tennessee Williams exposition, and highlighted that it also features works from renowned Cuban artists such as Wifredo Lam and Roberto Fabelo.
“It is greatly satisfying, after more than 50 years, to be able to realize this joint cultural initiative, as evidence of what the two peoples can achieve together.”
For her part, Ana Cristina Perera, director of the MNBA, praised the curatorship of both institutions and emphasized that the exposition is another way of bringing the Cuban public closer to a different facet of Tennessee Williams, to his art.
The exhibition includes personal photos of the novelist and scriptwriter; first editions of his most important works; playbills; awards; postage stamps based on Williams or his works; and documents relating to his presence in both Cuba and Key West.
It also features various photographs of brilliant actresses and actors who starred in his plays, frequently adapted to film, as well as some of the posters made for his theater productions and their film versions.
The film adaptations of his works were realized by renowned directors. For example, Elia Kazan directed A streetcar named desire in 1951, starring Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh; Daniel Mann brought The rose tattoo to cinema in 1955, with Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster; Richard Brooks adapted Cat on a hot tin roof in 1958, with Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman; and Joseph L. Mankiewicz premiered Suddenly, last summer, in 1959, staring Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift.
Cristina Ruíz, head of the MNBA’s Antonio Rodríguez Morey Information Center, where the exhibition is on display, thanked the National Council of Performing Arts for their important contribution of precious documents from their archives, among them, costume sketches, which demonstrate the profound impact the playwright had on Cuban theater.
She stated that between 1947 and 1960, 15 of his iconic plays were performed in Cuba. Carlos Díaz, 2015 National Theater Prize winner, shook Havana’s theater scene during the period 1989-1991 with a U.S. theatre trilogy which included A streetcar named desire and The glass menagerie.
The exposition Tennessee Williams: Dramaturgo y pintor, on display at the MNBA’s Antonio Rodríguez Morey Information Center, offers a tour of the works of one of the greatest U.S. and world renowned authors of the 20th century, and brings the spectator closer to another facet of his art: painting.
