TENNESSEE WILLIAMS AND ROUNDABOUT’S 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY
Fan from Roundabout's Production of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
One of the most rewarding aspects of my job as the archivist for Roundabout Theatre is discovering interesting events that happened in years past, ones that were important at the time but perhaps forgotten over the course of the company’s long history. Sometimes these events are made known through oral history interviews with
artists and collaborators, but just as often I stumble upon something in a newsletter or critic’s review.
Case in point: along with a deposit of other documents related to Roundabout’s operations in the mid-1970s came a copy of
Roundabout’s institutional newsletter known as Subtext. The Archives does not have a complete series, nor does it know how long the newsletter was printed, but we have a few issues from the 1970s, and each sheds fascinating light on the events and programming of the era.
Tennessee Williams at Opening Night of Roundabout's 1996 Production of Summer and Smoke
Vol. III, No. 1 of 1975 is particularly wonderful. Not only does it identify early educational initiatives and mention modern dance programming (a lesser-known fact of Roundabout’s early history), it also includes a fantastic photograph of a smiling Tennessee Williams standing in front of Roundabout’s 10-year anniversary banner. According to the article in Subtext, Roundabout and Mr. Williams both received awards from Mayor Abraham Beame’s office: Roundabout for “the presentation of quality theatre for all New Yorkers” and Mr. Williams, praised as “America’s greatest living playwright.”
Summer and Smoke—which Mr. Williams would have seen the night of October 6, 1975 when he was in attendance at the gala performance—is the first Williams play staged by Roundabout. In the years following, we have staged seven more: The Glass Menagerie (1994), Summer and Smoke (1996), The Night of the Iguana (1996), A Streetcar Named Desire (2005), Suddenly Last Summer (2006), The Glass Menagerie (2010) and The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore (2011). The Rose Tattoo will be the ninth Williams production, and certainly not the last.•
Natasha Richardson and John C. Reilly in Roundabout's 2005 production of A Streetcar Named Desire Photo by Joan Marcus
Costume sketch by David C. Woolard from Roundabout's 2011 production of The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
For more information on the Roundabout Archives, visit
https://archive.roundabouttheatre.org or contact Tiffany Nixon, Roundabout Archivist, at
archives@roundabouttheatre.org
22 ROUNDABOUT THEATRE COMPANY
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