The Facts: Basics
Title: Summer & Smoke
Author: Tennessee Williams
Language/Translator: English
Year of Original Publication: 1948
Genre/Length/Structure: Drama, full length, part one with six scenes, part two with six scenes
Agency Controlling License: Dramatists Play Service
Royalty Fee: Book/item: $7.50. $75 per performance. SPECIAL NOTE: A CD (#4345CD) with cue sheet containing the original music composed by Paul Bowles for the New York production of this play is available through the Play Service for $60.00, plus shipping. The nonprofessional fee for the use of this music is $15.00 per performance.
Cast Breakdown: 8 men, 6 women: 14 total
Time and Setting: Set in Mississippi from the turn of the century through 1916.
Bio of Author: Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), better known as Tennessee Williams, was a major American playwright who received many of the top theatrical awards. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee," the state of his father's birth. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. In addition, The Glass Menagerie (1945) and The Night of the Iguana (1961) received New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards. His 1952 play The Rose Tattoo received the Tony Award for best play.
Plot Summary: A play that is profoundly affecting, SUMMER AND SMOKE is a simple love story of a somewhat puritanical Southern girl and an unpuritanical young doctor. Each is basically attracted to the other but because of their divergent attitudes toward life, each over the course of years is driven away from the other. Not until the end does the doctor realize that the girl's high idealism is ultimately right, and while she is still in love with him, it turns out that neither time nor circumstances will allow the two to come together. Because of the explicit details provided by the author’s production notes, the stage directions, and the diagram of the set design, nonprofessionals should have no difficulty in mounting the play effectively.
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