Description
A play produced only twice in the 1940s and now published for the first time reveals that Tennessee Williams anticipated the themes of Star Trek by decades.
Sixty years ago a young Tennessee Williams wrote a play looking toward the year 2001. Stairs to the Roof is a rare and different Williams' work: a love story, a comedy, an experiment in meta-theater, with a touch of early science fiction. Tennessee Williams called Stairs to the Roof "a prayer for the wild of heart who are kept in cages" and dedicated it to "all the little wage earners of the world." It reflects the would-be poet's "season in hell" during the Depression when he had to quit college to type orders eight hours a day at the International Shoe Factory in St. Louis.
Stairs is Williams' revenge, expressed through his alter ego, Benjamin Murphy, the clerk who stages a one-man rebellion against the clock, the monotony of his eight-to-five job, and all the dehumanizing forces of an increasingly mechanized and commercial society. Ben's swift-moving series of fantastic adventures culminate in an escape from the ordinary that is an endorsement of the American dream. In 1941 with the world at war and civilization in danger of collapse, Williams dared to imagine a utopian future as Ben leads us up his stairs towards the Millennium.
Stairs to the Roof was produced only twice, once at the Playbox in Pasadena, California, in 1945, and subsequently at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1947. Now, in an edition meticulously prepared by noted Williams scholar Allean Hale, Williams fans can share this play of youthful optimism.
Stairs is Williams' revenge, expressed through his alter ego, Benjamin Murphy, the clerk who stages a one-man rebellion against the clock, the monotony of his eight-to-five job, and all the dehumanizing forces of an increasingly mechanized and commercial society. Ben's swift-moving series of fantastic adventures culminate in an escape from the ordinary that is an endorsement of the American dream. In 1941 with the world at war and civilization in danger of collapse, Williams dared to imagine a utopian future as Ben leads us up his stairs towards the Millennium.
Stairs to the Roof was produced only twice, once at the Playbox in Pasadena, California, in 1945, and subsequently at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1947. Now, in an edition meticulously prepared by noted Williams scholar Allean Hale, Williams fans can share this play of youthful optimism.
Also By: Tennessee Williams 
Caterpillar Dogs: and Other Early Stories
Paperback, 2023
Seven previously unpublished stories of the Great Depression by America’s poet laureate of the lost
The Luck of Friendship: The Letters of Tennessee Williams and James Laughlin
Hardback, 2018
Four decades of correspondence of Tennessee Williams’s and James Laughlin’s unlikely yet enduring literary and personal relationship.The Luck of Friendship: The Letters of Tennessee Williams and James Laughlin
E Book, 2018
Four decades of correspondence of Tennessee Williams’s and James Laughlin’s unlikely yet enduring literary and personal relationship.
Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws & Other One-Act Plays
Paperback, 2016
“The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays—like firecrackers in a rope.” —Tennessee Williams
Now the Cats With Jeweled Claws & Other One-Act Plays
E Book, 2016
“The peak of my virtuosity was in the one-act plays—like firecrackers in a rope.” —Tennessee Williams
Also By: Allean Hale
Fugitive Kind
E Book, 2016
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions—Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work inFugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays.
The Glass Menagerie: The Deluxe Centennial Edition
Hardback, 2011
A beautiful clothbound edition of a beloved classic to celebrate the 100th birthday of America’s greatest playwright, with a sweeping new introduction by Pulitzer Prize–winner Tony Kushner.
Fugitive Kind
Paperback, 2001
Social outcasts, misfit survivors, dangerous passions—Tennessee Williams fleshed out the characters and themes that would dominate his later work inFugitive Kind, one of his earliest plays.
