SCHOLAR PANEL CONVERSATIONS
“Conversations: The Original Production of The Glass Menagerie”
Robert Bray & Eric Colleary
“Conversations: The Glass Menagerie and Tennessee Williams’s St. Louis”
Eric Colleary & Henry I. Schvey
“Conversations: Adaptations and Tennessee Williams Today”
Thomas Keith & Annette Saddik
All conversations are moderated by Tom Mitchell, TWStL’s Scholar-in-Residence.
Tom Mitchell
Tom Mitchell is a professor of Acting and Theatre Studies for the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mitchell chaired the Summer Theatre Program at Interlochen Center for the Arts and directed productions in Musical Theatre and Shakespeare. Mitchell served on the national committee of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival and traveled the nation to review 56 productions by schools from Maine to Hawaii. He has directed five of Tennessee Williams’ earliest full-length plays including the 21st-century premieres of Candles to the Sun and Stairs to the Roof. He has authored essays, articles, and presentations on Williams early career, and composed performances introducing these little-known works. Tom also directed two lost plays by the 20th-century Spanish playwright, Jose Lopez Rubio, and the premiere of James Still’s play Meet Me Incognito. He is former chair of the Mid-America Theatre Conference Directing Symposium and received the 2007 Award of Honor by the Illinois Theatre Association. With colleague Burnet Hobgood, Mitchell authored “A Framework for Directing in the Theatre” and has made numerous presentations on the practice of directing in the contemporary theatre.
PANELISTS
Robert Bray
Dr. Robert Bray is the founding director of the Tennessee Williams Scholars Conference, now in its 25th year as part of the Tennessee Williams Festival. Bray is also the founding editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review. The author/editor/coauthor/coeditor of four books, he has also written dozens of articles, interviews, entries, and reviews of Williams. With R. Barton Palmer, Bray coauthored Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America (U Texas P, 2009), the only full-length book that examines the Williams films in their cultural context. Bray retired from teaching in 2017 and is Professor Emeritus of English at Middle Tennessee State University.
Eric Colleary
Eric Colleary is the Cline Curator of Theatre & Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center, an international humanities research library, archive, and museum at the University of Texas at Austin. In this position, he is responsible for the interpretation, management, and growth of the center’s extensive performing arts collections, which includes a large collection of papers from Tennessee Williams. Eric holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota. He currently serves on the boards for the American Theatre Archive Project and the Theatre Library Association.
Thomas Keith
Thomas Keith has edited the Tennessee Williams titles for New Directions since 2002, including two full-length late plays and four volumes of previously unpublished or uncollected one-acts. Editor of a collection of original LGBTQ essays about New York, Love Christopher Street, as well as co-editor of The Letters of Tennessee Williams and James Laughlin, Keith served as dramaturg for Lee Breuer and Maude Mitchell on their Glass Guignol at The Sundance Institute Theater Lab and has taught theater and acting at Ohio University, Lee Strasberg Institute, Atlantic Theater Company School, University of North Carolina Greensboro, and currently at Pace University in Manhattan.
Annette Saddik
Annette Saddik is Professor of Theatre and Literature at the City University of New York, specializing in 20th- and 21st-century drama, particularly the work of Tennessee Williams. She has published four books: Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess: The Strange, The Crazed, The Queer (2015); Contemporary American Drama (2007); The Politics of Reputation: The Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams' Later Plays (1999); and an edited collection of Williams's late plays, The Traveling Companion and Other Plays (2008). Dr. Saddik also lectures regularly on and off- Broadway, has published numerous essays, and serves as a voter for the Lortel Awards.
Henry I. Schvey
Henry I. Schvey, scholar, playwright, memoirist and director, has taught in the Performing Arts Department at Washington University in St. Louis since 1987. Recent publications include the memoir The Poison Tree; the essay “‘The Place I Was Made For’: Tennessee Williams in New Orleans,” published in New Orleans: A Literary History (Cambridge U. P., 2019); and the forthcoming book Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams (U. of Missouri Press), scheduled for publication in spring 2021.
While presented FREE, a donation would be greatly appreciated to help us replace our lost in-person ticket sales for this season.
Thank you to Emerson for sponsoring this year’s Festival!