Tennessee Williams and the Theatre of Excess

Saddik explores Williams' later plays (1961-82) in the context of what she terms a 'theatre of excess', which seeks liberation through exaggeration, chaos, ambiguity, and laughter. Grounding the plays in the carnivalesque, the grotesque, and psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theory, Saddik analyzes recent productions that successfully captured the playwright's late aesthetic.