| dc.description.abstract | Terry Teachout’s 2017 play, Billy and Me, imagines two fictional encounters between Tennessee Williams and William Inge: first, in a bar in Chicago in 1944 immediately following a pre-Broadway tryout of The Glass Menagerie, then in New York in 1959 following the premiere of Inge’s A Loss of Roses. Through fictional dialogue, Teachout builds upon the historical relationship between these two playwrights to imagine the conversations that must have connected them as two midcentury gay playwrights in America: success and failure, sexual conquests, relationships, and addiction. In this way, Teachout’s play attempts to “uncloset” the issues that were at the heart of Williams’ and Inge’s life and work. Through a comparative analysis of specific characters and situations in their plays, this paper explores how the representation of white, gay male identity varies from the closet dramas of Williams and Inge to the uncloseted and celebrated representation of sexual identity in the theatre of today.Teachout was the lead drama critic for The Wall Street Journal, playwright of Satchmo at the Waldorf, and author or editor of nearly eight books until his untimely death in 2022. His passion and respect for the writing and craft of America’s midcentury playwrights is apparent in the text of Billy and Me, which has had three productions up until now, providing an interesting study in how this work revivifies its historical subjects through both content as well as form. | |
