About the Play:

I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix is a one-act drama by Tennessee Williams. An imaginary look at novelist D. H. Lawrence's last hours, supported by an abrasive wife, Frieda, and a doting friend, Lady Brett. As the poet clambers the tortured steps to death, refusing to go gently into that good night, we do get glimpses of Lawrence's phoenix spirit and poetic pain; Lawrence was one of Williams' chief literary influences.

I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix presents a fictionalized depiction of the demise of English writer D. H. Lawrence on the French Riveria. Tennessee Williams refers to his work as "imaginary." The basic facts, however, are well known. There are three characters, Lawrence himself, his wife Frieda, and his close friend and admirer Bertha Brett, and the scene is a sun porch of a small retreat at Vence in the Alpes Maritimes. We see Lawrence at the very end of his career, in fact the very day he dies, showing the intense love-hate relationship with his wife as he expresses his controversial views on art and sex, referring in particular to a recent exhibition of his paintings. We recognize him as the erratic, inspired, ill-tempered genius who was never able to come to terms with life. Yet he stands revealed here as the man who, in Tennessee Williams' words, "… felt the mystery and power of sex, as the primal life urge, and was the life-long adversary of those who wanted to keep the subject locked away in the cellars of prudery."

I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix was written as a tribute to D.H. Lawrence in 1941, but was not published until 1951. It premiered in 1959 at the Theatre de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre) off-Broadway in New York City. The production was well received and was thought to be "Williams' purest piece of dramatic writing," by critic Henry Hewes.

Cast: 2 female, 1 male

About the Playwright:

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), one of the 20th century's most superb writers, was also one of its most successful and prolific. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi, where his grandfather was the Episcopal clergyman. When his father, a travelling salesman, moved with his family to St. Louis some years later, both he and his sister found it impossible to settle down to city life. He entered college during the Depression and left after a couple of years to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there for two years, spending the evening writing. He entered the University of Iowa in 1938 and completed his course, at the same time holding a large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1940, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 and 1955.