About the Play:

The Night of the Iguana has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, and Female/Male Scenes.

The Night of the Iguana is a full-length drama by Tennessee Williams. A defrocked priest accused of having sexual relations with a teenage girl seeks shelter at a Mexican inn run by his blowsy, widowed old friend, who finds herself competing for his attentions with a kindly spinster who is caring for her grandfather, an aging poet.

The Night of the Iguana is set in 1940 in the shabby, run-down Costa Verde Hotel. The hotel, surrounded by the simmering heat of the Mexican jungle, plays host to the flotsam and jetsam of passing tourists and is run by the recently widowed Maxine Faulk and her ragbag collection of staff. Into this steaming backwater comes the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon, an ex-minister now earning a living as a tour guide for a second-rate travel agency. He is leading a bus tour of Baptist women on a trip to the Mexican coast. The widow sees in Shannon an easy and desirable replacement for her deceased husband, and starts to entrap him, just as new travellers arrive at the hotel in the shape of Hannah Jelkes and her aged grandfather, Nonno. As the night unfolds and Shannon's plight comes to resemble that of the captive iguana, trapped, bound and tormented under the hotel's veranda, Hannah enters into a deeply human bond with the ex-priest and the heat in the jungle increases. This Tony Award-winning play by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner is a provocative exploration of human struggle and passion.

The Night of the Iguana premiered in 1961 at the Royale Theatre on Broadway in New York City. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 6 female, 8 male

What people say:

"…an awesome and powerful new drama." — New York World-Telegram & Sun

"…Williams' most mature work." — New York Daily News

"…the most fruitful and versatile exercise by our best living playwright." — New York Journal-American

"…Tennessee Williams at the top of his form." — New York Times

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 was awarded four Drama Critic Circle Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.