Esta tese analisa seis peças de Tennessee Williams escritas entre as décadas de 1960 a 1980 [The Mutilated, I Can´t Imagine Tomorrow, A Cavalier for Milady, Kirche, Küche, Kinder (An Outrage for the Stage), Now the Cats with Jewled Claws e The One Exception)] a fim de serem investigadas as personagens femininas, sua abordagem e conjuntura a partir de um aprofundamento social, histórico e político que se afasta da leitura hegemônica das obras canônicas do autor, de realismo psicológico, biografismo e glamourizadas pelas versões fílmicas hollywoodianas. São identificadas as considerações estéticas que levam em conta as experimentações e inovações a partir dos contextos da contracultura, negligenciando, portanto, a ideia de que o autor é realista por excelência. As obras mostram uma abordagem de uma mulher que, apesar da conjuntura contracultural, não consegue se livrar do papel social prescrito. Ela é retratada em contraposição a este papel de forma crítica e paródica. Como elemento complementar de análise dramatúrgica, as características destas peças que se alinham com os expedientes mais importantes daquele momento histórico são sublinhadas, levando em conta que Williams trata estas formas a partir de sua própria estilística lírica e lacônica. Os elementos são: o épico, o teatro da crueldade, o chamado teatro do absurdo, contextualizado na conjuntura estadunidense como existencialismo metafísico, o camp e o grotesco. / This thesis aims at analyzing the female characters in six of Tennessee Williams\' late plays written between 1960 and 1980: [The Mutilated, I Can\'t Imagine Tomorrow, A Cavalier for Milady, Kirche, Küche, Kinder (An Outrage for the Stage), Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws and The One Exception]. The analyzes focus on the historical and political aspects in these plays and avoid the reiteration of hegemonic readings of the author\'s canonical play, which tend to stress aspects such as the one of the so called psychological realism of his works, the parallels between themes and characters in Tennessee Williams´ plays and in his biography, and the glamour of the Hollywood versions of his plays. The analyses of Tennessee Williams\'s experimentalism in the aforementioned plays discuss the innovations that stem from the context of counterculture, rather than the idea that he is na essentially realistic author. The six plays studied in this thesis show that, in spite of living in a countercultural context, women were still unable to free themselves from the socially imposed roles. The parodic representation of female characters in these plays is a critical response to this. As a complementary element of dramaturgical analysis, these analyzes will also deal with the characteristics these plays eventually share with the most important sources of theatrical experimentalism, taking in consideration the author\'s stylistic lyricism. These elements are the ones of the epic theatre, of the theatre of cruelty and of the so called theatre of the absurd. In the United States, they are re-contextualized as metaphysical existentialism, the camp and the grotesque.

An exploration into the influence of the noh and kabuki on the late plays of Tennesee Williams and the impact his friendship with Yukio Mishima had on his work.

Concentrating on six plays in the 1610s, this thesis explores the ways theatrical visual effects described as “strange” channel the period’s moral anxieties about rhetoric, technology, and scepticism. It contributes to debates in repertory studies, textual and material culture, intellectual history, theatre history, and to recent revisionist considerations of spectacle. I argue that “strange” spectacle has its roots in the materialisation of morality: the presentation of moral ideas not as abstract concepts but in physical things. The first part of my PhD is a detailed study of early modern moral philosophy, scepticism, and material and textual culture. The second part of my thesis concentrates on Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (1609-10) and The Tempest (1611), John Webster’s The White Devil (1612), and Thomas Heywood’s first three Age plays (1611-13). These spectacular plays are all written and performed within the years 1610-13, a period in which the changes, challenges, and developments in both stage technology and moral philosophy are at their peak. I set these plays in the context of the wider historical moment, showing that the idiosyncrasy of their “strange” stagecraft reflects the period’s interest in materialisation and its attendant moral anxieties. This thesis implicitly challenges some of the conclusions of repertory studies, which sometimes threatens to hierarchise early modern theatre companies by seeing repertories as indications of audience taste and making too strong a divide between, say, “elite” indoor and “citizen” outdoor playhouses. It is also aligned with recent revisionist considerations of spectacle, and I elide divisions in criticism between interest in original performance conditions, close textual analysis, or historical-contextual readings. I present “strangeness” as a model for appreciating the distinct aesthetic of these plays, by reading them as part of their cultural milieu and the material conditions of their original performance.