Tennessee Williams’ Desdemona: the dynamics of Tom Mitchell’s theatrical adaptation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2238-3867.v25i2236198Keywords:
American theatre, contemporary drama, theatrical adaptation, American short storyAbstract
This article analyses Tom Mitchell’s theatrical adaptation of Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?, developed from fragmentary versions of Tennessee Williams’ unpublished short story. This study offers a critical reflection on the processes of recovering, reconstructing, and reinscribing the work in the present. Anchored in the historical contexts of the 1930s and 2020s, the investigation demonstrates how the dramaturgical text stages, without softening, racial, gender, and sexual tensions, reaffirming the disruptive force of the Williams original material. Structural fragmentation, metatheatricality, and the oscillation between narration and scene establish a field of estrangement that removes the spectator from passive reception, deepening the critical engagement with Williams’s dramaturgy through a contemporary lens.
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