Onnagata, Grotesque Beauty, and Aging: Reading Tennessee Williams’s Kabuki-Inspired Plays

Abstract

This article examines Tennessee Williams’s kabuki-inspired plays, which were written after his first trip to Japan in 1959. I focus on And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens… (1957–70), which Williams began writing in 1957 but completed after his trip to Japan, and the 1964 version of The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, a play that Williams rewrote several times from 1962 to 1964. In so doing, I demonstrate how Williams used and modified kabuki traditions under the guidance of his Japanese friend, the acclaimed novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima. In And Tell Sad Stories of the Deaths of Queens … the art of acting by the onnagata (male actors who play female roles in kabuki), especially those who live as “women” even off stage, underlies the male protagonist’s exploration of transgender identity as well as his female gender presentation. In The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, Williams seeks to transform the perceived grotesqueries of aging into allure by using kabuki’s aesthetic principles of “grotesque beauty” and “necrophilic” nostalgia, which had also been expressed in Hollywood films featuring older movie actresses. He deliberately wrote the role of the female protagonist for Tallulah Bankhead, who starred in the 1964 production, with the intention of celebrating her aging body through kabuki aesthetics.