Tennessee Williams: We Work and We Love

Interview with Tennessee Williams

Conducted by James Grissom

New Orleans

1982

There is always the eventuality of worthiness when people who love theatre gather together to value what is strongest about its nature--which is its welcoming embrace of the altogether unique people who are singularly responsible for creating it. ....We work and we fail; we work and we love; we work and we dream. The essential thing is that we work. If we are true to ourselves and to our partners in this remarkable art of theatre, we are rewarded, and it is not the prize you remember, or the parties, or the willing flesh, but the congregation of spirits who worked toward your shared goal and occasionally looked over at you and let you know that you were noticed and that you mattered.

For many years Marian Seldes quoted this and other pieces of what would ultimately become Follies of God. In 2005 Marian read this at the Tony Nominee Luncheon and it was reproduced in the Tony Playbill.  Marian got the words of Tennessee--and many others--into the ears and hearts of those who would make the book and its message possible.