Professor David Peimer
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire: The Film, the Play
Summary
Staged in 1947, why has “A Streetcar Named Desire” endured as well as it has? It is about a post-war era long gone and a vision of our age. The play is full of sanity in doubt, immigration, fierce sexuality, raw gritty life, denial and bittersweet dreams. It illustrates a world where, as Yeats wrote, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”
Professor David Peimer
David Peimer is a professor of theatre and performance studies in the UK. He has taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and New York University (Global Division), and was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Born in South Africa, David has won numerous awards for playwriting and directing. He has written eleven plays and directed forty in places like South Africa, New York, Brussels, London, Berlin, Zulu Kingdom, Athens, and more. His writing has been published widely and he is the editor of Armed Response: Plays from South Africa (2009) and the interactive digital book Theatre in the Camps (2012). He is on the board of the Pinter Centre in London.