Stairs to the Roof by Tennessee Williams
About the Show
Stairs to the Roof
Benjamin Murphy is disappearing behind a desk. Day after day, he reports to the same office, performs the same meaningless work, and wonders if this is really all life has to offer.
Then he discovers a mysterious flight of stairs leading to the roof.
He climbs them, and the ordinary world begins to fall away. What follows is a wildly fantastical odyssey filled with eccentric strangers, inept security guards, titans of industry, unexpected romance, impossible encounters, and even a wizard high atop a mountain. Each step carries Benjamin further from the life prescribed for him and deeper into a journey through expectation, self-determination, and ultimately liberation.
Written before The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Stairs to the Roof reveals a funny, rebellious, and wildly imaginative Tennessee Williams. Part romantic comedy, part social satire, and part theatrical fever dream, the play takes aim at the demands of capitalism and the promise of the American Dream, or what Williams saw instead as an “American settlement”: the bargain we make when we surrender possibility for security.
What might be waiting when we dare to climb beyond the life we’ve been given?
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