In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel

Written in 1968, during an experimental phase in his career, Tennessee Williams’s In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel depicts the tragic demise of a famous American painter and his desperate wife. Set in a Tokyo Hotel Bar, the piece juxtaposes a deeply personal American experience against the cultural backdrop of an exotic and distinctly foreign Japan. Known for poetically realistic portraits of lost American souls in such plays as The Glass Menagerie and the Pulitzer-prize winning A Streetcar Named Desire, the playwright’s In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel shocked audiences with its innovative use of language, stark minimalism, brashness of character and multi-layered symbolism.