Confessional, by Tennessee Williams

an Anatomy of Exclusion in American Society

Abstract

This article examines Tennessee Williams’s one-act play Confessional, understanding it as a dramaturgy that problematizes the social and cultural contradictions during the historical turning point of the United States between the 1960s and 1970s. For this purpose, a dramaturgical analysis based on the dialectical method is adopted, which allows the articulation of form and content in the examination of artistic works. The research departs from the problem of how Williams reworks the theatrical scene in dialogue with the crisis of the American Dream, contrasts this perspective with the reading that his late plays would be merely fragmentary or decadent, and seeks to achieve a synthesis that situates the play as an aesthetic expression of a historical moment marked by political and cultural transformations. The aim is, therefore, to investigate how the structural devices of the play—the barroom setting, the confessional soliloquies, the narrative fragmentation—can be understood as social and historical phenomena, unveiling contradictions between exclusion, memory, and resistance. In conclusion, the article demonstrates that Confessional marks an aesthetic and political turning point in Tennessee Williams’s career, transforming the social margins into a space for critical reflection. The play affirms theater as a form of resistance and as a means of confronting the historical contradictions of capitalism.