Tennessee Williams' lost early play, Not About Nightingales, a co-production of Britain's Royal National Theatre and Moving Theatre and Houston's Alley Theatre, has been nominated for a Tony as best play.
Nightingales was written in 1938, the fourth play by the then unproduced playwright. The melodramatic prison thriller was inspired by a real-life account of Pennsylvania institution and its inhumane warden. The play might have never been staged if Moving Theatre artistic director Vanessa Redgrave hadn't uncovered the work among Williams' papers at the University of Texas in Austin.
Nightingales was first produced at the National Theatre in March 1998. It made its American debut in Houston in June of that year, before being moved to Broadway.
Williams' other plays include The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Rose Tattoo. He died in 1983 at the age of 71.
